How to Play Real Media Files on Mplayer - Mepis 8

Kmplayer Playing Monster.rmvb

I have never been a fan of Real Player, but it was there in my every installation of Windows or Linux. Reason? Some of my old audio and video collections.

Before MP3 and XviD stuff became the mainstay of Web and standalone Players, there was Real Media. I still have have some ra, rm audio, and rm, rmvb video that I can't find in any other format. Nor can I convert them to today's popular formats, because they are already very much compressed and lossy.

Well, I used to play them in the Linux port of RealPlayer. But the latest debian package of RealPlayer couldn't play it on one of my beloved Mepis 8 installation. Don't know why. They somebody told me that you can play them on Mplayer (one of very popular native media players on linux) with alsa-oss and w32codecs. And Lo, it worked.

So, those of you who would like to play Real Media files, need not have to install RealPlayer, you can play them quite well on Mplayer (KMPlayer, SMPlayer & GMPlayer) with alsa-oss and w32codecs installed. Of Course, you can't stream audio and video from Real Networks.

It works for me on Mepis 8. Hope, it will work on your Linux Flavor too.

Linux Kernel vs. Desktop Performance

If you have been using Linux for a decade, you must have come across many news stories/blogs/forums/release notes stating "the latest kernel version promising some performance enhancements".

I have read news of performance improvement at every new kernel release - starting from kernel 2.2 to this date (kernel 2.6.31). These days some blog posts state that the latest 2.6.31 kernel will improve desktop performance greatly (40%). But I have never really experienced performance improvement with new kernels. For example, the boringly stable Centos 4 with 2.6.8 kernel is way too fast on my aging PIV HP system than the later Fedora or PCLOS, or anything. Besides, on my cheap Compaq C702 Notebook PCLinuxOS 2008 (MiniMe) with Kernel 2.6.22 is faster than PCLinuxOS 2009.2 with Kernel 2.6.26. There are hundreds of such examples.

So, drawing from 8 years of my Linux computing, I have seen the skinny Linux growing fatter and fatter, keeping in pace with the upcoming devices and demands. Sorry, if I am too dumb, but I always try a lower version of kernel if it supports my hardware, and I have seen it works better.

For me, it really pays a lot if you install a kernel that’s contemporary of your hardware. Any big time difference forward or backward affects performance, very often, badly.

Well, let’s see, if Kernel 2.6.31 can defy my view.

Mepis 8.0.10 perfects KDE 3.5.10

KDE 4.3 is Great but I would suggest all newbies to try the last, KDE 3.5.10 release of Mepis 8 (8.0.10) before it moves into KDE 4 world (cos i don't know what will happen then).

KDE 3.5.10 is still the most stable and feature-complete desktop environment, and Mepis 8.0.10 does KDE 3.5.10 the best. I have been keeping track of Mepis 8 - from Beta 1 to the latest 8.0.10. Every time it came with more polish. And the last 8.0.10 is the best distro with kde 3.5.10, because Mepis is also moving to KDE 4 zone.

After installing Mepis 8 I've tampered it every possible way. Did every possible work. And I bet say, it performs consistently on the everyday rigors of computing. No problems. It brims with all the commercial polish and user-centric approach. Yet, it's a free to download.

If you want a pain-free and stable KDE 3.5 desktop for everyday task, go for Mepis 8.0.10. It's rock solid as Linux and it understands users better than Microsoft.

Pain-Free Way to Delete Cell Contents in OpenOffice Calc

Microsoft has come to fame making computing no-brainer for everyone at home and office. For example, its office suite (earlier than Office 2007) is so contextual and easy that it's ported to Mac. And many people prefer it to iWorks.

Its biggest opensource counterpart, Openoffice.org has come a long way, and its 3.1 iteration is a big leap forward. However, it still has some big annoyances. Sometimes OO.o people consider users too dumb. Here is one such instance related to OpenOffice Calc.

For last one week I had to edit many official spreadsheets. It involved deleted several cells, rows and columns across various sheets. Every time I selected certain cells/rows/columns and pressed delete button, OpenOffice Calc popped up a dialog box (see the screenshot below).



It's good to provide cautionary dialog boxes for some important tasks. But it's definitely an annoyance to every time interfere with the user in such mundane tasks as deleting a cell. Because, even if a user deletes certain cells, rows or columns, he/she can always Undo it.

I was really scared with this behavior of oocalc and looked for alternatives to Delete. Fortunately, OpenOffice has not binded this annoying dialog box with Backspare key. So all of you who use openoffice calc and are scared of this delete dialog box can use Backspare instead of Delete to clear contents of a spreadsheets. And don't panic, there is always the venerable Undo button in case you wrongly deleted something.

KDE4 - Hype & Reality

It feels good to see KDE 4.3 mature. Again it feels good to see some of the major but conservative Linux distributions turning up to KDE 4. PCLinuxOS has set a complete KDE 4.3 repository ready for those interested in this new and much-hyped desktop environment. Slackware 13 is loaded with KDE 4.2. However, it feels very bad that KDE4 doesn't deliver the stuff hyped much earlier. Read on to know what I exactly mean by "hyped stuff" but don't start kde4-fanboyism.

The worst hype about KDE4 is that it's more responsive than KDE3. It's a complete false statement. I have tried OpenSuse, PCLinuxOS, Mepis, and sadly, Fedora, on top of KDE4 and 3. Sorry friends, I could not see any major difference in performance. On the contrary I have seen lack of performance while using KDE4. "KDE4 uses around 40% less resource than KDE3" is another biggest hype that moved across various OSS forums. It's again a false statement. True, KDE4 manages memory more intelligently, but not 40% less.

I am sure, KDE 4.3.1 is way more polished and advanced than KDE 3.5.10. It looks stunning. It's enviable to all - KDE 3.5.10, Windows 7 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard. But it is not as tightly integrated.

Good news is that Linux Kernel 2.6.31 has much possibility in terms of desktop performance improvement. And it seems, KDE 4 will stood up to its hype when it couples with this nice kernel. Till then I am sticking to KDE 3.5.10 on PCLinuxOS MiniMe.

PCLinuxOS 2009.1 Minime Review

pclinuxos 2009.1 minime default desktop

Macho Man

I am a copy writer/editor by profession who is deeply into Desktop Linux. Is not it machoistic? I love to make/break praise/rant Linux. To pursue this I try each release of popular distributions. But everytime I come back to PCLinuxOS. This time I am trying PCLinuxOS 2009.1 Minime - my personal favorite (read on, I will tell you why) from PCLinuxOS bandwagon.

Mean Machine

Hi there you techies who run after quad cores! I still believe a Celeron 530 1.73 chip is fast enough for a home desktop. And it's 64-Bit too. To me it's the meanest machine. It has tested some 200 distros and still running fine! Specs: 1 GB RAM, 1.73 GHz Celeron M 530 CPU, Intel GMA 965 Graphics, Intel HDA 8 Audio, Broadcom 4311 Rev.2 WLAN Card, 80 GB HDD.

Mini-Me

My personal favorite! Why? Because it's the best, the smallest and the most perfect distribution. What's more, it gives you complete freedom to add whatever you like and make it fit to you personality. That's why the name - Mini-Me. It gives a bloat-free linux experience.

The Review

I have tried them all - Fedoras and Ubuntus. Sometimes a release comes great but most of the time they are buggy. Even a better Fedora runs out of order after some odd updates. But here is PCLinuxOS that provides great releases every time and the nicest updates everyday. Now onto the review.

When I popped up PCLinuxOS 2009.1 MiniME the boot chooser seemed looked little different from its 2008 edition. Yes there is a copy2ram option. I tried it. But sadly it did not work. Except that it booted up quite well. It took some 2 minutes to boot the liveCD. Upon booting Minime 2009.1 gave one more surprise - the update notifier.

Like it's predecessor it has no extra frill (or bloat). Just configure your internet and pull in whatever you like (except openoffice) from synaptic. Kde menu >> Office section has a link GetOpenOffice to grab openoffice 3.1.

Without doing adding/removing packages I thought it better to install and went ahead. Installation took some 10 minutes only.

Here is the list of packages I pulled in from repo to fully load my MiniMe.

OpenOffice 3.1
Kchmviewer
Unrar
Karchiver
Kpdf
Kcalc
Artha
K3b
Kpowersave

Firefox 3.5.2
Skype
Kopete
Kget
Ktorrent
Ksirc

Smplayer
RealPlayer
Amarok
Gimp
Gwenview
Ksnapshot
avidemux-qt
qt-recordmydesktop
libdvdcss2
vcdimager
Krec

The above are a regular mix of applications that I install on Minime. This time Artha came as a surprise. It is a really great wordnet frontend that's Linux's answer to WordWeb.

If you are a regular home desktop user you too can pull in just the above packages onto your Minime and get a real mean slim fast kde home desktop.

The Surprises

Even after installing all these packages my Minime consumes only 2 GB of hard drive space, giving much space to do whatever I like. The freshly installed desktop took only 250 MB RAM! Another pleasant surprise of this minime release is its power management. Right after I installed kpowersave package I was surprised to see the system running cool like a cucumber by utilizing p4_clockmod settings under ondemand cpu governance. It's first time ever happened on this notebook. Previously I had to manually set up cpu-scaling to run this machine optimally cool.



resource consumption of pclinuxos 2009.1 minime on a freshly boot system



power management of my celeron m 530 cpu on pclinuxos 2009.1 minime

The Looks

PCLinuxOS is not a cosmetic distribution. No wonder, it sticks to those crystal icons which you can easily replace with better-looking ones from kde-looks.org. Besides that, the default wallpaper, bootsplash and kde-splash are simply marvelous. They look way better, polished and professional than the previous releases.

What I liked most in this distribution:

1. Inclusion of Update Notifier option.
2. Availability of OpenOffice 3.1, Firefox 3.5.2, Artha and many other useful packages in the repo.
3. Bloat-free attitude of Minime like its predecessors.
4. Adherence to KDE 3.5.10 + 2.6.26 kernel.
5. Stunning default wallpaper, bootsplash + ksplash.

Artha - WordWeb Knockoff for Desktop Linux

Till Artha showed up in OSS Linux was lacking a perfect dictionary/thesaurus for long. Yes, it has WordNet as the lexicon and some primitive front ends such as kthesaurus and the native wordnet gui. Clearly it was not as usable as its Windows counterpart - WordWeb.

Artha is a handy dictionary/thesaurus program for Linux that focuses on high usability. It makes the best utilization of WordNet database with highly usable Hotkeys, Regular Expressions, Notifications, Relative Senses, Suggestions and Much More!

So, if your looking for a wordweb knockoff in desktop linux, look no further. Go, get Artha.

Why Should You Love PCLinuxOS 2009.2?

(pic courtesy pclinuxos.com)

I could have better set the title "What's so Great about PCLinuxOS 2009.2?" Be whatever the case, the good thing is that PCLinuxOS is here. Though little late, it's pouring goodies steadily.

After storming the Desktop world with PCLinuxOS Gnome 2009.2, PCLinuxOS KDE 2009.2, PCLinuxOS MiniME 2009.1, PCLinuxOS Zen Mini 2009.1, PCLinuxOS XFCE and PCLinuxOS LXDE 2009.4. And at last, the repo is ready with kde4. That means an Official PCLinuxOS with KDE 4.3 is not far away.

What I liked the most in PCLinuxOS 2009.2?

1.Cosmetics: This point release sports a better look-n-feel than 2009.1.
2.Updates: It endows tons of updates over 2009.1, making it a must for anyone doing a fresh install.
3.Stability: I don't know much about linux internals but this release seems well tested and polished.
4.CPU management: This release does a great job managing your CPU and power. After installation of 2009.2 when I set out to configure cpu-scaling, I was really surprised to see that pclos had already set proper cpu-scaling for my celeron chip.

Needless to say, this release also bears the testimony of tex standards - well chosen packages and better overall integration of all the components.

So, try it. You will fall in love!

Easy PCLinuxOS Solution to Weird HTTPS Annoyance in Centos 5.3

Background:
Couple of months back I had installed PCLinuxOS 2009.1 in ONSIS, Noida. For almost 2 months after installation ONSISians had a joyride with PCLinuxOS. But slowly PCLinuxOS started to hang after some hours of working, and afterwards hangs became frequent. And finally we gave up on it and moved to Centos 5.3. We had to compromise on usability for the sake of stability.

The Problem:
Though Centos 5.3 worked like a charm it gave rise to some weird problems, the most annoying of which was the inability to open any HTTPS websites. On the same network Windows XP and PCLinuxOS had no problem opening https websites but Centos did not move. We scanned the firewall settings, browser setting; visited several forums (fedora, rhel, mandriva, pclinuxos, etc.) but to no avail. We checked for 443 port, there was no blockage there. We checked for konqueror and firefox setting, there was nothing wrong either.

The Solution:
Suddenly something brilliant stuck to your System Admin Tarun Pandey's mind. He tried to dig deep into the pclinuxos network settings (which opens https sites flawlessly) and came up with a big point – PCLinuxOS advanced network setting has disabled tcp_window_scaling. He did the same on Centos 5.3 by putting an extra line net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling=0 at end of /etc/sysctl.conf file, and lo, after rebooting Centos opened up all the https websites.

The Question:
Though the problem was solved. I am interested to know how disabling tcp_window_scaling solved this weird https problem. So far, I have no cue.

KDE 3.5.10 - How to Stop Kwallet Annoyance

On my home desktop I had been using Pidgin (formerly Gaim) and Thunderbird without any password phishing agents like Gnome-Keyring (and Kwallet which never showed up). There is no use of a password phishing agent on a home desktop where you are the only user. But the problem surfaced in PCLinuxOS 2009.2 on which I started using Kmail and Kopete. Overall I was happy at the growth of both these KDE apps, except that kwallet phisher.

I remember right after the fresh installation of pclos 2009.2 I had removed kwallet, but when I fired up kopete and kmail, the kwallet started buzzing me to give a password. And there was no escape, I removed all that hidden kwallet craps and config files from my /home as well as /root directory. Again gave kopete a try, but kwallet came up adamantly and asked for password. Perhaps some kwallet daemon is running all the time.

Thank God! I finally found a fix to disable kwallet at OpenSuse forum.

If you want to disable the use of kwallet, edit ~/.kde/share/config/kwalletrc (if there is no file as kwalletrc create one). Delete all the text from that file and paste:

[Wallet]
Enabled=false

Save the file and reboot your system. Henceforth, kwallet phishing agent won't show up.