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Monday, November 30, 2009

Full Circle Magazine Issued 31

This month:

  • Command and Conquer.
  • How-To: Program in Python – Part 5, The Perfect Server – Part 1, and Universe of Sound.
  • My Story – The Conversion.
  • My Opinion – Windows 7.
  • Review – Linux Mint 7.
  • MOTU Interview – Andreas Wenning.
  • Top 5 – Subversion Clients.
  • Ubuntu Women, Ubuntu Games and all the usual goodness!
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Thursday, November 12, 2009

PackageKit

PackageKit is a system designed to make installing and updating software on your computer easier. The primary design goal is to unify all the software graphical tools used in different distributions, and use some of the latest technology like PolicyKit to make the process suck less.

The actual nuts-and-bolts distro tool (yum, apt, conary, etc) is used by PackageKit using compiled and scripted helpers. PackageKit isn't meant to replace these tools, instead providing a common set of abstractions that can be used by standard GUI and text mode package managers.

PackageKit itself is a system activated daemon called packagekitd. Being system activated means that it's only being run when the user is using a text mode or graphical tool, and quits when it's no longer being used. This means we don't delay the boot sequence or session startup and don't consume memory when not being used.

gnome-packagekit is the name of the collection of graphical tools for PackageKit to be used in the GNOME desktop.

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Sound-Rec-Ed - Sound Recorder & Editor

SoundRecEd is a pair of simple graphical utilities to record and edit sound files, similar to operating a tape-deck. Maintained under Sourceforge project SoundEdRec.
  • Sound-Recorder - Buttons start and stop recording, or split incoming audio into separate files. Captures incoming analog audio, such as from PC sound-card microphoneline-in jacks.
    or
  • Sound-Editor - Cut sections from audio file, or join files.
Both tools save files in WAV, OGG, or MP3. SoundRecEd is not a full-blown professional mixer application. However, it provides functions that are frequently desired by casual users.

The Sound-Recorder/Editor utilities (also called SoundEdRec) are graphical front-ends (GUI's) for existing sound utilities that are already present on most Linux PC's. Although everything could be done from the command-line, it is often helpful to have a tool like Sound-Rec/Ed to accomplish frequently-repeated command-combinations by merely pressing buttons. The Sound-Editor tool also provides some visual editing capabilities. SoundRecEd's initial configuration defaults to commonly available record, playback, and conversion tools. It is easily configured to use any alternative tools that you prefer.

Without SoundRecEd, you could record audio from a live event using the ALSA arecordSound-Recorder GUI will do all these things automatically by pressing buttons: record, stop, pause, split, ... record, etc., similar to using a tape-deck. function on the command-line. At some point you may wish to pause the recording. Or, you wish to split the recording into separate files by resuming recording into a new sequentially named file. However, it would take some time to manipulate the command-line to do this. In the meantime, you miss incoming material, and/or accidentally overwrite an existing file. At the same time, to conserve disk space, you may wish to initiate conversion to OGG or MP3, followed by deletion of the WAV file. The

If your recording was not cued properly, you may want to cut a small section from the front or tail ends. The Sound-Editor will do this, similar to rewinding tape a bit to cue the next item. The Sound-Editor helps split long audio recording files into separate files. It shows information visually about a recording, and it can apply segue fading, if desired. If you need to record unattended for an extended period of time, you can set SoundRecorder to periodically break the recording into separate sequentially numbered files. The files can later be conveniently edited, cut-down or joined together (spliced), by Sound-Editor.

Conventional audio CD's can be made from the WAV-files captured by Sound-Recorder.
(For example: cdrecord -v speed=20 -audio -pad *.wav )
MP3 or OGG disks can also be made by both Sound-Recorder and Sound-Editor.
(Write MP3 or OGG files to CD's as regular data files; not audio.)

Other sound applications exist, but many are complicated, designed for serious professional sound editing/mixing, etc.. Some are difficult to install or maintain due to numerous dependencies. The SoundRecEd utilities aim to be self-contained with minimal dependencies. They provide only simple functions.

GNOME Bluetooth

gnome-bluetooth is a fork of bluez-gnome focused on integration with the GNOME desktop environment (see also this blog entry for details).

gnome-bluetooth is the historical name of the first GNOME focused Bluetooth effort for Linux. As such, when the need came to name this project, we selected something that was still in the people's minds. You can find historical versions of gnome-bluetooth in the GNOME git repository.

gnome-bluetooth does not include the bluez-gnome analyzer, or the proximity tool.

The original GNOME Bluetooth was developed by Edd Dumbill, bluez-gnome was developed by Marcel Holtmann. The current primary maintainer is now Bastien Nocera. The software is free, licensed under the GPL for the programs, and LGPL for the libraries. See individual source files for copyright information.

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The intelligent monitoring tool

What is it really?

The EDDIE Tool is a monitoring agent. It runs standalone on a system and performs checks and other actions as defined by an extensible configuration. What can it do? The EDDIE Tool can perform all basic system monitoring checks, such as: filesystem; processes; system load; and network configuration. It can also perform such network monitoring tasks as: ping checks; HTTP checks; POP3 tests; SNMP queries; RADIUS authentication tests; and customized TCP port checks. Finally, a few checks lend themselves to security monitoring: watching files for changes; and scanning logfiles.
The EDDIE Tool can also send any collected statistic to RRD files to be displayed graphically by any standard RRD tool. No need to run multiple monitoring and data collection agents.
Monitoring rules are just like Python expressions and can be as simple or as complex as needed. Advanced alert control functionality such as exponential back-off and dependencies are also standard.
What platforms does it support? The EDDIE Tool has been designed to be as platform-independent as possible. It is written in 100% Python and will run on all platforms that Python runs on. Only a few system-dependent modules must be customized for individual platforms for system data collection. System-dependent modules are included for: Linux; Solaris; HP-UX; OpenBSD; Darwin/OS X; FreeBSD and Windows (Win32) . Detail




GimPhoto - free Photoshop alternative for photo and image editor

GimPhoto is GIMP modification with new menu layout, great selection of plugins, and many additional resources for more professional look and feel as digital photo retouching and image editing application package.

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xGPS

xGPS is a free project aiming to bring powerful and easy to use navigation software to the iPhone and iPod Touch. xGPS has many powerful features including: turn-by-turn directions, vocal instructions, offline maps support and more. A utility called xGPS Manager can be used to download maps on to your computer, and upload them wirelessly to your iPod Touch or iPhone. xGPS currently uses Google Maps for maps and the routing data, meaning xGPS will work wherever there is Google Maps support.

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Zenwalk 6.2

Zenwalk is a GNU/Linux operating system, designed to provide the following characteristics:

  • Modern and user-friendly (latest stable software, selected applications)
  • Fast (optimized for performance capabilities)
  • Rational (one mainstream application for each task)
  • Complete (full development/desktop/multimedia environment)
  • Evolutionary (simple network package management tool - netpkg)

  • Download

    Slackware 13.0

    After one of the most intensive periods of development in Slackware's history, the long awaited stable release of Slackware 13.0 is ready. This release brings with it many major changes since Slackware 12.2, including a completely reworked collection of X packages (a configuration file for X is no longer needed in most cases), major upgrades to the desktop environments (KDE version 4.2.4 and Xfce version 4.6.1), a new .txz package format with much better compression, and other upgrades all around -- to the development system, network services, libraries, and major applications like Firefox and Thunderbird. We think you'll agree that this version of Slackware was worth the wait. Also, this is the first release of Slackware with native support for the 64-bit x86_64 architecture! Major kudos to Eric Hameleers for all of his work, especially on the 64-bit port.

    More details may by found in the official announcement and in the release notes.

    Full Circle Magazine Issued 30

    We’ve hit thirty!


    Can you believe it? We’ve made it to thirty. That’s right; thirty issues of FCM, and they wouldn’t have happened without you! Here’s a giant thank you to all the editors, translators, writers, hosting donators, and everyone else that’s made FCM and Ubuntu possible.

    This month:

    • How-To: Program in Python – Part 4, Applications for Bookworms, Installing OpenOffice.org Base.
    • My Story – The Doctor Is In, Recording Porgy & Bess, Ubuntu Reincarnates Pensioners Laptop
    • Command and Conquer
    • My Opinion – Acer Aspire One Distros
    • Review – Sony PRS-505 Ebook Reader
    • MOTU Interview – Thierry Carrez.
    • Top 5 – Writing Applications.
    • Ubuntu Women, Ubuntu Games and all the usual goodness!

    Download it here!

    Ubuntu 9.10

    1. Faster, smoother, more beutiful......
    New features, fixes and application designed around you
    2. Developing at speed....
    Fun tool to make it easy to write and deploy apps for ubuntu
    3. .....introducing your personal cloud
    Store and share files and contacts in couple of click with Ubuntu one

    More