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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.

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 !

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

Screenlets is a pretty cool little widgets application. It allows you have a similar interface which is available in Mac OSX. If you are running Ubuntu, there is a deb package available for it here.

Below is a screenshot of some it’s uses, and you also have more widgets you can download and use. It’s more of an eye candy utility than a functionality tool for me. But who doesn’t like eye candy?

cheers,

~j

So, today I was playing around with some different emerald themes, and to apply it I logged out and logged back in. I am very religious about closing my applications before logging out or shutting down a system. So I found it interesting that I still received a firefox error upon returning to my desktop. Error: “Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To open a new window, you must first close the existing Firefox process, or restart your system”.

Well, is that so? I can only assume that maybe while trying to apply the new theme to the application it hung, or perhaps my user processes were not completely closed when I logged out. In any case, below is a screen shot of the error:

Well, for those who would rather not restart their system, there is an easy way to resolve this.

Solution:

Open a terminal, and run the following command:

$ps aux | grep firefox

What this does, is it asks the system to list the running process. Using the “grep” command is just applying a filter for “firefox”. IF you notice the second to last process is my firefox process. the PID or “process ID” is “5719″. The first column will list what user is running the process, and the second column will show the process ID. Now we can just kill the process by running another command in the temrinal of

$sudo kill -9 5719

What this is doing is telling the system to just kill the process, the equivalent of “end task” in Windows. You should now be able to just relaunch Firefox without any errors.

To see all the processes running just run a:

$ps aux

from your command line and you can see all the processes running and the corresponding information for each.

cheers,

~j

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Ubuntu US GA LoCo..

History of the loco….

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I like it when I find utilities to make the easy things easy. Ubuntu Tweak is just that kind of application. It’s a simple download / install, and then you are off configuring the little nuances on your system.

The “Computer” tab allows you to quickly view all of your system information. It will list the host name, distribution, kernel version, platform, CPU, Memory, current user and environment information.

Ubuntu Tweak allows the end user to easily change what starts at bootup . login, modify security settings as well as system and user interface configurations. This tool is great to have in your system tool apps and I would recommend it for the new user, as well as the experienced. Like I said, I like it when the easy things are easy.

Official Download

Linuxcrypt Mirror – Ubuntu

So I came across this screen shot on digg today, and I have to say it looks elegant and sexy. This is exactly what the user interface needs, is that polished refined look, to say, “I’m no longer a geek operating system, I’m here to own your desktop”. This artwork was done by Mossblaser over at DeviantArt. Here is a link to the digg article. Digg it if you like it like I did.