Snagging web videos has gotten even easier

This post is now available on Peng’s new Tux + Me blog. You can find it at http://bostonpeng.wordpress.com/2010/10/07/snagging-web-videos-has-gotten-even-easier/

If you came to this site form a link on another site please let the site you came from know that the post has been moved. Thank you.

Peng’s links for Sunday, 31 January

• Lior Kaplan: Hamakor, the Israeli Free Software Society, calls for the annulment of Software Patents. People have been calling for the end of software patents since it’s getting (almost) to the point where it’s getting tough to determine whether a new patent contains prior art due to so many patents being granted. I found this post on Planet Debian and I’m glad to see the Israeli Free Software Society taking the lead on this.
• MJ Ray: Get the Survey Monkey Off Your Back. I’ve long thought using surveymonkey was a pain in the rear because they (seem to) ask for so much from people who are just voting on a survey. It turns out that surveymonkey may be not just a pain in the rear but also violating UK accessibility and privacy laws.
• Lasse Havelund: OpenOffice.org is “a piece of crap” – or is it? OOo has gotten some pretty bad press lately so Lasse did a personal recreation of a study that had a group of teenagers try their hands at word processing and presentation management tasks using both OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office 2007, all in the name of seeing how OOo really compared. He tends to use LaTeX for his writing and hasn’t used either OOo or Office 2007 much “over the last few years.” I won’t spoil his results so you need to read his post. You may be glad you took the time to read it and you can follow his links to get more background info on the test.
• Siegfried Gevatter: GNOME Activity Journal, and installing it on Ubuntu. I’ve been hearing about this app (formerly known as GNOME Zeitgeist) and am curious about it. Siegfried some nice info on why you’d want to use it as well as some easy steps for getting it installed.
• Stephan Hermann: Is it just me, or… People have been kvetching about non-free software being included in distros like Ubuntu ever since it first came out. Stephan writes such a good post on the matter that I doubt I could have said it better myself.
• DesktopLinux.com: Second Lucid Linux alpha said to offer 15-second start-ups. Eric Brown takes a good look at the latest early test release of Ubuntu 10.04, listing both the good and bad to be seen in this bleeding edge release, including some kvetching about support for some proprietary software being included (see previous link).
• Google Chrome Blog: Over 1,500 new features for Google Chrome. Google Chrome dev Nick Baum writes about some of the new features in Chrome and includes a video walk-through for installing an extension (not one that I personally use but you may find it helpful). The post is mostly about using Chrome on a Windows-based box but some of the info is also good for Mac and GNU/Linux users, as well as users of Chromium. There’s also a great tips post on the Chrome blog about managing tabs that you may find helpful.
• Launchpad New: ACTION: Back up old sources from PPAs. It turns out that Personal Package Archives on Launchpad are a little too popular. You may need to back up some of the packages you’ve gotten from PPAs. Jonathan Lange has some info every user of software from a PPA should have.
• Bastian Venthur: How to find packages installed/updated yesterday? If you’re like me you take regular updates to the software you run and every now and then you find a problem has cropped up after updating. The problem is that sometimes you don’t recall what got updated to know where to start tracking down your issue. Bastian asked he readers for ways to find out which packages got updated or installed and he got some really good responses. This is one post you’ll want to add to your permanent reference/resource list.
• Nick Mamatas: Ursula K. LeGuin to Google: Hands off my books! Not every author is satisfied with the proposed solution to the problem of Google’s plan to digitize books to make available online.
• Carlos Garnacho: Multi-touch support in Linux/Xorg/GTK+. Apple made other OS’s jealous with their ability to use two fingers to select and modify content on their smartphones and DMPs (Digital Media Players). Now GNU/Linux users can use it, if they can resolve the dependencies, that is.
• Steve Langasek: Ubuntu 8.04.4 LTS released. The Ubuntu devs have released the fourth maintenance update to Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy Heron” LTS (Long Term Support). Since Ubuntu 10.04 “Lucid Lynx” will also be an LTS release this will be the last maintenance release for 8.04 LTS but there are about 70 updates in this update so if you run Ubuntu 8.04 you’ll want to take this update.
• Mike Hommey: Feeling alone. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has an experiment to see how much info your browser lets web servers know about you. I’m kind of worried about how much information they report about me.
• NewsAskew: Green Hornet #1 FREE! May 10, 2010… All right all you lovers of comics and Jay & Silent Bob. Kevin Smith has been lending his talents to comic books, including being the writer for the very first of the new series of Green Hornet comic books. Thanks to Free Comic Book Day you have a chance to pick it up without having to shell out any cash for it. And without risking an arrest for shoplifting!
• Nigel Tao: The Road to One Point Zerodom. Nigel is the author of the SuperSwitcher app, and he’s glad to announce that he has a goal of getting Superswitcher 1.0 out in time for the release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. I. Can’t. Wait.

I have more things to post but I want to give them their own posts so if you’ll allow a  little commercial promotion, I found a great product that you may join me in wanting to buy.

• QMx Insider: Put a Firefly in Your Pocket for $9.95! Fans of the Joss Whedon show Firefly and it’s follow-up movie Serenity will be glad to know that you can finally own your own Firefly-class ship without having to spend an arm and a leg. Shiny!

Have a most excellent start of February 2010!

The GlobalMenu PPA has been updated for karmic users

One of the issues people have been dealing with since the upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala is the fact that the GlobalMenu Team’s Personal Package Archive (PPA) hasn’t been updated for the new release (Issue 524 on the GlobalMenu Google code issue tracker). I’m very happy to say that Pierre Slamich has resolved the bug and karmic users are now able to use the PPA to keep their version of GlobalMenu updated, as it now has version 0.7.8 packages for the current version of Ubuntu.

Many thanks to Pierre and the rest of the GM team. You guys rock and I owe y’all a case of brewskies.

Peng’s links for Wednesday,25 March

Yep, I’m posting again already. I snagged a few things I wanted to post yesterday when the clock started to run out, and I’m going to try not to let my list of things to post get quite so long.

• Stephen Hermann: Ubuntu Jaunty Netbook Remix. Getting Ubuntu 9.04 ready for release also brings a version for people using netbooks. Stephen didn’t use apt-get to perform the upgrade, going instead with a flash drive, but if you’re wondering how the next release of Ubuntu will play on the smaller platform you’ll want to read his report. He also posted some screenshots for those who want some images with their text.
• Jono Bacon:Ubuntu 9.04 Free Culture Showcase Winners!. The Ubuntu devs had a competition to see who could come up with great content to be included in the Examples/folder for Ubuntu 9.04, and Jono has the good news on what content will be immortalized in cd/dvd/iso form when the Jaunty Jackelope is released in less than a month.
• Launchpad News: Launchpad maintenance 27th March and 1st April. Launchpad, the code hosting service from Ubuntu parent Canonical, is going to be doing some maintenance that will mean that Launchpad will have to go offline for a brief period on two days in the coming week. The first downtime will mean that Personal Package Archives (PPA’s) hosted on Launchpad will be unavailable for about half an hour on Friday, and then all of Launchpad will be offline for one hour on April Fool’s Day. yeah, great timing on that latter date, eh? Get all the details from the announcement on their blog.
• André Gondim: Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope booting in 20s. Holy crap, but that’s pretty quick! I’ll have to check it on my own system, but if I get even a fraction of that speedup I’ll be one happy penguin. I seem to be hitting lags when Compiz starts and AWN loads in, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got a setting messed up someplace, but it’s good to see that the dev team are working on getting you from turning on your comp to be able to actually use it with the GUI down to as short a time period as possible. (I’ll see about getting some timing figures on both my current boot time and the time under 9.04.) André’s even kind enough to give us graphs to back up what he’s telling us.
• Stefano Forenza: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. How to waste time. Stefano give us some good info on adding repositories via Apt-URL and why it’s good news. Complete with lolcats.
• Panji Nushantara : How To Read Software Version Number in Ubuntu. Reading version numbrs (and typing them into bug reports) can be a real pain. Panji has a nice tutorial on how to make sense out of the apparant gobbldygoop. She He (sorry about that!) also has a plea to make the damned things easier to understand.

Catch GNOME Do 0.8 being silly

Tuesday’s links post included news that GNOME Do 0.8 has reached alpha stage and since then I found an easy way to get it. The GNOME Do team has added a new PPA on Launchpad for GNOME Do testers that will probably be the easiest way to get testing builds of GNOME Do 0.8 and keep them up to date. To get them you want to add these two lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list file

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-testers/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-testers/ubuntu intrepid main

Now update your package list with

sudo apt-get update

If you already have GNOME Do installed you should get a notification from the Update Manager that you have updates to install, but if you don’t have Do installed yet just run this from your terminal:

sudo apt-get install gnome-do

That will install not only GNOME Do but also the plugins as well. Once they’re installed you can simply run gnome-do to launch it.

But GNOME Do 0.8 can get silly in version 0.7.95.1 (the second alpha release of GNOME Do 0.8). I had an issue where none of my launchers were available in Do so I had to use my menus just to be able to run Synaptic or even Sonata, the two apps I run most often. I posted a question about it on the Do support thread on the Ubuntu Forums and davidsiegel was kind enough to promptly ask me to run gnome-do --debug and post the output. When I ran that I saw that a link that I had created to a post on the Ubuntu Forums was causing problems so I moved it to a folder away from my desktop, restarted Do and saw that I could once again launch apps from Do.

I did notice that the Do icon shows up in the notification tray regardless of what I had set in the preferences dialog, but someone had already filed a bug for it. There’s also a problem with the Files and Folders plugin, but I think what I’m seeing is covered by one of two bugs already filed.

There is one very cool thing I’m seeing in Do 0.8, and I found it when I was reading my RSS feeds the other day. When I set Do to use the Docky theme I saw this on the bottom of my screen:

Yes, Do is now available as a dock, but it’s nowhere near as configurable as something like AWN, which you may notice behind the Do dock. Go ahead and play with it, but if you need to figure out how to get Do back to another theme simply use your trigger keys (usually Super (aka the Windows key)+space) or click on the first icon to get Do ready for your input, then start typing GNOME Do Preferences. When it offers that option simply go into the Appearance tab and select a different theme. I’m really liking the Nouveau theme, myself, especially when I change the background color and opacity, as you can see on the right. It still needs some work, but this is good for now.

I do have sone suggestion for you. I’d stay away from the Read Help Documentation (man) plugin. When I enabled it I got options to read the manuals for several apps before getting anywhere near the launcher for the app I wanted to run.

[UPDATED] Install Vala without compiling source code

Last week I wrote a post on installing GlobalMenu (nee MacMenu) and I said you had to install Vala, which had to be installed from source code. This morning I saw ayoli’s comment and it sent me hunting through Launchpad for a PPA that held Vala 0.5.1. After finding several PPA’s with older versions I found the one that had the current version.

Before we install Vala from Bruce Cowan’s PPA we need to uninstall our current build of Vala. You’ll need to restart your computer during the change so either bookmark this post or print it out so you can refer to it after you restart. Since GlobalMenu depends on it let’s shut down the GlobalMenu first. Go into your home directory and open ~/.gnomerc again in your favorite text editor and comment out all of the lines that you had uncommented to run GlobalMenu. Save the changes and close your text editor, then open a Terminal (or your favorite command line app). Change to the folder where you installed Vala and let’s run the uninstall command.

cd vala-0.5.1
sudo make uninstall

Enter your root password when asked and you will see a rather long list of remove file operations. One that’s done you’ll need to reboot to apply the changes, but before you do right click on your Global Menu Panel Applet and remove it, then add either the Main Menu or the Menu Bar to your panel. This will give you the main application menus to use after you restart your computer. Now close any application you’re running (including your web browser) and restart your system to apply the changes we made. I’ll see you when you get back.

/me fires up Sonata and plays a little Fragile while he waits for you to get back

Welcome back. Let’s get Bruce’s PPA added to your sources.list file.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/bruce89/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/bruce89/ubuntu intrepid main

Updated 2 June: Vadi’s comment reminded me that there’s a better PPA for Vala, namely the one for the Vala Team. Use these sources in your sources.list for the latest builds of Vala:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/vala-team/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/vala-team/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

Update your package list (sudo apt-get update) and install Vala by running

sudo apt-get install valac

I know that look weird but you want Vala, a “C# like language for the GObject system” (from Bruce’s PPA page), if you want to run the current version of GlobalMenu. I’m running GlobalMenu as I type this so I can confirm that valac is the package that you need from Bruce’s PPA.

Go back to ~/.gnomerc and edit the file to the setting you used the last time you ran GlobalMenu. You can either replace your Global Menu Panel Applet now or when you get back, but it’s time for yet another reboot.

/me enjoys a little Mood for a Day while you reboot again

If you didn’t put the Global Menu Panel Applet you should put that back on your panel now. The GlobalMenu should be working, showing that the valac package was the right one to install. I’ll be adding these updated instructions to the documentation for Mac4Lin 1.0 so Mac4Lin users will have the compiled instructions in a single handy file.

Thanks to aoli for giving me the idea of finding a PPA that has Vala, and thanks to Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, Rick Wakeman, Chris Squire and Bill Bruford (collectively known in 1971 as Yes) for making such a sweet album to listen to as I blog.

Updated 20 November 2009: Commenting on this post is closed due to its age and use by somment spammers.

Peng’s links for Saturday, 25 October

I know I owe you a follow-up on upgrading to Intrepid but I’m checking a few more things and making some screenshots to share with everyone.

• Ruben Romero: Announcement: SpreadUbuntu alpha0.1. If you like Ubuntu and SpreadFirefox you’ll love SpreadUbuntu! I can’t wait until it’s out of testing.
• Ubuntu Release blog: Ubuntu 8.10 release candidate available. The Intrepid RC did come out on Thursday. They do have a link to some release notes that do have some important information, you may find some additional information Ubuntu wiki, although it’s not as pretty as the link they provide.
• Dustin Kirkland: Announcing ‘musica’ for Ubuntu Intrepid. If you are looking for a way to browse and stream your MP3′s over HTTP musica may be for you. And yes, he has a screenshot and there’s a package in his PPA for Hardy. For Intrepid users it’s simply an apt-get away. In fact I need to check it out for the possibility of sharing my tunage with the roomies a little more easily. ETA: Dang. It doesn’t support Ogg Vorbis files. Yet.
• Jordi Hernàndez: Gloobus-Preview 0.11. Another new version with even more new features.
• Christer Edwards: Upgrading Using the Alternate CD (8.04 -> 8.10). If you’re looking to make the upgrade to Intrepid Christer has a tutorial to help you get it done.
• DesktopLinux.com: You, too, can learn Ubuntu-fu. A brand new book has come out to help users of every experience level, including a “crash course” in doing system administration work in Ubuntu.
• Christer Edwards: Ubuntu Tutorials Search Plugin. One of the very best features of Firefox is the Search bar that you can add any number of the Mycroft Open Search site searching tools. Now the Ubuntu Tutorials site has a site search plugin for both Firefox and IE7. Adding this search tool to your browser should be the very next task on your todo list.

I’ll try to get that Ubuntu Intrepid article posted for you tomorrow morning. Unfortunately one of my roomies has finally come home from his hospitalization (about a week early, actually) and it’s ended up putting a few things on my “gotta do” list several days before I expected to have to get to them. Have a great evening!

Ubuntu Tweak 0.4.0 is out!

Ubuntu Tweak, one of our favorite utility programs for Ubuntu Linux (think Windows’ TweakUI, but for Ubuntu), has been upgraded to version 0.4.0. Among the changes is an entirely redesigned GUI that works even better on lower screen resolutions (like the EEE PC and I assume other netbooks). They’ve also added a new feature, the Package Cleaner.

The idea behind the Package Cleaner is to clean up for you after doing several installs, updates, etc. You can easily find yourself with a number of “garbage” packages, as well as a number of useless packages in the package cache. Tweak Ubuntu’s Package Cleaner will clean up all that mess for you, not only getting rid of useless packages but also clearing space in the root directory for you. The upgrade announcement has screenshots of what the process looks like.

The Third-Party Source screen now will show you the origin URI for a program so you can double check to see if it’s what you want or not. (I personally prefer using Synaptic for this, but your mileage may vary.) As always, be careful enabling third-party repositories, because they can offer software that may not be 100% compatible with your system.

Ubuntu Tweak 0.4.0 has added an ability that I’ve long seen posts about in the Ubuntu Forums, changing the GNOME Panel Logo, that icon that starts your main panel menu. Ubuntu by defaults to setting that to a small version of the Ubuntu logo, and Mac4Lin 1.0 RC sets it to the GNOME foot logo, but you may want something completely different. It’s easy-peasy to select a new icon for use there, which is bound to be a major selling point for this newest version of Ubuntu Tweak. Add that to the new Terminals and Scripts support, along with User Folder Settings, right within Ubuntu Tweak and Ubuntu Tweak will find itself on even more Must Have lists than it was in version 0.3.

I’ve been holding on to this news since Thursday because there was a glitch in the package available in the PPA managed by TualatriX, the developer for Ubuntu Tweak. The versions available for downloading from the UT website worked, as shown in the number of positive comments, but I didn’t want to write my post about the upgrade until I was able to install it from the PPA and run it with no problem, and that didn’t happen until today, although TualatriX saw my bug report on it and tracked down the problem fairly quickly.

You can snag the update by either downloading it from the UT website or by downloading it from the PPA with the instructions Tualatrix provides on both the download page and on the release announcement.

If you already have Ubuntu Tweak 0.4.0 from the PPA and are having problems, you can either snag the newest package from the PPA or follow the instructions that kuidao posted for me. I had mentioned that Tualatrix had said I needed to change a value but wasn’t sure what change was needed. In response he wrote

You can change it very easy. Edit file Canvas.py

sudo gedit /usr/share/ubuntu-tweak/common/Canvas.py

Line 15 says:
font_size = int(font_name.split()[-1])

You may change text “int” to “float”, like this:
font_size = float(font_name.split()[-1])

And UT works fine!!

Many thanks to all who helped me find out what was wrong and how to fix it. I think you’ll find Ubuntu Tweak 0.4.0 well worth the extra time I waited before writing this post, especially since it now runs without major issue.

A GNOME update, a way to buy non-free codecs in Ubuntu, and an Intrepid beta freeze, oh my!

We’ve got a few updates (in addition to a new Firefox) that are making Linux users pretty happy. First is an update to the GNOME free desktop software project.

Among the improvements in GNOME 2.24 that came out yesterday is the addition of the  Empathy IM client (which I’ve tried and ended up not thrilled with, although some users love it) as well as the upgrade to Ekiga 3.0. They also have a time tracker, an improved Deskbar, new screen resolution controls (that look a lot more user friendly in the screenshot than what came with GNOME 2.22), new sound theme support (yea! we can set up multiple sound themes and change between them much more easily!), more attractive backgrounds, and what I consider the pièce de résistance, tabbed browsing in the file manager!

Of course there’s more goodies in GNOME 2.24, which will be included in Ubuntu Intrepid unless I’m reading something wrong, so to see the entire list check out the release notes.

Buy non-free media codecs in Ubuntu

One of the biggest complaints about Ubuntu is that it doesn’t come with media codecs so you can enjoy your MP3s and DVDs out of the box, but the codecs aren’t free to distribute with the Ubuntu install disks. Windows, Macs and distros of Linux that come with a price tag have the codecs because you’re paying for them. Scott Wegner reminded me of a link in this week’s Ubuntu Weekly News that I had missed. Canonical, Ubuntu’s parent company, has teamed up with Fluendo and Cyberlink to allow Ubuntu users to buy the codecs required to enjoy these types of media.

The codecs are currently available in the Medibuntu repository,and it looks like that option will continue, but the new agreement will allow users to purchase legal copies of the codecs, but I suspect that most users will prefer to use either the Medibuntu repo or the ubuntu-restricted-extras package than shell out $40 for most of the non-free codecs plus another $50 to be able to enjoy DVDs. What about you guys (and gals)? Will you buy the codecs from the Ubuntu Store or will you continue using the no cost method for getting the codecs?

Ubuntu Intrepid in beta freeze

Ubuntu 8.10 “Intrepid Ibex” is one week away from entering the beta phase of testing and has entered the beta freeze. Basically this means that anything that needs to get added to the first beta of Ubuntu Intrepid has to get approved so they can get the disk images ready for distribution. They have an issue tracker set up so you can keep an eye on the bugs that the release team are watching. I burned a disk of Intrepid Alpha 6, and I’m looking forward to booting up with an image of the first Intrepid beta. I’m not sure when I’m going to start testing Intrepid, and I’m keeping an eye out for a way to test the Intrepid kernel while still using Hardy, just like we had for the Hardy and Gutsy kernels. André Gondim has a report on his testing of Intrepid Alpha 6 that is definitely worth the time to read if you have any thoughts of checking out Intrepid, even if it’s not until after it comes out.

Mackenzie Morgan has a way for you to start checking out the new themes that have been created for Intrepid. It’s super easy to get them, too. Simply add these two lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kwwii/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/kwwii/ubuntu hardy main

Once that’s done simply update your package list and install community-themes. You can do it at one time by running this in your Terminal

sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude install community-themes

Then simply open your Appearance window (System > Preferences > Appearance) and check them out. You can also grab updates for the human-theme, ubuntu-artwork and ubuntu-sounds to check out what they will look like in Ubuntu Intrepid. Just remember, if you decide to use the Hardy sounds you’ll need to disable the new PPAs or you’ll find them getting updated next time Update Manager is run. Personally I’m linking the NewHuman (from the updated human-theme) and NewWave (in the community-themes) themes, but I find I prefer the Hardy (or Mac4Lin) sounds, especially for logon and logoff, to the Intrepid sounds. The current sounds have a great African tribal feel to them, but the new ones just seem to remind me of the Windows (and yes, OSX) sounds. I’d prefer Ubuntu have sounds that set it apart. We can always add other sounds.

Par-tay!

Of course now’s the time to start planning your Intrepid release party, and Jono Bacon has all the info you may need to start planning a celebration in your area. The Boston party hasn’t been set up yet, but as soon as I hear it’s official I’ll post the info so you can put it on your calendar.