Shaakunthala's Portal

Howdy..! At last, I was lucky enough to receive my copy of the latest Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, from Canonical. I was silent over past few days because severe lightning ruined my laptop's power adapter. :( My laptop runs without a battery, and it's only power source is the AC adapter. However, I managed to make it work somehow, and at this time, things are bit OK.

Mmm... Ubuntu..! It looks like that Canonical has bit changed their usual way of shipping policies. In earlier releases, they shipped big amounts of installation media. Later, they limited. But now, if you has received the earlier version (9.04) via shipit service, they won't ship the latest version. They would deny the request, and ask you to update the existing version instead. :(




At glance, the new Ubuntu is OK and friendlier than previous version. Here, I discuss few things I have specially noticed. Some of them are really good, but few things are not.

GRUB2 (Beta)
The bootloader used in earlier versions of Ubuntu is GRUB. But now it has been replaced by GRUB2 which is still in beta. GRUB2 provides more sophisticated graphical interface than GRUB Legacy. When booting, stage 1.5 is no longer used. Also, GRUB configuration is stored in a file named grub.cfg, rather than menu.lst. Configuration file syntax has become changed, and more advanced  than legacy.

But, a one serious draw back with GRUB2 that I have noticed is, it no longer supports bootloader password. In my point of view, this is a huge disadvantage since any idiot can adjust kernel parameters in order to gain root access very easily. So what I did is, soon after installing Ubuntu, switched back to GRUB Legacy. If you wish to do that, use the following command:

$ sudo apt-get install grub
$ sudo grub

Then overwrite the bootloader as specified in this article. Follow the same procedure for your hard drive.

GRUB Legacy works with Ubuntu 9.10 very well, no issues at all. :-)

In distros like Debian, the user is asked to chose the bootloader (whether GRUB, LILO or GRUB2) during installation. But Ubuntu does not. It asks only for the location where bootloader should install. But according to my views, when distributing beta software as a default package for some appliance, the older (stable) version should be kept aside as an option to let the user decide what to install. Because beta software might sometimes dissatisfy the user.

Encrypted Home Folder
This is actually an option provided by ubiquity, the Ubuntu installer. When you set up your user account during installation, you can either choose to require password to login, or require password to login and decrypt home folder, or automatically login. But, the second option seems like a troublemaker since it makes problems with login if you change your password later.

Just see for yourself. ;-)

New Appearance
New dark splash and login screens feel better than earlier ones, Boot time also seems reduced than 9.04. Console font has also become more readable and because of that, console screen has made more roomy.

Default human theme has also modified to become more darker than the earlier... ;-) However, personally I would prefer the earlier one than that.

Like in 9.04, in this release also Ctrl+Alt+Backspace key sequence is disabled. This is not so good since if your desktop freezes, you might need to restart your computer. If this key sequence has been enabled, you can just restart the current X session (without having to reboot) in a such situation. If you want to re-enable it, just go to System --> Preferences --> Keyboard, and then follow the screenshot below.


However, in Linux, freezing is not an often thing. :-)

New Wallpapers Collection
New wallpapers collection is really a thing to mention because rather than greenish one or two wallpapers that earlier releases had, the new aesthetically pleasing wallpaper set attracts the user... like Windows Vista did. :P

Audio Volume Increasable up to 150%
The worst problem I ever had with Ubuntu audio is, it does not produce enough sound. I was looking for a solution browsing through various forums and blogs, but had no luck. Finally I decided to use SMPlayer since it provides capability to increase audio volume up to more than 100%.

But now, in new Ubuntu 9.10, it provides a very convenient graphical way to increase audio volume up to 150%. For me this is really a great thing since I'm a huge fan of music. However, if you increase volume level than 100%, changes are not persistent. At next reboot, it will again drop to 100%. :(


Also, Karmic Koala provides a more comprehensible interface for audio configuration. But older configuration interface is also still available through the command line. Just run alsamixer on command line and see.

iBus Input Method Framework
Since I use two languages, it is often needed to switch between those input methods. So, an input method provider is a must. Earlier it was SCIM, and now it has been replaced by iBus which provides a more user friendly configuration interface, and smoother operation. I really like the new iBus. :-)


UbuntuOne
UbuntuOne is an online file hosting service based on cloud computing technology. It is offered by Canonical and they provide 2 GB of space for free of charge, and it cloud can be upgraded to 50 GB for $10 per month. The service is still in public beta.

More information is available here.

Firefox 3.5 as Web Browser
Although Firefox 3.5 was released before Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty, they distributed the older version. But, in Ubuntu 9.10 the web browser is Firefox 3.5.3.

Empathy as the Default IM Client
A significant change is that they have replaced the default IM client by Empathy. Earlier it was Pidgin. Unlike Pidgin, Empathy supports audio and visual communication.

Screensavers
The number of screensavers has been reduced, and my favourite screensaver Skyrocket is also missing. :-(

In the screensavers dialog box, screen saver preview area had some issues with compiz fusion, but now that seems fixed.





Overall, I feel that Ubuntu has become more and more like Windows than ever it was. And it no longer looks like a g33k's operating system. In my laptop, Karmic Koala works really faster than Jaunty Jackalope. And also compiz fusion works with no issues. However, most users like it. :-)

So, why waiting? Get it..!

(Till I get my laptop fixed, ciao......!!!)

Nice ideas come in handy way :) ; invoke Google's web search from your Linux desktop shell! :-O

Here's a small shell script that I wrote couple of minutes ago. Copy-paste it into a new file, save it inside /usr/bin as google. This works in GUI mode with firefox very well, but it doesn't work with lynx. I still could not find any reason,.. may be somebody can come up with an idea.

if [ $# -ne 0 ]
then
  query="http://www.google.lk/#hl=en&q="
  for i in $@
  do
    query=$query$i+
  done
  firefox $query &
else
  echo "Usage: google <your search query>."
fi

Then chmod +x /usr/bin/google as root to make it executable.

Now, enter the following as a command and see: B-)

$ google shaakunthala

Or,

Just press Alt+F2, type google shaakunthala and press Enter.


You can use whatever as your keyword. But, have to follow usual bash (shell) syntax.

For example,
If your query is sameera shaakunthala, your command should be,
$ google sameera shaakunthala

If your query is shaakunthala's portal, your command should be,
$ google shaakunthala\'s portal

If your query is "shaakunthala's portal", your command should be,
$ google "\"shaakunthala\'s portal\""

... and so on.

And use your creativity and combine this with some google search hacks that you know. It can be a powerful web search command from your desktop! :-O

Bye! Ciao! Sweet dreams! :P




I re-wrote the script for lynx. The problem arises with the hash (#)sign in the URL. So I removed it. The whole thing is more convenient in the command line, than in the GUI mode.

if [ $# -ne 0 ]
then
  query="http://www.google.lk/search?hl=en&q="
  for i in $@
  do
    query=$query$i+
  done
  lynx -accept_all_cookies $query
else
  echo "Usage: google <your search query>."
fi

Here's the code explanation (how it works):
When you execute the script with some arguments, it will concatenate all arguments with plus sign (+) in between. This is necessary to parse the input as web browser URL format. Then it will concatenate it to the Google search URL string to pass it to the server script at Google.

And finally pass the whole thing as an argument to your web browser.

if - then - else - fi : Decision making
$# : Total number of arguements passed to the shell
-ne : not equals
for - do - done : Looping
$@ : all the arguments (except the command itself) passed to the shell

Ciao! :)

Well, hello there; after some time... this one is about some small work I've done, that I think usful for other Linux users.

 I'm huge fan of music -- especially hard rock and thrash metal. I feel almost dead if I don't get a chance at least once a day, to listen to them. So I wanted to put my huge collection into my mobile phone's memory chip so I can carry them anywhere I go. But, my poor memory chip is just 1 GB. It's not enough at all! So, the only way to pack as much as I can is, reduce the bitrate of the MP3 files.

The next problem... I don't use Windows, nor Windows based software. But, if occurs a situation where I don't have any chance with Linux, I have installed Windows inside a virtual machine for use. But I rarely use that. Of course I can use JetAudio or any other audio conver to do this easily, but, as a professional and permanent Linux user, that's not my style.

So I asked our smart genie... Google to find out a solution. Here's what I've got:

#!/bin/bash
for file in `ls`
do
file=`echo $file | sed s/\ /_/g`
echo $file
lame --decode $file
lame -b 128 $file.wav
rm $file
rm $file.wav
mv $file.wav.mp3 $file
done

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/reduce-mp3-bitrate-336791/

It's a shell script for batch processing. It will process all the MP3 files inside a given directory. Yes, that's more than what I wanted, but, what would happen if filenames contain whitespaces? The solution is not much practical, because most MP3s we get contains at least one whitespace in filename. I don't have time to rename each and every file. So I wsa thinking about a suitable solution.

It is based on lame encoder, if you don't have it, please install it first.
# apt-get install lame

Yes, the find command! Got that!!! Here's the code I've wrote:
Copy this into a text file (mp3enc.sh).

if [ $# -eq 2 ]
then
mkdir $1/output
cd $1
find . -maxdepth 1 -exec lame -h -b $2 {} ./output/{}  \;
else
echo "Invalid arguements, please refer http://portal.shaakunthala.com/2009/10/mp3-batch-transcoding-with-linux.html"
fi

Then execute,
$ chmod +x mp3enc.sh

Now run it,
$ ./mp3enc.sh <mp3_files_directory> <target_bitrate_kbps>

Eg:
$ ./mp3enc.sh /home/ubuntu/Music/MyMusic 128

It will make a directory called output inside your music directory, and put the encoded files in.

It's simple as that! I think it's easier than JetAudio, isn't it? ;)