How to set up surround 5.1 audio in Linux with Alsa

Posted by suvi under Linux, Multimedia

The main problem I had with the sound setup in linux was getting it to
work so that i can use all my speakers. After a few hours of searching
the web and trial and error I finally figured out how to do it. I have
put together this tutorial hoping to help other people in a similar
situation.

The goal of this tutorial is to play stereo sounds on all 6 channels of
your audio card. All you need to do is to write the routing information
in your ~/.asoundrc file. Here is my setup with every block explained

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Mini-howto: using Envy on Ubuntu Gutsy (WARNING: use it at your very own risk)

Posted by suvi under Ubuntu

I have received many requests from users who would like to use Envy on Gutsy at their own risk.

I haven’t tested Envy on Gutsy yet and currently I don’t support it
in any way (I’ll support Gutsy when it’s released as stable).

If you want to use Envy on Gutsy, even if it could potentially break your system, you will only have to follow these steps:

type:
sudo nano -w /usr/share/envy/instun/classes.py

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How-To: Install Ubuntu on LVM partitions.

Posted by suvi under Ubuntu

LVM (Logical Volume Manager) is a great
piece of software which allow you to deal with Logical Volumes. Using
LVM along with ext3 filesystem, you are allowed to extend the size of
your logical drives which is pretty handy when running out of space.

Distributions like Fedora, Suse and Debian have a LVM aware
installer. Unfortunately, at the time this article was written, Ubuntu
does not offer such settings with the Desktop Install CD.

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Working With The GRUB Menu

Posted by suvi under Linux, Tricks, Ubuntu

This tutorial describes how to edit the GRUB menu. It will also show how to add operating systems and how to add splash screens.

What everything means

To start off I will go over why you would use GRUB and what it all means.

The reason anyone would use the GRUB menu is to dual-boot two
different operating systems. All it is is a simple DOS menu that you
select which operating system you want to load during boot-up.

To open it type -

gksudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

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MOC Audio Player — advanced tricks

Posted by suvi under Multimedia

The program MOC was reviewed in recent article called MOC — Console Audio Player for Linux. It was written by Roman Tworkowski. Even though we live in the times of cute graphical interfaces e.g. Compiz, KDE, etc. I consider the MOC player to be a better solution for some users (including myself) than the very popular applications Xmms or Amarok, and the other visually appealing players. Why do I think so? Read on. I am about to describe some of the lesser known options of this excellent player.

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Power Saving for the Workstation, Part 1

Posted by suvi under Desktop, Tricks

Ordinarily,
the only place you see these programs are in laptops and the methods
should work on laptops, and there are many places to go for information
on the specialized laptop tweaks and GNOME and KDE laptop configuration
options.

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How to get the best out of the history command in GNU/Linux

Posted by suvi under Linux, Tricks

Anybody who has used the command line
extensively to navigate, understand and configure GNU/Linux will know
that in the course of a few months’ work it is possible to build up an
extensive history of used commands. This necessitates some pro-active
management to get the best out of it. Here are some tips to make the
most of the history command.

Please note, from the outset, that command history is only saved in
interactive shells and does not, therefore, work with shell scripts.

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Setting up your own jabber server: ejabberd

Posted by suvi under Debian, Networking, Server

t was on my todo list since ages, finally I took some minutes to set up my own jabber server (reach me at mika@jabber.grml.org). I’m using ejabberd, a free and open source instant messaging server written in Erlang.

Reference system: Debian etch (current stable), ejabberd version 1.1.2-6, installed via a simple:

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Tuning the Linux kernel for more aggressive network throughput

Posted by suvi under Linux

The Linux kernel and the distributions that package it typically provide very conservative defaults to certain network settings that affect networking parameters. You can tune then to optimise your network performance.

These settings can be tuned via the /proc filesystem or using the sysctl program. The latter is often better, as it reads the contents of /etc/sysctl.conf, which allows you to keep settings across reboots.

The following is a snippet from /etc/sysctl.conf that may improve network performance:

net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling = 1

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How to Sort files and folders by size

Posted by suvi under Tricks

If you want to Sort your files and folders by size use the following tip

You need to open terminal use the following command

ls -lS –block-size=1 | awk ‘ {print $5,$6,$7,$8}’ >size.txt; du -s –block-size=1 */ >>size.txt; sort -n size.txt

or

{ ls -lS –block-size=1 | awk ‘ {print $5,$6,$7,$8}’; du -s –block-size=1 */ ; } | sort -nr | less

Read more at Ubuntu Geek 

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Free Software Licensing, Part 2: Beyond GPL

Posted by suvi under Other

In practical terms, developers use GPL v2 and GPL v3 if they want their software to be free and open and to remain free and open no matter how the code is used downstream. It can get more complicated than this, of course, especially since the copyright holder of GPL v2-licensed code, for example, can sell it and even use it in closed-source solutions.

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So You Want to Be a Linux Developer, Part 2

Posted by suvi under Linux, Programming

Generally, it’s hard for a new graduate to land a job as a developer at a major Linux house without getting some exposure and experience first, according to Barry Klawans, a founding member of the Open Software Alliance and CTO at JasperSoft. The goal for open source companies is to find good people.
The continuing rise in popularity of Linux applications has become a boon to job opportunities for software programmers. However, the working culture of the open source industry is different from that of proprietary software developers.

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Automatically mounting and unmounting Samba/Windows shares with CIFS

Posted by suvi under Networking, Server

At my work the employees are in the fortunate position that they are
free to choose whatever OS they want to work with. At the moment the
default is still Windows XP but you are free to wipe the drive and
install whatever you feel—as long as you can do your job properly. And
there is work underway to roll our own distribution for internal use.
You’re even free to bring in your Mac (but we won’t supply you with
one). The only thing that’s banned (unofficially) so far is Windows
Vista. Server-side we run a mixture of Linux and Windows, and the thend

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A Support Guide for Xen

Posted by suvi under Virtualization

Here’s a guide to supporting Xen servers for people who are not
Linux experts. If your job means that you have root access to a Xen
server that someone else installed for the purpose of fixing problems
when they are not available then this will help you solve some common
problems.

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Install Xine Multimedia Player in Ubuntu

Posted by suvi under Multimedia, Ubuntu

xine is a free (gpl-licensed) high-performance, portable and reusable
multimedia playback engine. xine itself is a shared library with an
easy to use, yet powerful API which is used by many applications for
smooth video playback and video processing purposes.

Xine Features

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