uTorrent For Linux

Ever since uTorrent was released, Mac and Linux users have begged the developers to release a version of the client designed to work on their computers. In 2006, when uTorrent was sold to BitTorrent Inc., the company announced that a Mac version was coming. In 2008, nearly two years after the announcement, it was finally released to the public.

With the the release of the Mac version, Linux users were the only ones left out in the cold, but this is about to change. The uTorrent development team has just announced that they are working on a Linux version of the client. Further details on the time line and an eventual release date are not available at the moment.

The Linux version is the most backed idea on uTorrent’s recently introduced Idea Bank. The Idea Bank is prominently featured on uTorrent’s website and allows users to submit and vote for ideas they want to see implemented. In just a few weeks the idea of a Linux version has been supported by 3254 people. This huge demand from users is one of the main reasons why the Linux version is now in progress.

Whether or not the uTorrent Linux release will ever reach the massive market share it has on Windows remains to be seen. The Mac version has been well received but it is by no means the most used BitTorrent client on the platform. Whatever happens, it’s definitely good to see that uTorrent will soon be available on all three major platforms.

I was getting fairly decent frame rates, around 22-35 depending. That was also while running the gtk-recordmydesktop screen capture application. For some reason the audio was stripped out. There is a new version of wine out, I plan to upgrade, tweak it some more and give that a try. I did have the shading turned way down just to increase FPS performance.

Video was recorded in OGV, and edited in Kdenlive

For those curious this machine is running:

AMD Phenom II Quad Core 2.2
8 GB Memory
Nvidia BFG GTX260
500 GB WD HDD

I will have more to come after trying out Wine. 1.1.26.

One other note, Adobe will now be releasing Air like flash at the same time for Mac, Windows, and Linux users at the same time for future releases. Rock On!

To Install Adobe Air on Ubuntu Linux 8.10, follow this:

Download Adobe Air: http://get.adobe.com/air/

It will download “AdobeAirInstaller.bin” to your default location. For me it downloaded to my desktop. Open a terminal:

Applications > Accessories > Terminal

$cd /home/user/Desktop (replace “user” with your userID)

To make sure we can install it, you can check the permissions, or just make it writable:

$chmod +x AdobeAIRInstaller.bin (this makes the file executable by the user)

Now install

$./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

This will generate the installer process, you will see the following screens. Since I had an older verison already installed, I am prompted to “update”, yours might just say “install”.

Voila, now you can go to a site like http://www.twhirl.org/ which is a twitter application that runs on AIR and simply click the “install now”.

Enjoy !

Main Features:
* Capture video from your camcorder, webcam or screen
* Mix a large number of different formats (depending on your FFmpeg install): mpeg, flash, mp3, ogg, png, jpeg, dv, hdv, …
* See the result of your work (effects and transitions) in realtime
* Export your work in several formats (hdv, dv, mpeg, …)
* Create titles, slideshows and more

For those not familiar with this application, Kdenlive is an open source multi track video editor based on the MLT video framework and FFmpeg.

So how do we get this baby installed in ubuntu as there isn’t a “.deb” package on their website, and the current package in the main repo is on 0.5? Well, if you cruise over to the Wiki Documentation, you will find a nice tutorial written by Mads Dydensborg. The tutorial did work for me, and I am successfully running 0.7. The only thing I couldn’t figure out is why it installed a sleu of KDE apps and made launchers for them? This can be resolved by unselecting them in the alacarte tool. Below are the steps for installing.

1) Add a repo to your sources.list

• echo deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-members-kde4/ubuntu hardy main | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list

2) Get a load of extra packages

• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install gtk-qt-engine-kde4 bzip2 kdebase kommander subversion g++ cmake pkg-config kdelibs5-dev libsdl1.2-dev libxml2-dev

3) Make a new directory

• mkdir kdenlive

4) Move into the new directory

• cd kdenlive

5) Download the script

• wget http://www.kde-apps.org/CONTENT/content-files/85826-kdenlive_builder_wizard.kmdr.bz2

6) Extract, rename and make executable the script

• `bunzip2 85826-kdenlive_builder_wizard.kmdr.bz2 && mv 85826-kdenlive_builder_wizard.kmdr kdenlive_builder_wizard.kmdr && chmod +x kdenlive_builder_wizard.kmdr

7) Sort out a path by typing:

• export PATH=$PATH:/usr/lib/kde4/bin

Run the script

• kmdr-executor kdenlive_builder_wizard.kmdr

9) follow the instructions on-screen. Press “Cancel” after success.

10) In file browser (nautilus) navigate to the /kdenlive directory which you created in step 3

11) click “kdenlive_start” and you are in business.

12) Use alacarte (sudo apt-get install alacarte) to add ~/yourpath/kdenlive/kdenlive_start to your menu.

I hope this helps with getting people to trry out publishing their videos on Linux!

Josh

XBMC media center is a free cross-platform media-player jukebox and entertainment hub. XBMC is open source (GPL) software available for Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows operating-system, and the Xbox game-console. XBMC can play a very complete spectrum of of multimedia formats, and featuring playlist, audio visualizations, slideshow, and weather forecast functions, together with a multitude of third-party plugins. Originally developed as XBMP (XBox Media Player) for the first-generation Xbox game console in 2002, XBMC has eventually become a complete graphical user interface replacement for the original Xbox Dashboard, and it is currently also being ported to run natively under Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows operating-system. This, The XBMC Project is also known as “XBMC Media Center” or simply “XBMC”).

Team-XBMC is always looking for talented developers to help with this effort.

Official XBMC software application names:

• XBMC for Linux
• XBMC for Mac
• XBMC for Windows
• XBMC for Xbox

XBMC en Ubuntu 8.04 from MuyComputer on Vimeo.

He uses a linux laptop, with a Bluetooth dongle, a high gain DB antenna and his Nokia phone to do this. Watch the video below for the demonstration. The tool he is running is called “car whisperer” which can be installed on any linux laptop.

enjoy…

First off, I want to thank Dan Trevino from the Florida LoCo team for helping me get this working. I was beginning to rip my hair out and cry like a little baby, (F this linux crap, I’m buying a mac) moment. So for a long time I have used “rippedwire” to rip my “legally” purchased DVD’s out to my network so I can stream them. If you haven’t heard of rippedwire, RippedWire is a graphical front end to HandBrake, the open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 converter.

It works just fine on Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10. I was having mono dependency errors however installing it on Hardy Heron 8.04 LTS release. Below are the instructions for installing this (BAMF) application.

First, download rippedwire DEB package to your home directory.

$ sudo apt-get install mono-mcs

$ sudo apt-get install mono-2.0-devel gtk-sharp2

$ cd to your home directory of where the deb package is i.e. cd /home/username

$ sudo dpkg -i –force-overwrite –ignore-depends=mono –ignore-depends=mono-devel handbrakegtk_1.0.1_i386.deb

**UPDATED Instructions

The instructions should be modified to be:
1. sudo apt-get install mono-mcs mono-2.0-devel gtk-sharp2
2. sudo dpkg -i monofix_1.0_all.deb
3. sudo dpkg -i handbrakegtk_1.0.1_i386.deb

Download the monofix package here 

I should also point out… if you’ve already installed with the ‘old’ instructions you can ‘fix’ your system by doing:
1. sudo apt-get install -f
This will remove handbrakegtk
2. sudo dpkg -i monofix_1.0_all.deb
3. sudo dpkg -i handbrakegtk_1.0.1_i386.deb
Ok, now you are ready to party like a rockstar.

Go to Applications > Sound & Video> HandBrakeGTK

Load a DVD, you click on the source button, select your movie and desired settings, and rip away, like you see below as I’m ripping Snatch!

Thanks again Dan !

So one thing I have recently been complaining about is how running Ubuntu 7.10 on my HP nc6400 laptop tends to frustrate me because of the power consumption issues I have been having. The system runs hot, the an is always blowing hard, and the battery is only lasting for about an hour and 5 minutes.

When I run Windows XP SP2 PRO on it, I tend to get about 2 hours and 15 minutes, and it stays very cool. I have run the same tasks with both operating systems from surfing the web, ripping movies, running multiple applications and compiling. So I was stoked to find this cool little application called “PowerTop” today.

PowerTOP has these four basic goals:

• Show how well your system is using the various hardware power-saving features
• Show you the culprit software components that are preventing optimal usage of your hardware power savings
• Help Linux developers test their application and achieve optimal behavior
• Provide you with tuning suggestions to achieve low power consumption

I hope this helps you determine what applications or procceses are taking over your lappy.

You can download PowerTop here.

If you are running Ubuntu, you can install it by doing the following:

$sudo apt-get install subversion

$svn checkout http://powertop.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ powertop

cheers,

~j

If you are like me, you heavily rely upon your gmail. Why would you ever want to back it up? Suppose you needed some sort of information in an offline mode, or perhaps you just don’t want certain data hosted with gmail? For whatever reason, I just think it’s kind of a cool idea. I like it for keeping a copy of my data on hand so I can manipulate it however I like. I can easily find any piece of data without having to use the gmail web filter options.

Pyropus Technology has developed “getmail” which is available under the GPL license. Feel free to download it and try it out.

Once again, Codeweavers delivers a product that owns. I have been using the Crossover Office product for the past coupe years, and it keeps getting better and better with every release. Well I just got an email that introduced the “Gaming” product they have released for Linux and Mac. Can you say “bad ass mofo”? Below is a list of supported games:

• World of Warcraft
• EVE Online
• Guild Wars
• Prey
• Steam Games, including:
  • Half-Life 2
  • Team Fortress 2
  • Counterstrike
  • Counterstrike: Source
  • Civilization IV
  • Peggle Extreme
  • Call of Duty 2
  • Max Payne 2
  • Grand Theft Auto 2

  I will be giving this a try this week and posting the outocome, but if it’s anything like their office product, then I will be thoroughly impressed. Sure you can use Wine of ocourse, but their application has a great interface, and management. You can great a different wine bottle for each instance of every application to make it easier to manage. Here is a screenshot fo the installer for games:

Definitely try it out if you like the latest apps. They have a trial, and it’s a great project to support.

cheers,

~j