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16Dec/080

Java plugin 64-bit, now available.

Sun Microsystems announced the 64-bit version of the JRE, which includes the Java Plugin.

This means that if you have a 64-bit version of a Linux distribution, you can now have Java applets running in your Firefox.

Download at https://jdk6.dev.java.net/6uNea.html

You can install in /usr/local/

Then, you need to make a symbolic link, (it's OK if Firefox is still running)

ln -s /usr/local/jre1.6.0_12/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so ~/.mozilla/plugins/

Then, in Firefox, visit about:plugins and check if the new plugin is recognised. You should see the text below.

libnpjp2.so

Όνομα αρχείου: /usr/local/jre1.6.0_12/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so
Τύπος MIME Περιγραφή Επιθέματα Ενεργές
application/x-java-vm Java Ναι
application/x-java-applet Java Ναι
application/x-java-applet;version=1.1 Java Ναι

Finally, test your browser with the demo applets at http://java.sun.com/applets/jdk/1.4/index.html

I do not know how well some complicated Java applications will behave. If you do not see the applet starting up (there is no loading indication), have a look at ~/.xsession-errors for any hints of a failed applet.

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11Dec/072

ert-archives.gr: “Linux/Unix operating systems are not supported”

ERT (Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation) is the national radio/television organisation of Greece.

ERT recently made available online part of its audio and video archive, at the website http://www.ert-archives.gr/

When browsing the website from Linux, you were blocked with a message that Linux/Unix operating systems are not supported. This message was appearing due to User-Agent filtering. Even if you altered your User-Agent, the page would not show the multimedia.

There has been a heated discussion on this on local mailing lists, with many users sending their personal polite comments to the feedback page at the ERT website. Many individual, personal comments have value and are taken into account.

Since today, http://www.ert-archives.gr/ does no do filtering on the User-Agent, and has changed the wording at the support page saying that

Σχετικά με υπολογιστές που χρησιμοποιούν λειτουργικό σύστημα Linux σχετικές οδηγίες θα υπάρξουν στο άμεσο μέλλον.

which means that they will be providing instructions for Linux systems in the immediate future.

Going through the HTML code of http://www.ert-archives.gr/ one can see that the whole system would work well under Linux, out of the box, if they could change

<embed id="oMP" name="oMP" width="800" height="430" type="application/x-ms-wmp"

to

<embed id="oMP" name="oMP" width="800" height="430" type="video/x-ms-wmp"

Firefox, with the mplayerplugin, supports the video/x-ms-wmp streaming format. You can verify if you have it by writing about:plugins in the location bar and pressing Enter. For my system it says

Windows Media Player Plugin

File name: mplayerplug-in-wmp.so
mplayerplug-in 3.40Video Player Plug-in for QuickTime, RealPlayer and Windows Media Player streams using MPlayer
JavaScript Enabled and Using GTK2 Widgets
...
MIME Type Description Suffixes Enabled
video/x-ms-wmp Windows Media wmp,* Yes

I am not sure if the mplayerplugin package is installed by default in Ubuntu, and I do not know what is the workflow from the message that says that a plugin is missing to the process of getting it installed. If you use the Totem Media Player, it instructs you to download and install the missing packages. I would appreciate your input on this one.

A workaround is to write a Greasemonkey script to replace the string so that Firefox works out of the box. However, the proper solution is to have ERT fix the code.

I must say that I would have preferred to have Totem Movie Player used to view those videos.
ERT Ecology
I just finished watching a documentary from the 80s about ecology and sustainability of the forests on my Linux system. It is amazing to listen again to the voice-over which is sort of a signature voice for such documentaries of the said TV channel. The screenshot shows goats in a forest, and mentioning the devastating effects of said animals on recently-burnt forests.

Update (22Mar08): The problem has not been resolved yet. Dimitris Diamantis offers a work-around at the Ubuntu-gr mailing list.

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5Apr/070

Re: 11 Things You Haven’t Seen Yet in Ubuntu Feisty Fawn

Άρθρο του John Reese για τις βελτιώσεις του Ubuntu.

Από τα πιο σημαντικά:

1. Θα δουλεύει το 3D όπως είναι διαθέσιμο από τη διανομή Fedora Core 6. Δηλαδή θα είναι μια επιλογή στις Προτιμήσεις με το όνομα Desktop Effects. Ελπίζω να το μεταφράσαμε :)
Αν έχετε κάρτα γραφικών Intel, τότε το 3D desktop θα δουλεύει άμεσα, δίχως ανάγκη εγκατάστασης άλλου λογισμικού.
Το 3D desktop δεν βασίζεται στο Beryl αλλά στο Compiz, window managers. Ποιο είναι πιο καλό; Το Compiz φαίνεται να είναι αυτό που έχει όλο τον αρχικό κώδικα ενώ το Beryl έχει κάνει τρομερή δουλειά στο marketing και στις μικρορυθμίσεις/plugins. Σε κάθε περίπτωση τα δύο έργα ανακοίνωσαν ότι θα συγχωνευτούν και φαίνεται να οδεύουν στην κατεύθυνση αυτή.

2. Οι ρυθμίσεις δικτύου θα δουλεύουν καλύτερα και με αυτοματοποιημένο τρόπο, με χρήση του NetworkManager. Υπήρξαν κάποιες συζητήσεις για προβλήματα με το NetworkManager, ελπίζω να λυθούν σύντομα.

3. Δυνατότητα να δει κάποιος τους οδηγούς συσκευών κλειστού λογισμικού που χρησιμοποιεί. Τεχνολογικά είναι εύκολο να γραφτεί το πρόγραμμα αυτό, ουσιαστικά προσφέρει τη δυνατότητα να διαχωρίσει τα μηχανήματα που δουλεύουν πάνω σε πραγματικά ελεύθερο λογισμικό και σε όσα δεν.

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25Mar/070

Multimedia support in Ubuntu Linux 6.10

This is a follow-up to the article Multimedia support in Ubuntu Linux 6.06 on how to add extended multimedia support to the Ubuntu Linux distribution.

The new version of Ubuntu Linux, 7.04, has a new functionality to help add multimedia support in a seamless way; when you try to play a media file that requires a new codec, you will be asked to install it at that time. The new functionality was made available thanks to the work on the gstreamer multimedia library (bug #161922 - script to provide plugin installation info), and work with the Ubuntu distribution. It is important to note that the new version of Fedora Linux 7 has a similar mechanism of automatic multimedia support installation.

In Ubuntu 6.10, start System/Administration/Synaptic Package Manager. Under Settings/Repositories, select the universe and multiverse repositories. Click ok, then Reload to update your package cache.

Subsequently, click on Search and type in

gstreamer-0.10

You will get quite a few results; you can install packages found apart from those which names end with -dev (development packages, not normally required) and -dbg (debug packages, not normally required).

Finally, the w32codecs package (do a new search for this) adds support to other binary codecs that no native Linux software exists yet.

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23Feb/0713

Video playback problems (black) after installing Beryl (or Compiz)

Note: Here we describe a workaround. The proper solution is to fix the graphics drivers and the X.Org X server. Such work is taking place, and for several cases you do not need this workaround. Especially with newer versions of Linux.

You just installed your 3D Linux desktop and you are really enthusiastic about it. But when you try to play some videos, you get a strange black output. What's going on?
The common software video players that come with the Linux desktop are able to display the video stream to several types of output devices. This includes several types of output for the graphical interface, and also obscure output devices such as text mode, using ASCII characters.
The default output device is XVideo (or Xv) for players such as those based on GStreamer (totem) and VLC.
As you guessed, there is a bug with XVideo when using Beryl/Compiz. Therefore, to fix, you need to switch to another output device that works.
For GStreamer players (such as totem, the default movie player in GNOME, Ubuntu and so on), you need to run from the command line the command
gstreamer-properties
(with older distributions such as Ubuntu 6.06 there is an option in System/Preferences for this).
and pick
Video, then for Default Video Plugin choose X Window System (No Xv). Click on test to verify that it actually works. Click Close and you are set.
VLC is not installed by default in Ubuntu 6.10. You need to install manually using the Synaptic Package Manager (under System/Administration), once you have activated the Universe repository in Repositories.
Start VLC and click on Settings, then Preferences. Expand Video and then expand Output modules. You will notice several options for output device. How do we actually choose which one should be the active output device? Well, it appears it's a bit tricky. Select the item Output modules, and notice the checkbox at the bottom right that says Advanced options. Check the box, and now you have the option to select a different output device. Pick X11 video output, click on Save and you are set!

Update (17 Jun 2007): Added section at UbuntuGuide.org, How do I fix black windows during video playback.

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9Jan/072

Translating the OLPC

In a previous post, we covered how to install fonts and enabling writing support on the OLPC. The OLPC contains a limited number of applications that are available to be translated. These applications include

  1. NetworkManager, part of the GNOME project (HEAD, extras)
  2. alsa-utils, ???
  3. aspell, external
  4. atk10, part of the GNOME project (GNOME 2.18, developer)
  5. chkconfig, part of the Fedora Project
  6. diffutils, external
  7. glib20, part of the GNOME project (GNOME 2.18, developer)
  8. gst-plugins-base-0.10, external
  9. gst-plugins-good-0.10, external
  10. gstreamer-0.10, external
  11. gtk20-properties, part of the GNOME project (GNOME 2.18, developer)
  12. gtk20, part of the GNOME project (GNOME 2.18, developer)
  13. hal, external
  14. initscripts, part of the Fedora Project
  15. libc, part of the Translation Project (reduced version?)
  16. libuser, part of the Fedora Project
  17. libwnck, part of the GNOME Project (GNOME 2.18, desktop)
  18. stardict, external
  19. vte, part of the GNOME Project (GNOME 2.18, desktop)
  20. wget, part of the Translation Project

The links provided point to the latest available version. The versions that the OLPC using are not the latest with the upstream project, therefore keep in mind that the translated files may differ. It would be good to establish the exact .PO files from the OLPC project (URL to source?).

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28Oct/060

Updated my WordPress!

I updated my WordPress to the latest version 2.0.5. The process was painless though I have a load of plugins up and running.

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6Jul/06Off

Multimedia support in Ubuntu Linux 6.06

With Ubuntu Linux 6.06, it is much clear how to install those codecs in order to get broad multimedia file support.

In Ubuntu, the multimedia infrastructure is handled by GStreamer; you install GStreamer plugins and any application that uses GStreamer can immediately benefit from the new codec support.

A typical installation of Ubuntu will bring in the free and open-source codecs by default. This includes the base gstreamer plugins package, gstreamer0.10-plugins-base that covers

  1. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstadder.so
  2. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstaudioconvert.so
  3. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstaudiorate.so
  4. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstaudioresample.so
  5. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstaudiotestsrc.so
  6. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstcdparanoia.so
  7. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstdecodebin.so
  8. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstffmpegcolorspace.so
  9. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstogg.so
  10. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstplaybin.so
  11. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstsubparse.so
  12. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgsttcp.so
  13. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgsttheora.so
  14. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgsttypefindfunctions.so
  15. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideo4linux.so
  16. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideorate.so
  17. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideoscale.so
  18. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideotestsrc.so
  19. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvolume.so
  20. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvorbis.so

With a properly encoded multimedia file, you can play music or video with subtitles. Such good codecs are Ogg, Vorbis and Theora. You can also rip CDs; cdparanoia is also there.
By default you also get the good package, gstreamer0.10-plugins-good
It contains

  1. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgst1394.so
  2. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstaasink.so
  3. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstalaw.so
  4. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstalpha.so
  5. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstapetag.so
  6. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstavi.so
  7. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstautodetect.so
  8. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstcacasink.so
  9. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstcdio.so
  10. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgsteffectv.so
  11. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstgoom.so
  12. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstid3demux.so
  13. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstlevel.so
  14. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstefence.so
  15. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstmulaw.so
  16. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstossaudio.so
  17. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstrtp.so
  18. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstrtsp.so
  19. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstsmpte.so
  20. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgsttaglib.so
  21. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstudp.so
  22. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideobox.so
  23. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideoflip.so
  24. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstwavenc.so
  25. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstwavparse.so
  26. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstauparse.so
  27. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstdebug.so
  28. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstnavigationtest.so
  29. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstalphacolor.so
  30. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstcairo.so
  31. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstflxdec.so
  32. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstmatroska.so
  33. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideomixer.so
  34. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstcutter.so
  35. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstmultipart.so
  36. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstflac.so
  37. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstjpeg.so
  38. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstpng.so
  39. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstspeex.so
  40. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstgconfelements.so
  41. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstshout2.so
  42. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideobalance.so
  43. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgsticydemux.so
  44. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstximagesrc.so
  45. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstannodex.so
  46. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstgdkpixbuf.so
  47. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgsthalelements.so
  48. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstdv.so

This includes generic AVI support, access to digital video and Firewire devices, visualisers, the Matroska codec, access to shoutcast servers, the speex audio codec, the flac codec and many more.

At this point, you can install Pitivi, a gstreamer-enabled video editor written in Python that helps you create your own movie. Make sure you install gstreamer0.10-gnonlin which enables non-linear editing in gstreamer.

Up to here you got free and open-source software.

You can continue with more codecs by installing the package gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly. This package is not part of the official Ubuntu distribution; you need to enable the Universe repository. Use System/Administration/Synaptic Package Manager to install these additional packages.
Ugly are the plugins and codecs that may have distribution problems in some countries.

Ugly includes

  1. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgsta52dec.so
  2. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstasf.so
  3. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstdvdlpcmdec.so
  4. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstdvdread.so
  5. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstdvdsub.so
  6. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstiec958.so
  7. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstmad.so
  8. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstmpeg2dec.so
  9. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstmpegaudioparse.so
  10. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstmpegstream.so
  11. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstrmdemux.so
  12. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstsid.so

This package will bring in, among others, DVD playback and subtitle support, ASF file support, MP3 support (MAD package) and MPEG2 video playback.
You can also get MP3 support if you install the gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3 plugin which is available from Universe as well. This package is probably free to use in any country thanks to the efforts of the Fluendo team.

It appears that if you install ugly, it is good to install gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg so that you get support for

FFmpeg plugin for GStreamer

This GStreamer plugin supports a large number of audio and video compression
formats through the use of the FFmpeg library. The plugin contains GStreamer
elements for encoding 40+ formats (MPEG, DivX, MPEG4, AC3, DV, ...), decoding
90+ formats (AVI, MPEG, OGG, Matroska, ASF, ...), demuxing 30+ formats, and
colorspace conversion.

Finally, there is a package gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad with plugins of potentially suboptimal quality. It includes

  1. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstbz2.so
  2. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstcdxaparse.so
  3. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstdtsdec.so
  4. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstfreeze.so
  5. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstgsm.so
  6. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstmms.so
  7. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstmodplug.so
  8. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstmusepack.so
  9. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstqtdemux.so
  10. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgsttrm.so
  11. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstspeed.so
  12. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstswfdec.so
  13. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgsttta.so
  14. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideo4linux2.so
  15. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstwavpack.so
  16. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstxingheader.so
  17. /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstneonhttpsrc.so

With bad you get GSM audio codec support, MMS support, QT playback support for some formats, Flash (SWF) playing support, Video4Linux2 support, MUSEPACK support and a few more.

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16May/060

Στατιστικά πρόσβασης στο WordPress

Έχετε ιστολόγιο WordPress;

Με το plugin wp-stattraq έχετε τη δυνατότητα να συγκεντρώσετε στατιστικά επισκεψιμότητας του ιστολογίου σας.

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16May/064

Google Analytics και ιστολόγια WordPress

βαρόμετρο, υπάρχει plugin για το WordPress με το οποίο μπορείς πολύ εύκολα να ενεργοποιήσεις το λογαριασμό σου στο Google Analytics.

Δες το Google Analytics Plugin for WordPress. Το ενεργοποιείς κατά τα γνωστά και βάζεις το ID που σού έχει δώσει το Google Analytics.

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7May/066

Domains and Webhosting #2

There are loads of companies that offer webhosting services. We distinguish between dedicated webhosting (you have a server on your own at the datacentre), virtual private server (VPS) (a server is partitioned to virtual private servers through VMWare, Xen or other) and shared webhosting (you share the server, you get your own virtual host in Apache).

The most affordable of the three is shared webhosting and prices start at around 20 euros per year for facilities that allow you to run your own WordPress blog.

To run your own WordPress blog, you need

  • Apache (Linux, etc but preferably not Windows)
  • mysql database
  • ability to upload files (typically FTP upload)
  • PHP
  • mod_rewrite is preferable
  • safe_mod off for PHP is preferable
  • disk space at least 20MB for WordPress
  • monthly bandwidth at least 2GB (for typical non-mainstream blog)

It is important that the webhosting provider allows you to administer your webhosting options and offer a tool like cPanel.

Normally you do not get shell access. In some cases you do, as long as you provide a photo ID.
Normally you do not get a backup option as it tends to be complicated to apply. For a WordPress blog, the typical changes are applied in the mysql database so there are no files that change over time (apart from plugin installation). Therefore, it is good to have a way to backup your mysql database. You could use phpmyadmin to backup your database, however it is more suitable to use something like the WordPress Database Backup plugin.
If you have recommendations for webhosting, post them as comments.

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26Sep/05Off

Dear VideoLAN users

Dear VideoLAN users,

The VideoLAN team is happy to announce the first beta version of VLC
0.8.4 (Note: 0.8.3 was skipped because it's technical improvements were
too little)

Highlights from improvements include:
* Mac OS X interface:
- new dialogs (wizard, extended controls, bookmarks)
- drag and drop in playlist
* wxWidgets interface (default Windows / Linux interface):
- renamed from wxWindows
- VLC update checker (?)
* Skins interface:
- Partial support for tree playlist
* HTTP interface:
- CGI handling, you can now use external programs from VLC's web
server
(like PHP for instance)
- Much richer controls
* Linux binary codecs loader. Now able to read WMV3 under Linux.
* UPnP service discovery
* Bonjour (Apple zeroconf protocol) service discovery
* Shoutcast output module to forward streams to icecast servers
* Internal strings handling is now UTF-8 based
* ActiveX plugin should now work outside IE as well
* New languages: Korean and Romanian
* Loads of bug fixes
(https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/query?status=closed&milestone=0.8.4-test1)

You can get a complete list by reading the release notes:
http://developers.videolan.org/vlc/NEWS

Binary packages are already available for Windows and MacOS X. You can
download those and the source code as well on:
http://downloads.videolan.org/pub/videolan/testing/vlc-0.8.4-test1/

Remember that this is a beta version. Please test it heavily and report
bugs. Known bugs are registered in the trac database:
http://developers.videolan.org/cgi-bin/trac.cgi/roadmap

This beta release's forum topic is located here:
http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=12634

For the VideoLAN team,

-- dionoea Antoine Cellerier

Μπορείτε να συνεχίσετε την ελληνική μετάφραση.

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