Been a while

So I got caught up doing a lot of stuff and my fiance was in a bike wreck and required a lot of care for a while.

Anyways the big news from here is that I am now officially switched to Linux. My work provided me with a "new" laptop. New to me but used. I did some research ahead of time and realized that I could run everything I needed to run for work from Linux just as well as I could in Windows. The only thing I can't do is run Visual Studio C# Express for school. I figured I could load up a VM with no problem and run it from within there. So I was thinking about running Ubuntu since that is what I am most familiar with but after hearing so many good things about Linux Mint I decided to at least check it out before I set myself up with Ubuntu. After running the live CD I was very impressed with the look of it. Everything worked right away except for wireless which had a proprietary driver that installed very easily. As a lot of you might know the worst thing about Ubuntu is that is just looks awful because of the brownish orange theme. Linux Mint however looked great. I also felt very comfortable with Linux Mint because it is based from Ubuntu. I have come to love Linux Mint for many more reasons besides looks since then but I plan on leaving some of these for a future post so I can hopefully keep this blog a little more up to date.

Anyways I have been running linux now and loving it. I joined a LUG and have been thoroughly loving it also. I encourage anyone else even if you arent running linux to join their LUG if they are remotely interested. It has been a great networking opportunity and very informative also.

Here is also a screenshot of my new desktop.

Also thanks to my friend Joyce for commenting on here. It reminded me to keep this more up to date.

God Bless,
Aaron

LVM Update

So I was able to get the whole process worked out and everything was ready to go, but apparently right now there is a bug in ubuntu that is not allowing LVM to work properly. I will try again maybe next version

Also coming up I am getting a new laptop and will be running ubuntu as my primary desktop. I will surely keep everyone updated on my problems and moments of bliss that I run across.

Aaron

LVM

So I am working on adding a 320GB drive to my MythTV box. I already know how to add the drive and create the mountpoint for it. What I really want to do though is make the computer not know the difference between the two drives. If it runs out of space on one it will just start using the next. I have figured out to do this I will have to use LVM(logical volume management (I think)) to do this. I will post directions once I figure this out. I am getting close but havent had time to follow up on some of the research I did recently.

Thanks and God Bless
Aaron

Facebook Chat

So for all you Facebook people out there as you probably know they just added a chat feature to the site. Well my only complaint is that you can not yet connect to this network except signed in through the site. Well I found a way around this. I found a windows program called Bubbles. It is kind of like Prism that google recently released except I found it a little easier. It just runs a webpage as if it was a desktop application. I have not tried to see if this will run under wine, but it seems to be using IE6 to render the web pages even though it is not my default browser, so it may need IE6 installed under wine to run properly.

thanks and God Bless
Aaron

MythTV upgrade transfer

I recently switched my MythTV computer out to a newer one, mostly because the new one is a dell and it much much quieter than the old one. There were two things I wanted to do to use this new computer. I wanted to transfer all my old recordings, and I wanted to transfer the database that tells mythtv what shows I have already recorded, what I have marked for recording and all that stuff. The first was easy I just hooked my hard drive up through USB and copied over all my recordings. The second took quite a bit of effort. I found a site (after quite a bit of searching) that walked me through it but I still had some issues.

http://mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-23.html#ss23.5

This was EXTREMELY helpful in getting my database transfered to the new computer. But there were a couple of things needed to figure out.

I didn't know the password for the database, but I think it was in /home/[username]/.mythtv/mysql.txt

I also copied over my whole home directory folder. For those that don't know almost all your installed program configurations and everything is installed into home.

Also in the tutorial linked above had two ways of getting data from your backup of sql data, and the second worked for me not the first. To sum up the link above these are the commands I used.

$ mysqldump -u mythtv -pmythtv mythconverg -c > mythtv_backup.sql
$ grep "INSERT INTO \`record\` "          mythtv_backup.sql > restore.sql
$ grep "INSERT INTO \`recorded\` "        mythtv_backup.sql >> restore.sql
$ grep "INSERT INTO \`oldrecorded\` "     mythtv_backup.sql >> restore.sql
$ grep "INSERT INTO \`recordedprogram\` " mythtv_backup.sql >> restore.sql
$ grep "INSERT INTO \`recordedrating\` "  mythtv_backup.sql >> restore.sql
$ grep "INSERT INTO \`recordedmarkup\` "  mythtv_backup.sql >> restore.sql
$ grep "INSERT INTO \`recordedseek\` "    mythtv_backup.sql >> restore.sql



Then to restore data type this on the new computer after moving the restore 
file to it.

$ mysql -u mythtv -pmythtv mythconverg <>

Thanks and God bless,
aaron

Installing Programs on Linux

One of the first things I found confusing was how to install a program. I am used to using Windows where I go out and download the exe file and install it. With Linux it is a whole different ball game. I suggest you refer to my package management post here. With Linux instead of an exe you install a package or install from source (which is the hard way). Usually a distro will provide you with an add/remove programs option or a GUI package management program so you can check and uncheck what you want to install and what you don't want to install. I will focus on how to install programs in Ubuntu since that is what I am most familiar with, but these suggestions will work with almost any Debian based distribution.

Add/Remove Programs...
Sounds very windows like doesn't it. Well in the Ubuntu menu in the top left of the screen there is a link to Add/Remove programs. This is the easiest way to install programs in Ubuntu. It lists all the programs that are available from the repositories (where the packages are stored) and you can just check and uncheck the programs you want to add or remove. Very simple.

Synaptic...
With synaptic you are given more control but still have a GUI. It lists every package including dependency files that are available for your distribution. You can check parts of programs that maybe aren't working to remove certain files, or add a certain dependency if you are installing software that needs the dependency. Synaptic gives you a lot of control in a nice interface.

apt-get...
The fastest way to install and remove programs. This is a CLI program. It is the hardest of the three to use but like I said the fastest. Many Linux enthusiasts are command line junkies and would easily give up any graphical interface for the command line. I have no reached that point yet, except with apt-get. I love popping open a terminal typing "sudo apt-get install firefox" and boom it downloads and isntalls really quick. You can also remove with this line by typing "sudo apt-get remove firefox" this will remove any program files that only firefox was using from your system. Apt-get is very versatile and very fast. The only part I have problems with is figuring out the names of something I want to install and then have to open synaptic to find the list of available packages.

Like I said this all applies to Ubuntu but can be applied to other distros as well, espcially debian based distros. Others have yum, or rpm, but I can not remember how to use them because I mostly use Debian based distros.

Thanks and God bless,
Aaron

Wubi

A couple of things out there scare people off from trying Linux, a couple of them being don't know how to install it, don't have an extra computer to install it on, don't want to deal with partitioning and dual booting. Well thanks to a program called Wubi and Ubuntu this has been resolved. Wubi was originally developed seperately from Ubuntu but in the newest version of Ubuntu they have included this program. OK so what is it? Wubi is a windows installer that creates an image file that acts as a hard drive. Now I know virtual machines have been doing that for a while now, but this gets better. Wubi then boots directly to the image. You DO NOT have to run Ubuntu inside of a virtual machine. You just install Wubi and then it walks you through getting it installed. NO more excuses installing Ubuntu is easy, requires no partitioning, and very little overhead compared to a virtual machine. I strongly suggest you give it a try.

For those who don't know Ubuntu is a version of Linux that I prefer. It is very easy to use and newbie friendly.The new version with Wubi built in is coming out in 1 week and I suggest you try it. If you are new to Linux this is where you should start, because it is so very easy. If you know how to burn an ISO file you can download the CD immediately, if you don't Ubuntu will send you the CD FOR FREE.

www.ubuntu.com

For the free Cd's go to https://shipit.ubuntu.com/

Thanks and God bless,
Aaron

Facebook and Picasa

So I use Picasa from Google as my photo manager. I wanted to add a Facebook button to Picasa. Facebook has a button that does this for you at http://apps.facebook.com/picasauploader/. This however did not work for me because my Firefox did not have a protocol for Picasa ( in other words the link says picasa://... which Firefox had no idea how to handle). I tried to add the protocol manually but was having no luck. So here is how I added the button without the install script. This worked on Windows for me but should work within any operating system.

Go to your Picasa folder. For me this was c:/Program Files/Picasa2. Then go to the buttons folder. Open up a text editor, ie notepad. Paste this code inside of the file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><buttons format="1" version="1">
 <button id="custombutton/facebookupload" type="dynamic">
   <icon name="outputlayout/poster_icon" src="runtime"/>
   <label>Facebook</label>
   <tooltip>Upload photos to Facebook</tooltip>
   <action verb="hybrid">
     <param name="url" value="http://webkinesis.com/fbpicasa/picasa-post.do"/>
   </action>
 </button>
</buttons>

I got this code from http://www.webkinesis.com/fbpicasa/facebook.pbf and take no credit for it at all. Save this file as facebook.pbf. Restart or open Picasa.

Hope this helps anyone having problems.

Thanks an God bless,
Aaron

DistroWatch

So this post is mostly for the new linux user, as I believe most experienced linux users know about this website. The website it http://www.distrowatch.com. This is a site that just lists almost every linux distribution there is. Tells you when they have new releases and has a somewhat accurate list of the most popular linux distributions. Also when you click on a distribution for more details you get what version of the most popular packages/programs it has installed, how much the distro costs, how many cd/dvds it needs to install, any distribution it is based off of, and a discription about its main purpose. This is a great site for someone who needs to know more about a number of different disributions. It is also a good way to keep up with new releases and see what is going on in the linux distribution world out there.

Thanks and God bless,
Aaron

Linux Package Management

One of the main things I like to teach the new linux user is the idea of linux packages. The two main package systems out there are rpm and deb.

Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) - This is a package system that is based from the Red Hat Linux distro. This package management system is still heavily influenced by Red Hat. Any distribution that is based off of rpm packages is usually derived from Red Hat, or a derivation of a derivation or so on. In my opinion rpm based distributions usually have a more business feel to them. They feel little more professional oriented. They aren't done more professionally or look better per say but feel like they should be in a business environment rather than a personal desktop.

Debian Package Management (DEB) - This is a package system that is based from the Debian distribution. Most distributions based from the debian package system feel like they are made more for the personal desktop. Debian is a lot more community based than rpm based distros giving it more options it seems. Ubuntu is a debian based distribution. I prefer debian based distributions because it seems to work faster than rpm based distros when installing packages and seem more designed for personal use instead of the corporate situation. Part of this is also just because I have used debian distros more than rpm based distros so they are just what I feel more comfortable using.

There are other package systems too. Slackware has its own package system, as well as gentoo, arch and I am sure there are many others out there.

I am not really well versed in the different packages but that is a general idea of the difference.

With most debian distributions the way I install packages is by using the command apt-get.
In Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install *

In Debian:
you must have root privelages

apt-get install *

In RPM distros:
you must have root privelages

yum install *

I think these commands are right. I know the debian and Ubuntu commands are right but like I said I am not too familiar with RPM distros. Hope this informs and helps.

Thanks and God bless,
Aaron