Howto: use audio-convert in Thunar

February 18, 2008 at 1:09 pm | Posted in programs, scripts, tips and tricks, xubuntu | 7 Comments
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One of the best scripts for GNOME’s file manager Nautilus is audio-convert. audio-convert is a program that lets you convert mp3s to oggs, wavs, and vice versa. For me, it’s one of the main reasons I use Nautilus. Now, though, I can also use it with Thunar too. Here’s how:

1) If you haven’t already, install audio-convert. To do so, open up a terminal (Xfce Menu > Accessories > Terminal) and run the following:

sudo apt-get install nautilus-script-audio-convert

2) Next, open up the Thunar file manager and go to Edit > Configure custom actions…. Click the Add (plus) sign and put in the following:

a) Under the Basic tab:

Name: audio-convert
Command: /usr/share/nautilus-scripts/ConvertAudioFile %f

b) Under the Appearance Conditions tab:

Put a checkmark next to Audio files. Click Ok and exit out of the actions manager.

Now you can right click any audio file and go to audio-convert. audio-convert will do the work from there. Enjoy!

Murrine – now with transparency

December 14, 2007 at 7:53 pm | Posted in programs, xubuntu | 4 Comments
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Ryan Paul reports that Andrea Cimitan, developer of GTK theme engine Murrine, has added support for transparent widgets. Yep. This means that themes using this engine can now be partly transparent.

If you want to see what it looks like, go and see Cimi’s blogpost. Yes, it does look beautiful.

The Murrine engine is used by Xubuntu since 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon”, for the MurrinaStormCloud theme. This probably means that, in future versions, Xubuntu, too, can enjoy transparency. “But what if your computer does not support it?”, I hear you asking. Well, no worries there:

The translucency effects obviously require a compositing window manager, but the theme engine is designed so that the widgets will simply be rendered without transparency when no compositing window manager is present.

And if that wasn’t enough, in a last note, Cimi points out:

And yes, it is FAST!

I can’t wait 🙂

Gvtray: A volume control for your system tray

August 15, 2007 at 12:39 pm | Posted in programs, tips and tricks | 16 Comments
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UPDATE:

this guide is no longer necessary IMO. I’ve solved my volume control problems by dragging the Volume Control plugin from the item list to the panel. Simple, but it works.

I have problems with the default Volume Control plugin in Xubuntu, so this is a useful solution. It displays the volume percent, and can be turned up or down using the mousewheel.

1) First, open up the terminal and get the necessary programs:

sudo apt-get install python-alsaaudio python-gnome2-extras
wget http://gtk-tray-utils.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/gvtray-1.1.tar.gz

2) Extract gvtray-1.1.tar.gz and go into the newly created directory:

tar -xvf gvtray-1.1.tar.gz
cd gvtray-1.1

3) Run all of the following commands:

sudo mkdir /usr/share/gvtray
sudo cp gvtray /usr/bin
sudo cp gvtray.py /usr/share/gvtray/
sudo cp -r gvtray_about/ /usr/share/gvtray/gvtray_about

4) Now test it out:

gvtray

And there it is, a volume control in the system tray. You will get an error message in the terminal; just ignore it.

Hope this program is useful!

Why Automatix may not be the most viable solution

August 10, 2007 at 8:47 pm | Posted in programs, reviews, xubuntu | 4 Comments

For a while now I’ve been recommending people not to use Automatix nor EasyUbuntu. This was mostly because I knew they could break a few things (especially when upgrading from one version of your Ubuntu derivative to another), but I never had any solid proof that they would break anything.

Well, Matthew Garrett solved that by checking the source of Automatix and wrote up a list of things wrong with Automatix. And, even though I already knew there were some things wrong with Automatix, I still found the list to be huge! In fact, it contains 26 points that need attention. I read through them all, and at least three quarters of those should, even on its own, be enough incentive not to use Automatix at all. Matthew summed it up nicely in his conclusion:

In its current form Automatix is unsupportable, and a mechanism for
flagging bugs from machines with Automatix installed may provide a
valuable aid for determining whether issues are due to supported
distribution packages or third party software installers.

So not only can Automatix break your system, it can do so without you noticing it was Automatix that did it, and when you file a bug report or ask a question without explicitly noting you used Automatix, being helped can be really troublesome.

Rather, you can either wait for Ubuntu to fix the problems Automatix works around, or find a solution yourself (they mostly turn out to be really easy) by searching the Ubuntu Wiki or the Ubuntu forums. If you still can’t find the solution, you can also use the latter to ask for help.

By the way, one excellent place to get support for such things as DVD playback is Medibuntu, which comes with easy instructions on how to use them in a safe way.

Xubuntu GUI to Add/Remove printers

September 2, 2006 at 1:35 pm | Posted in programs, xubuntu | 9 Comments

While it’s not as intuitive as Gnome’s printer manager, it’s still more useful than Xfce’s current one:

Download it from http://rapidshare.de/files/31500013/xprinterconf-bin.zip.html, and then run from the terminal (Xfce menu > System > Terminal):

unzip ./xprinterconf-bin.zip
./xprinterconf

The source code is also available:

http://rapidshare.de/files/31500014/xprinterconf-src.zip.html

More information is available at http://nongeeksight.blogspot.com/2006/08/configuring-printer-in-xubuntu.html.

Howto: Upgrade your Gaim

August 25, 2006 at 3:21 pm | Posted in programs, xubuntu | Leave a comment

If you’re still using Gaim 1.5.0, then you’ll want to upgrade to version 2.0.0beta3.1:

wget http://mighmos.org/packages/dapper/gaim/gaim_2.0.0-1beta3.1_i386.deb
wget http://mighmos.org/packages/dapper/gaim/gaim-data_2.0.0-1beta3.1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i gaim_2.0.0-1beta3.1_i386.deb gaim-data_2.0.0-1beta3.1_all.deb

Breezy users can upgrade to version 2.0.0beta3:

wget http://mighmos.org/packages/gaim/gaim_2.0.0-1beta3_i386.deb
wget http://mighmos.org/packages/gaim/gaim-data_2.0.0-1beta3_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i gaim_2.0.0-1beta3_i386.deb gaim-data_2.0.0-1beta3_all.deb

Enjoy.

Transmission: A lightweight GTK Bittorrent client

July 25, 2006 at 5:24 pm | Posted in programs, xubuntu | 12 Comments

If you’re missing a Bittorrent client, but you want one with low memory and CPU usage, then Transmission is the one for you:

Transmission

It features…next to nothing. If you want something with more features, then you might prefer Azureus.

However, if you’re interested, you can install it by typing these commands into the Terminal (Xfce Menu > System > Terminal):

wget http://acorbeaux.free.fr/packages/transmission-0.7.0-806.deb

sudo dpkg -i transmission-0.7.0-806.deb

You can run it by going to Xfce menu > Network > Transmission, or run

transmission-gtk

From the Terminal.

You could also use the original Bittorrent; however, the one in the repositories is very outdated (Version 3.x). If you want something that’s still light and has more features, you can also try that too.

Gtkboard

July 16, 2006 at 1:02 pm | Posted in programs, xubuntu | Leave a comment

If you enjoy the desktop games of Gnome, but don’t want to take up too much disc space installing Gnome-games, you can try Gtkboard:

Gtkboard Tetris

While some games are experimental, you can play games like Pacman, Tetris and mazes with it. Open up a terminal (Xfce menu > System > Terminal) and type:

sudo aptitude install gtkboard.

Xarchiver 0.3.9.2beta2

July 11, 2006 at 10:20 am | Posted in programs, xubuntu | 2 Comments

Xarchiver 0.3.9.2beta2 was recently released, and I’ve made an Ubuntu Dapper package.

Open up a terminal and run:

wget http://samztercomix.com/kim/tech/linux/programs/xarchiver_0.3.9.2-0ubuntu1_i386.deb

sudo dpkg -i xarchiver_0.3.9.2-0ubuntu1_i386.deb

It’s straight out of Edgy, so it should work well.

Xfce 4.4beta2!

July 10, 2006 at 4:21 pm | Posted in programs, xubuntu | 1 Comment

Xfce 4.4beta2 is released! To upgrade, you can use their installer, but I’m not sure how well this works with Xubuntu.

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