techiehenry

(Part 1 of my Ubuntu installation series)

Almost three weeks ago the latest release of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, Hardy Heron, was made available for download from numerous servers across the internet. I went and downloaded the i386 ISO image directly from the servers overnight, only to find out that it timed out somewhere on the 500Mb mark. Luckily I was able to find a torrent link from Distrowatch, and by then my download went fast and problem-free. By friday night I had the ISO images for Ubuntu and its siblings Kubuntu and Xubuntu.

What is new in this distro? Read the release notes here.

The following days happen to be weekends, so I have all the time in the world on Saturday and Sunday to do a little experiment: to finally convert my MacBook into one that dual-boots Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. So, here’s how it all went out.
Read the rest of this entry »

Early today I posted about creating a Linux disc service. I’ve already created a page related to my experiment.

It is located here: http://techiehenry.com/getthedisk

For the past week I’ve been downloading several Linux distributions, for the intention of having it burned to CD or DVD for those who either don’t have a broadband connection to download it themselves or don’t have the patience to wait for the download and burn process.

So far I have the following distributions at hand:

• Ubuntu 7.10 CD
• Kubuntu 7.10 CD
• Mandriva Linux 2008.0 DVD
• openSUSE 10.3 DVD
• Gentoo Live DVD
• Fedora 8 DVD
• CentOS 5.1 DVD

I’ve already verified the disks through SHA/MD5 whichever is used by the distro. I also plan to charge a nominal fee to cover the expense of the CD/DVD media that I’ll be using.

I’ll post more details as I determine how I could deliver the discs to prospective users.

Taken on a live session while installing to a separate partition on a desktop machine’s hard disk.

Downloaded the ISO image through BitTorrent last night — the mirror servers for direct download are almost inaccessible!

Avidemux is a Video editor designed to run under Linux. I’ve been recently asked to explain how to install it in Linux based from the instructions in the website. However, since the user requesting the explanation is using Ubuntu, there is an easier way to install Avidemux without compliling or downloading anything from the Avidemux main site. I want to share it here as well.

Here are Ubuntu-specific steps on how to install Avidemux:

1. Open the Synaptic Package Manager:
In the Ubuntu menu, go to System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager

2. In the Synaptic menu, go to Settings->Repositories

3. A dialog box will be opened. In the ‘Ubuntu Software’ tab, check the following:
- Community-maintained Open Source Software (universe)
- Software restricted by copyright or legal issues (multiverse)

4. Click on ‘Close’

5. A warning dialog will pop up. Read it, and then close it.

6. In the toolbar, click on ‘Reload’. It will refresh the list of packages from the repositories. Just wait for a while.

7. After the list has been reloaded, click on the ‘Search’ button on the toolbar.

8. Type ‘avidemux’ in the search dialog box.

9. The list will display the search results. There should be one that is named ‘avidemux’. Right click on it to display a popup menu, then select ‘Mark for installation’.

10. Another confirmation dialog may open, informing you that other packages need to be installed. These are needed by avidemux, so just click on the ‘Mark’ button to close the confirmation dialog and mark those listed for installation as well.

11. Click on the ‘Apply’ Button on the toolbar to start installation. A Summary dialog will be displayed first to inform you what will be installed. Make sure that the ‘Download package files only’ checkbox is UNCHECKED. Click on the ‘Apply’ button to start the download and install process.

12. A progress dialog is shown. You will be informed if everything has been installed successfully.

13. After the download and installation process, you may run avidemux from the Ubuntu toolbar, in Applications->Sound and Video->Avidemux

NOTE: Everything is downloaded and installed. So make sure that you have a working internet connection before performing this.