Category: Ubuntu/Debian

Stuff about Ubuntu and Debian GNU/Linux

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ffmpeg – How to Convert AVI video files to 3gp for phone

I know some people love to store their favorite movies or video clips in their phone (especially nokia phones). Here’s a quick how to, to convert movies and video clips to a format suitable for use in mobile phone.

For this thing to work, we will be using the multipurpose encoder/decoder – ffmpeg.

Convert from MPG to 3GP
ffmpeg -i video_clip.mpg -s qcif -vcodec h263 -acodec mp3 -ac 1 -ar 8000 -ab 32 -y clip.3gp

Convert from AVI to 3GP
ffmpeg -i video_clip.avi-s qcif -vcodec h263 -acodec mp3 -ac 1 -ar 8000 -r 25 -ab 32 -y clip.3gp

Convert from 3GP to AVI
ffmpeg -i clip.3gp -f avi -vcodec xvid -acodec mp3 -ar 22050 file.avi

With these method you wont need to spend a dime on expensive proprietary encoder anymore to transfer your favorite music files into your phone.

It should be noted that, the ffmpeg package from the default installation in Ubuntu are pretty useless for practical purposes. Please read this to enable 3gp encoding in Ubuntu : Enable mp3 and amr support in ffmpeg ( Ubuntu )

[tags]ubuntu, linux, nokia, 3gp, ffmpeg, debian, windows media player, media player, open source, encoding, ripping[/tags]

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Search Ubuntu Edgy Eft package from Mozilla Firefox

Have you noticed that the Mozilla Firefox build of Ubuntu has an extra search plugin that lets you search for Ubuntu Package Repository? I have, and sometimes I miss the functionality much if for some reason I had to use other operating system to do my work.

I need the search plugin because sometime I want to quickly check the Ubuntu software repository for certain packages while surfing the internet.

So to make things easy for me, I extracted the search plugin directly from my Ubuntu Linux installation and made it available for download. Now everybody can use this plugin to search Ubuntu Edgy softwares even if they are not using Ubuntu.

Ubuntu Edgy Package search plugin

[tags]ubuntu,firefox,edgy eft, linux, apt-get, repositories,gnu/linux, open source, mozilla,plugins[/tags]

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Ubuntu, Fedora Core, Opensuse, and Mandriva search trends

Yesterday I was curious about Google Trends service that I tried several search terms just to get the feel of it. This is one of the interesting trends that I like to share with you, it is about the search term of popular GNU Linux distribution based on Distrowatch.com list.

Popular Linux distro trends

While this is not an in depth analysis, we can see the relative search term popularity for the past 3 years base on the graph generated from Google Trends.

From there we can see that people started to search for Ubuntu more than Fedora Core around the end of the first quarter of 2005 (around the time of Ubuntu 5.04 Hoary Hedgehog release).

Similarly, people started to search for Mandriva after MandrakeSoft changed it’s name to Mandriva around April 2005 (second quarter), and the announcement of openSUSE project in August 2005 (3rd quarter).

The ‘surges’ on Fedora Core’s line indicates new releases made around the time (FC 2 – May 2005, FC 3 – Nov 2005, FC 4 – Jun 2005, FC 5 – Mar 2006, FC 6 – Oct 2006) [source].

Conclusion : When you see anomalies like sudden ‘surges’ in the trend, then there must be some even closely associated with it. Watch for surges that repeats itself, then you can establish a pattern and understand what causing the recurring trends.

[tags]search terms, search engine, linux, distro, ubuntu, fedora core, trends, search[/tags]

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Update WordPress blog using Drivel in Ubuntu Linux

Today I want to introduce you to a wonderful desktop blog client in GNU Linux, Drivel.

Drivel is one of many desktop blogging clients available under GNU Linux. It started as a LiveJournal desktop blogging client and now has expanded to support other blogging platform as well such as Advogato, Blogger xmlrpc, Movabletype, Drupal,WordPress, and blog that uses ATOM (like the new Blogger).

Using Drivel to update your WordPress blog is easy, all you need to do is to start up your Drivel client, and choose MovableType as your blog platform.

drivel linux mypapit

From there, you put in your WordPress username and password. Put in your WordPress address in your “Server Address” field, and append it with /xmlrpc.php like this “http://your_wordpress.com/xmlrpc.php”.

After that, writing blog entry from Drivel is relatively easy. All you need to do is just type :)

Drivel is an easy blogging client to use and does not require you to know much about HTML to use it, it has a build in function to insert images, link and basic font formatting.

One interesting thing to note is, Drivel (through Movabletype protocol) supports category, this makes it different from other blogging client under Linux which is based on the older Blogger xml-rpc protocol which does not support category. However currently Drivel only support posting to one category per entry.

Why use a Desktop Blogging Client ?
Most people use desktop blogging client because it saves the time to actually log into your blogging client and selecting New Post before they can begin posting new entries.

Desktop blogging client saves you the time on the web interface, and let you concentrates on the writing the entry itself. Updating and Saving post is also faster when you use a desktop blogging client.

As a summary, Drivel is a nice Desktop blogging application to have around, it is small, easy to use and relatively fast. Simply put, Drivel does the job well for a simple blogging client.

[tags]livejournal, blogger, wordpress, drivel, linux, ubuntu, open source[/tags]

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Some of the things I love about Ubuntu (Software Repository)

One of the things that I love about Ubuntu is it offers a wide choice of packages. Ranging from basic administration utilities (apt-get, yum,adduser, atop,cpuid) to Networking (apache2, 6tunnel, bind, xchat) and Games (nethack, ppracer, crack-attack).

The official software repository of the latest release of Ubuntu (Edgy Eft) has at least 20,231 packages, the number doesn’t include 3rd party repositories that offer restricted open source software such as lame, faad and libdvdcss.

Previously, I’ve use SUSE as my main distro. SUSE is slightly better than my first distro of choice, Mandrake/Mandriva (which was plague with rpm dependencies and stale packages), but it has certain limitation at that time mainly because it is still considered a comercial distribution and keeping up to date with the latest version of SUSE was a pain.

I’m not saying that SuSE is a lousy GNU/Linux distro, but it just doesn’t fit me well enough, and I found that SuSE lacks some packages that Mandrake/Mandriva offers.

I use SuSE until a friend recommend me to use Ubuntu as it is based on Debian GNU/Linux. Upon trying out Ubuntu, I found that it is an easy GNU/Linux distribution to use for me, an average desktop users.

apt-get does wonders in installing softwares from the internet and performing software and security updates. Moreover, Ubuntu has a predictable release cycle that I could really depend on.

I know some people would argue that shorter release cycle might degrade distro quality but I’m one of those people that like to keep up to date with the latest software release and technology (I’m pretty sure i’m not alone in this).

To summarise it, some of the things I love about Ubuntu is because it has a wide range of software choices, a predictable release cycle and a relatively up to date software releases. What about you? What is your favorite GNU/Linux distro?

[tags]ubuntu,debian,linux,suse,open source, distro[/tags]