It is about time Linux users, and especially those in less favored countries, have a decent and well supported route to acquiring high quality music legally. Many would suggest running iTunes in WINE. But I have no intention of supporting a service that does not support my OS of choice. Then there is the Amazon music store which does not sell outside the U.S.A. Other online stores I have looked into have a rather limited library of content, and most of the time I do not find the music I am looking for.

I am looking forward to seeing how this store and project develops. Will there be DRM? I surely hope not. Will it be limited to Ubuntu users? How large will the library be? Will it offer free content? Will it use free codecs? Will it provide a new and unrestricted platform for independent artists? Will it offer more incentive for people to switch to Linux? So many questions... A meeting is scheduled for Wednesday at the UDS. Let's wait and see.

More power to you Ubuntu and Canonical!

#!/bin/bash

getopen () {

if [ -x /usr/bin/xdg-open ]
then
export opener="/usr/bin/xdg-open"
elif [ -x /usr/bin/kde-open ]
then
export opener="/usr/bin/kde-open"
elif [ -x /usr/bin/gnome-open ]
then
export opener="/usr/bin/gnome-open"
else
echo "Requires xdg-open, kde-open or gnome-open"
exit 1
fi
}

getemail () {

export address=`echo $1 | sed 's/mailto://'`
export targeturl="http://compose.mail.yahoo.com/?To=$address"
}

getopen
getemail $1
exec $opener $targeturl
exit 0

#!/bin/bash

getopen () {

if [ -x /usr/bin/xdg-open ]
then
export opener="/usr/bin/xdg-open"
elif [ -x /usr/bin/kde-open ]
then
export opener="/usr/bin/kde-open"
elif [ -x /usr/bin/gnome-open ]
then
export opener="/usr/bin/gnome-open"
else
echo "Requires xdg-open, kde-open or gnome-open"
exit 1
fi
}

getemail () {

export address=`echo $1 | sed 's/mailto://'`
export targeturl="https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&source=mailto&to=$address"
}

getopen
getemail $1
exec $opener $targeturl
exit 0

Save this in a file. I called mine gmailer and saved it to ~/bin. Make sure it is executable and that your system is configured to search ~/bin for executable commands. Now configure your system to open mailto: links with gmailer. That would be gmailer %s in Gnome/XFCE and gmailer %t in KDE4. Cool thing is that gmailer emailaddress@isp.com run from command line or the Ctr+F2 launcher works just as well!

There is a limitation to it. If you are not already logged into GMail or your browser does not automatically log you in, it will not work. It surely can be better but it works just fine for me right now. Obviously, suggestions are most welcome! Enjoy!

[EDIT] Want to do this with Yahoo Mail instead? Click here.

What does this mean? Well obviously it means that more and more people are beginning to use Linux as a desktop OS. And that means that the quality of Linux as desktop OS has improved enough for one out of every hundred computers to be running it. Does it mean that this is the year of Linux on desktop? Or that Microsoft is finally crumbling? I think not.

Geeky celebrations aside, this is what I think should be taken away from this. Everybody knows that the whole world is going through an economic crisis. And according to a report on www.bloomberg.com, a financial news site, PC sales are predicted to drop by 12% to 257 million units in 2009 as compared to 2008. So:

1. Manufacturers will be battling each other fiercely for a sizable piece of the smaller 257 million pie,


2. People are looking to spend less on computers at least until the economic times change,


3. 1% of 257 million is still a whole lot of computers and money... especially when the pie is smaller.


4. As the growing segment of the market, Linux users are a group manufacturers should be targeting.

Now, Linux has been for the most part a fringe user base and still remains so for the time being. And as a Linux user since 2004, one inconvenience I have experienced is the sub par support for hardware compared to the likes of Microsoft. This usually means carefully selecting hardware that I will purchase and choosing the said hardware solely for its support for my OS of choice. This includes motherboards, graphic cards, wireless cards, TV capture cards, digital cameras, portable MP3 players, mobile phones, PDAs, and the list goes on. Moreover, us Linux users are usually the techie types that love all these kinds of gadgets and products and hence would more likely splash a few bucks on some new hardware this year.

Here we have this growing user base that love tech products, we're all going through rough economic times where consumers want to spend sparingly and manufacturers want to win over every possible customer... Common sense would dictate that it would be a perfectly sound business strategy to provide solid support for products on Linux. And with Linux being free, the price of a PC preinstalled with Linux and all hardware working perfectly will surely win over at least 1 in a 100 customers. Hardware support for money? What do you say? Come on, show us some love!

I sometimes wondered what became of Gaël Duval. He talked of launching another distribution called Ulteo Linux... or so I thought. But what he and his team have come up with is something quite impressive: Ulteo Open Virtual Desktop.

Ulteo Open Virtual Desktop (UOVD) seems like it would be an ideal solution for an enterprise that needs cost-effective deployment of cross-platform (or maybe even single-platform) applications to their employees. What this allows you to do is have Windows and Linux application servers on which the applications are actually run. Multiple users then use remote thin clients that only need Java enabled web browsers to run whichever Windows or Linux application they need. Integration of both platforms on UOVD looks seamless with a single desktop and menu! What is great for enterprises is that savings increases proportionally with the size of the company in the application server - thin client model. I have only scratched the surface. The feature list is really impressive

UOVD hit version 1.0 on 23/04/2009. And in true open spirit, UOVD is open source and anyone can download it and try it out now!

I am glad that the leader of the number one Linux distribution on Distrowatch in 2002, 2003 and 2004, the distribution that won me over from Windows, has made a comeback with an innovative, new Open Source project. Hats off to you Gaël Duval! All the best!

]]> http://drsjlazar.blogspot.com/2009/04/heres-your-chance-to-support-linux-mint.html Shane 2009-04-05T21:01:00+02:00 2009-04-05T21:01:00+02:00
Here is the catch. He will donate the proceeds from this sale to an open source project. He will hold a poll tomorrow to decide which one, and presently the options are Getdeb, Ardour and Linux Mint! We should probably mobilize the hoards of Mint fans :D

Follow the links below, support Bryan, buy his software if you like it, and support Linux Mint!

[lunduke.com]
[radicalbreeze.com]
[lunduke.com] ]]> http://drsjlazar.blogspot.com/2009/03/tidbit-creating-good-password.html Shane 2009-03-13T14:33:00+01:00 2009-03-13T14:33:00+01:00 In the latest Linux Mint Newsletter, Husse linked to an article which suggests that the weakest link in online security is weak passwords. I have seen this myself in the passwords my friends use. But it is possible to create a strong password that is also easy to remember. Here is how I generally go about it.

This is what will make your password easy to remember for you. Choose two short words that you won't forget - two words because two words are harder to guess than one for a cracker. Example:
'dogs' and 'linux'.

Now swap some letters for numbers that look like the letters. For example: 1 = I, 3 = E, 4 = A, 5 = S, 7 = T, 8 = B, 0 = O. You can use whatever substitutions you like as long as you remember them. Now our root words are:
'd0g5' and 'l1nux'

Alternate the letters of the root words but you can mix them up in a way that suits you. Now we have:
dl01gn5ux

Using at least one uppercase letter immediately increases the strength of the password because the cracker must now account for 26 more characters. Let us make the first and last letters uppercase:
Dl01gn5uX

To increase the number of characters in the mix, add a special character if it is allowed. These can be punctuation marks or symbols. Just keep it easy to remember
Dl01gn5uX!

It is not a good idea to use the same password on multiple sites because if one is cracked, they all are. And this is more important with more and more of our personal information going online. But still nobody likes remembering a different password for every site, if that is even possible. What we can do is make site specific changes (that are easy to remember) to our already strong password. For example, add the first letter of the site on which this password will be used. If it is on gmail, our password is now:
Dl01gn5uX!g

Now we have an awesome password that will take even the fastest brute force attack a long time to crack! And yet it is easy to work through the steps from our ultra-easy-to-remember root words to our awesome password should you forget it. After a while, this complex sequence becomes second nature even with site specific modifications.

But the weakest link still remains. And that is you! It goes without saying... do not tell anyone, do not write it down, do not save it in a file, etc. There really is no need to if your root words are easy to remember. And even if someone who knows you well can guess the root words, it will still be hard to guess your password.

Take the above process, change it to what suits you best, make your own rules, and most importantly, use it!

I used to be a KDE user. I thought KDE 4.0 was such a disaster, I switched to GNOME. I hate the fact that my right button doesn't do what I want it to do. But the whole "break everything" model is painful for users, and they can choose to use something else.

I am using an Ubuntu Itrepid based system which has been modified to use ALSA as the sound architecture. This is in fact the pre-release Beta of Linux Mint Fluxbox CE.

This is what I did:

1) Edit /etc/asound.conf and added the following at the end. This creates a device which copies another.

2) Restart ASLA with:

3) Get the 'numid' of the 'Capture Source' and the Item number of the 'Mix' device (you will have to go through the long output)

The part you are looking for looks something like this:

4)Then set the copy device to copy the 'Mix' device (5) by running this:

That's it!

When you are ready to record run this in the terminal

The output file will be a large wav file.

To encode it to a good quality mp3, run:

Enjoy!