Reaching out to ask for help could be intimidating because it might make you feel a bit insignificant. But what is life without other people being with you to experience things? As cliche as it may sound, no man is an island. For that matter, maybe you don’t necessarily have to be the type to broadcast to the entire world that you are a new Linux user. But just one or a few people with you in this makes the experience fun as you learn new commands. And who knows? The terminal might feel like a better place to deal with commands. Feeling like a wizard chanting a spell? Maybe that’s the thrill of the command line for some people. Others might be more of the type to find good things in new shiny packages — new applications that are useful, something more than they imagined.

Old Linux users might not feel as enthusiastic about the community before. Why? Because there are those who keep on conducting flame wars in community mailing lists. That or they’ve come to hate the “RTFM”/”RTM”-like replies to newbies. Or maybe they’ve gotten tired of reading newbie emails. Well, it might sound like those questions are being popped over and over and over again so I guess it’s hard to blame them for losing interest in those community mailing lists and forums. Oh and there’s also the problem with sexist remarks. Women sometimes have difficulties dealing with those issues. But there are times that it does turn women off from the community.

However, it is interesting to note that despite such issues that might be around not so new Linux users, there are friendships that do form among them. And it goes beyond the mailing list or forums. And sometimes those friendships lead to collaborations online and offline. There’s still discussions that do happen as time goes by. Which isn’t a bad thing and it could help as they continue to grow in terms of their personal development and their skills in using Linux and free and open source software.

I do hope that in the coming years, I’d see richer interactions among people in the community. I mean, I might not be as active in the local Linux community but I still have those friendships that I have developed over the years and it still keeps me interested in the technologies and the projects that are happening here. It’s just that I can’t help but hope for more so that the community will keep on growing.

Post from: New Linux User

• Managing your information
• Migration
• Broadcasting your information
• Community building

Participants shall be joining in a track to interact with fellow participants in order to learn something new from each other. Whatever they learn from this camp will hopefully be very helpful for them when they go back to work in their respective organizations.

I was able to talk with some of the participants here and they have different backgrounds and needs. But they are quite interested in the tracks they have signed up for and as early as now they have many questions. And there are also many interesting stories from them as they share why they are interested in FOSS and why they will be participating at the camp.

The next five days will be packed with activities that aims to empower each participants so that they have knowledge and practical skills. Whether it’s all about managing their information online or offline, collaboratively or what; whether it’s people learning something new about Linux there’s an opportuity for everyone who has an open mind and an attitude to learn.

I am looking forward to an awesome camp at Asia Source 3.

Post from: New Linux User

It’s the combination of the hardware you have with whatever you’re installing. Whether it’s any particular Linux distribution or maybe even Windows, there’d be times that you will hit some snags. Some inconveniences might be greater than others. You can not always tell. (This is also based on my personal experience.)

There will be times that everything is going to work out of the box. Seriously fine and dandy and happy. Right? I get those times. But there are moments that there are unexpected kinks. It could affect the sound card, it could be the video card. It could be something else like wifi. There are those sweet moments that I know people are happy about, including myself.

I’ve read the acronym YMMV on a mailing list and I wondered what it was all about. And someone just explained it to me that sometimes people don’t have the same experiences when it comes to installing things or trying out new applications. It often grounds me to the reality that not everything about x distro will be all bad or all good. That’s why even if I do read that x distro (in this case Ubuntu 9.10) isn’t quite as perfect, I still would give it a try once I can. After all, I do read good stuff about it too.

No distro is perfect. Exaggerated reports or isolated cases will not be very helpful either in assessing these things. So just keep in mind, YMMV for each time that you want to use something.

Post from: New Linux User

The design philosophy of Phraymd includes the following:

• The user interface must not be a blocker.
• It keeps the metadata in the images.
• There is a database that keeps track of data for faster searching.

It looks really nifty to me. It also is said to be designed so that one could easily call other applications when needed. For example, image editing tools that will enhance your pictures. Or maybe viewing it using Firefox.

If you take a look at page about using Phraymd

you will see interesting features. For me, one of the interesting features is to be able to select a bunch of pictures and not lose that selection if I move to another image.

Phraymd is also looking for people to use it and test it. It will be great if you could test it and give feedback. Of course, giving good feedback and not something too general might not be very helpful. Be specific about the your feedback especially when it comes to bugs so that the development of Phraymd will be better. There is a user group for Phraymd here so sign-up and be a part of it if you believe in this project.

For those who want to try Phraymd, read this guide on installing and running Phraymd.

Post from: New Linux User

Solang seems to have a problem with Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope so those who want to use it already might be better off with upgrading to Karmic Koala first. There’s a PPA for Solang but those who are not familiar with it might be turned off. I personally plan to upgrade before I try Solang.

The feature list as written by Santanu several months ago. I am thinking this would be applicable for Solang on Karmic.

• Paginated views for memory and speed efficiency (in git already)
• Icon zooming in browser view (in git already)
• Undoable delete feature for tags and photos (partially in git)
• Undoable basic editing (flip/rotate/scale) (underway)
• Batch editing of pictures (hopefully) (TBD)
• An importer from flickr (Underway)
• A basic exporter that exports selected photos to a directory (hopefully through a basic editing pipeline) (TBD)

It looks interesting especially with the screenshots on this blog entry about compiling Solang in Ubuntu.

Solang is one of the applications I want to try once I upgrade to Karmic Koala because I am still trying to find which application works best for me. At least when it comes to managing a photo collection offline. I’ve settled for Postr when it comes to importing photos since I mainly use Flickr rather than Picasa or Photobucket. If I uploaded images to other online image sharing sites then I might be sold on using F-spot. And I find F-spot a bit slow even if it is useful. Hopefully Solang will be a better option. If not Solang, there’s also Phraymd to take a look at.

Post from: New Linux User

Not everyone might be able to appreciate these things especially new
Linux users but reading about them at the very least gives us a better
idea of how development happens, who are some of the key people in the
community, what might be happening in the coming days for us.

Not everyone might be developing software in the free and open source
community. But those who do have a great impact on Linux as we get to
use it. The kernel might seem to be a very intimidating thing to most
newbies. But the kernel is an important part of the Linux distros we
use and love. The very performance of these distros on our respective
computers have a relationship with how developers improve the kernel.
We might not understand all the processing being done by the CPUs and
how the kernel interacts with it but these names make it possible for
us to have something that we could use everyday for our work and play.

I suppose those who are more into technical details and hacking would
be able to appreciate the talks and training tracks in Linux Kongress.
Be sure to check out the
Linux Kongress 2009 page for other information.

Linux kernel developers deserve our appreciation for all their hard
work and time. After all, they’re part of the group that make Linux
become better and better each time.

Post from: New Linux User

So yeah, everybody seems to have Ubuntu 9.10 or Karmic Koala already. Well, except for me. Tsk. Next time I will check my things before leaving a building, just to be sure this doesn’t happen again.

Back to business.

And everyone but me has Karmic Koala. By this time it’s more practical for me to start looking for the rest of the world’s blog entries and screenshots. The Debian Admin blog has a 37 screenshots. You get to see the different aspects of Karmic so this is a good set. It also gives you a better idea of how things work in Karmic now, at least have a general idea. Also there are chances that other loco’s have probably pushed through with their release parties for Karmic already. Yes, I am envious that almost everyone has the latest Ubuntu release.

Because of that forgotten charger everything else could gloat to me about not having Ubuntu Karmic yet. Thankfully not everyone in the community thinks that way so I don’t feel so bad.

Others have given tips on what should be done first to your machine after installing Karmic Koala. One of them is to select download mirrors and set them up for your future needs. After all, you never know when these things will be handy. There’s also setting up folder sharing. This is especially for those who rely on shared files within the office network. One more thing you should do: synchronize time with atomic clocks. Just so you won’t find yourself in a different timezone all of a sudden. Great right?

Enjoy Ubuntu Karmic Koala!

Post from: New Linux User

What’s in store for us in ‘Eclair’ or Android 2.0?

Those who work in companies whose emails are managed by Microsoft
Exchange servers will be happy to note that Eclair is said to ship
with support for MS Exchange. Probably a good enough reason for some
to consider getting a new Android 2.0 powered smartphone.

Some of the features are said to be corporate friendly. Anyhow here’s a list of some features:

• Multiple email accounts. If you’re like me, then you probably have at least two email accounts. This feature sounds practical to me.
• Combined inboxes. Well, after all you have multiple accounts. It is possible to view them all as if they’re just in one inbox. No need to keep switching from one inbox to another, apparently.
• They also put a virtual keyboard where you could use two fingers to type faster. The multitouch surface should make it fine for you to use this on smartphones which are supported.
• Interestingly enough, there will be HTML 5 support on the browser on Android 2.0 so that sounds cool.

Developers might want to take a look at their improved API too. Includes changes in handling contacts, especially because of the multiple account feature. There is also a centralized acount manager for storing and accessing auth tokens/passwords.

Does Anroid 2.0 or Eclair look like a sweet deal to you? Then it might be worth waiting for. Well, there’s also Maemo so it should be interesting to see devices powered with Android Eclair and Maemo and compare them. Smartphones and Linux could be the future of computing for all we know. ; )

Thanks to Linux Insider for the heads up!

Post from: New Linux User

I hope that this team success for the upcoming hackfest! I also hope to hear/read about it from you.

Image credit: clarita, via Morguefile

Speaking of events, Asia Source 3 is coming up soon! It will be held from November 7-12 in Silang, Cavite — that’s in the Philippines! You got that right.

There will be several tracks that participants will be able to attend:

• Managing your information.
• Migrating to FOSS.
• Broadcasting your information.
• Joining the FOSS Community/Using FOSS tools.

It would be great to hear and read all about the participants’ reactions after the camp. I hope that a lot of the participants will be encouraged to join the FOSS community and spread the love~! Not just for Linux but for the free and open source software movement at large.

What other events are coming up soon? Care to share them here? It will be more interesting to hear about them. It will be good to experience those events too if it were possible. ; ) Just let us know and maybe some of us can be there too. : D

Post from: New Linux User

playing a song using mpd + sonata

So why the heck do I need two things to play music?

Let me say this: MPD is basically a daemon that runs in the background to make sure that you could play music. Sonata is the graphical way for you to control it. I’ve read so many raves about how powerful it is as a command line player but at least Sonata as its graphical front-end makes me appreciate the information about the songs. Sonata’s song information section will fetch information such as

• title
• artist
• album
• date
• track
• genre
• lyrics
• album info

There are other things that people rave about in Sonata. One of them’s keyboard driven shortcuts. There’s also support for Audioscrobbler.

Anyhow, the instructions that the webupd8 blog gave are pretty much everything I needed to set it up and running. However, I hit a snag when I tried to run Sonata at first. Because it didn’t see the library of files. Annoying, right? So I tried running MPD first in a terminal. It gave me an error regarding not being able to set the user id. I ran mpd as root. Guess what happened next? It’s working perfectly fine now. Ain’t it grand?

So yeah, you could try out MPD and Sonata by following their instructions. But here are two tips I could give you for now:

• Copy the mpd config file from /etc/mpd.conf to /home/your_username/.mpdconf so that mpd will look there instead of /etc. Also, it would lessen the hassle of editing mpd’s config file.
• Run mpd as root first before starting Sonata. Because it’s really much easier that way.

So far, it looks good. There’s a smaller percentage of memory being consumed by a media playing application. Memory here’s at 1.2% so far. Neat huh?

Post from: New Linux User