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Just came across smart ubuntu online radio client — radiotray. As it comes from its name radiotray sits in Ubuntu’s system tray and just plays online radio (see the screenshot taken on my Ubuntu Lucid Lynx). You can of course stop playing or select different channel (there are four channels coming by default). I found this utility useful when working as it doesn’t required to keep in RAM such monster like amarok just for listening the radio. Nice and simple application.
If you use Ubuntu (or other Linux distribution) and you wish to download some video from youtube.com into .flv file you can try using youtube-dl command line utility. It just downloads videos without any online applications, converters or etc. Type the following command in terminal to get it installed:
sudo apt-get install youtube-dl
Let’s imagine you would like to download the following video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2leg8mUE9rs (this is part of Military Parade at Red Square in Russia at 9th of May 2010). Just run youtube-dl download utility as follows:
youtube-dl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2leg8mUE9rs
and in a few minutes you will get 2leg8mUE9rs.flv file that could be viewed using almost any video player like my favorite one VLC.
Some time ago I’ve written an article named 16 GB encrypted candy file describing how to create encrypted filesystem within regular file. After quick research it became clear that cryptoloop is vulnerable and there is open exploit available on the web: see it here (thanks to everybody who commented that article). So I don’t recommend to use cryptoloop but instead take a look at truecrypt that makes it possible not only to encrypt whole storage but also to create encrypted file just like I’ve described in 16 GB encrypted candy file article.
Continue reading…
Date: May 8, 2010. Categories:
linux.
There are several approaches to install Google Chrome browser for Linux (another name Chromium) in Ubuntu Lucid Lynx. According to the first approach you can download deb package compatible with Ubuntu Lucid Lynx just from Google Chrome website (direct link to deb) and get it installed using dpkg command line utility or gdebi (just open downloaded deb file with double-click).
Currently it is available as a beta so every time Google upgrades their google-chrome-beta_current_i386.deb package you will need to download fresh one and install it again over existing package. This is not so effective as using apt package manager with Google Chrome repository for easy installation and automatic upgrades.
Once you installed Ubuntu Lucid Lynx on your computer and connected it to Internet open terminal (command line) and type there the following:
sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude install google-chrome-beta
This will install the latest version of Google Chrome (Chromium) browser and also will keep it up to date (Ubuntu checks for updates periodically and will notify you if fresh packages are available). Instead of using command line you can try Synatic Package manager that comes with Ubuntu Lucid Lynx by default and makes it possible to select packages to install without any commands. To open it go to System –> Administration –> Synaptic Package Manager, mark google-chrome-beta for installation and press Apply button. In a few minutes Google Chrome will be installed and appear in Applications –> Internet Gnome menu.
As for me Chrome is much more faster than other browser I’ve been using for a long time like Firefox and Opera but due to lack of extensions I wouldn’t recommend Google Chrome as primary browser. The most important extension for me is Nagios checker that is still in early stage of development for Chrome. Anyway here is official repository of Chrome extensions: https://chrome.google.com/extensions, there are not so many plugins as for Firefox but growing.
Good browsing with Google Chrome!
Sh*t happens. There is no more applications to manage my 6th generation iPod Classic 160 GB under Linux/Ubuntu. I have to install Windows as the second operating system along with newly installed Ubuntu Lucid Lynx (it rocks but this is for another post) to run iTunes.
For rather long time I’ve been using gtkpod, amarok, banshee, exaile or rhythmbox to sync my ipod under Linux/Ubuntu and load my music collection there. As we all know The Elder Brother Apple fights with interoperability and makes ipod/iphone users to use iTunes only. Any other applications that can read/write to ipod data format are prohibited by Apple. This also concerns Rockbox and ipod4linux alternative firmwares — once Apple encrypted ipod firmware it became impossible to use them. It definitely sucks. At least due to the fact there are millions of Linux users who are real or potential customers of Apple products. Anyways these facts have been discussed in various forums, blogs like this and similar but this post about how to install Windows as the second operating system along with Ubuntu or any other Linux.
The first that we need to do is to create new partition for Windows and format it to NTFS. Exact steps to accomplish this depend on your HDD partition table e.g. there is one large ext3/ext4 partition for Ubuntu or there are several partitions for various distributions or mount points. Anyway you should use partition manager to create and/or format NTFS partition. I use gparted. It is graphical and it just works (use ‘sudo apt-get install gparted‘ if you run Ubuntu/Debian).
Second you should backup your MBR record and restore it after Windows installation that silently erases existing bootloader and installs windows one, use “dd if=/dev/sda of=/mbr.bin bs=446 count=1” to save MRB into mbr.bin file and “dd if=/media/sda/mbr.bin of=/dev/sda bs=446 count=1” to restore it from file to HDD.
To sum everything up here is the algorithm:
0. BACKUP ALL YOUR DATA!
1. Create NTFS partition using gparted.
2. Backup MBR using dd command e.g. “dd if=/dev/sda of=/mbr.bin bs=446 count=1″ (/dev/sda means your HDD).
3. Boot Windows installation CD and install it onto newly created NTFS partition.
4. Boot into Linux live CD e.g. Ubuntu Live CD.
5. Restore MBR using dd e.g. “dd if=/media/sda/mbr.bin of=/dev/sda bs=446 count=1″.
6. Reboot.
7. Select Ubuntu in grub menu and boot it.
8. Setup grup for Windows booting.
In order to accomplish the last 8th item you should add the following text block to the end of grub config (read this article for detailed information):
title Microsoft Windows XP
root (hd0,1)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1
Good luck!
P.S. If something goes wrong or you need more details you can take a look at the following article at ubuntu.com: Recovering Ubuntu After Installing Windows. It’s written in rather tangled manner but still informative.
