Layman Linux

Totem Media Player is one of the most widely used media player amongst Linux user. Given its ability to handle many formats using the versatile G-Streamer framework, it has become a one stop all player for users who favor simplicity over the advanced VLC Player. Though the player offers a simple interface, there are some interesting features on offer which lie covered under the applications menu. Let’s dig in & unearth them!

Screenshot Taker:

If you need to take screenshot from your favourite movie, then simply press “CTRL+S” or go to Edit>Take Screenshot. Fill in the location to save the screenshot & you’ve your custom wallpapers from your favourite flick. The resolution of the screenshot will depend on the resolution of the video file you’re watching.

Screenshot Gallery:

Screenshot Gallery is useful if scenarios where you want screenshots taken at predefined intervals in your video/movie & then stitched together in single image file which can be displayed on forums or your website for illustration purposes. Its a bit rough & needs refinement but gets the job done satisfyingly enough. Screenshot Gallery can be accessed by navigating to Edit > Create Screenshot Gallery…

Aspect ratio:

Have problems viewing widescreen videos on your old square CRT monitor(or vice-versa)? The videos leave blackbars on your CRT monitor reducing the area of view. No problem, just navigate to View > Aspect Ratio and select the desired aspect ration for your monitor to get a fullscreen view. CRT monitors have aspect ration of 4:3 whereas Widescreen LCD monitors have ratio of 16:9.

Plugins:

Totem media Player has plugin support but its not enabled by default. Navigating to Edit > Plugins will present you with a list of installed plugins. A description alongside will help you to determine the utility of a particular plugin. Enable any plugin as per your preference.

Additional Preferences:

For additional preferences, navigate to Edit > Preferences. Here you can change the font of the subtitle, visualization, sound output & other miscellaneous options. Set it according to your tastes.

Once you do the above refinements, you’ll definitely have a improved Totem experience. I’ve done it & I’m enjoying it. Simplicity at its best, that’s what Totem Media Player shines for!

Now that the Indian rupee has got its official symbol, there is an itch to use it in our online communities, documents & under other applications. While it will take time for the rupee symbol to appear on our keyboards, we can begin to use it on your computer by simply installing the font. The font is developed by Foradian Technologies is free to download at their blog. Here are step by step instructions to use this font in Linux.

Under Fedora:

1) Download the font from Foradian Technologies blog.

2) Copy the font to /usr/share/fonts/default/TrueType/ directory.

3) Issue the command “fc-cache”(without quotes) to use font under all applications.

4) To insert the font in your document, type grave ascent(`) key, the one above tab key. You should have the new rupee symbol in your document.

Under Ubuntu:

1) Download the font from Foradian Technologies blog.

2) Double click on the font file & click on “Install Font” button on bottom left of the font viewer.

3) To insert the font in your document, type grave ascent(`) key, the one above tab key. You should have the new rupee symbol in your document.

Under Debian:

1) Download the font from Foradian Technologies blog.

2) Open a terminal & enter the following commands with root privileges/root user,

mkdir /usr/share/fonts/ttf

cp Rupee_Foradian.ttf /usr/share/fonts/ttf

apt-get install ttmkfdir

cd /usr/share/fonts/ttf

ttmkfdir > fonts.scale

mkfontdir

cd /usr/share/fonts/ttf/

chmod 644 /usr/share/fonts/ttf/Rupee_Foradian.ttf

3) To insert the font in your document, type grave ascent(`) key, the one above tab key. You should have the new rupee symbol in your document.

That’s it. Enjoy the new Indian Rupee font.

Autoten is a nifty application which makes installing proprietary codecs & other proprietary stuff a piece of cake on your Fedora system. It does the same things which Easy Life does in a way which is similar to Easy Life. Autoten should ideally be run after your first install so that your system is ready for multimedia playback including mp3, mp4, mkv etc. Autoten is available for 32bit & 64 bit Fedora and Omega Linux.

To install autoten, simply enter the following in an terminal;

su
rpm -Uvh http://dnmouse.org/autoten-4.7-4.fc13.noarch.rpm

Upon installing and executing Autoten, you get a similar screen as shown below. Here you will find four columns. The first column contains applications/utilities/codecs to install, second column is for info, third column for uninstall & the last one gives you status whether the corresponding application is installed or not on your system.

To install any application/codec/utility simply click on its corresponding box from the first column & Autoten will do the rest in the background terminal. You can click on the info button to see an overview of what will Autoten do when you click to install the particular application/codec/utility. It actually contains the commands which are executed in the background. This is helpful if you wish to know exactly what will Autoten do to your system. If later you wish to uninstall anything you installed via Autoten simply click on the remove box under uninstall row corresponding to your application/codec/utility & it will be uninstalled. I found this pretty useful as the extra backgrounds I choose to install were not up to my liking.

The author of autoten has done a superb job in keeping the application fuss-free & that should be appreciated as nobody wants to wander through menus to get simple things installed. Considering this application will be used by amateurs, there is no way they will get lost or feel intimidated by the huge(complex but informative) homescreen. Autoten gets a highly recommend tag from our side.

Who doesn’t loves statistics? Ever wanted to know how many users use GNU/LINUX? How many use a particular distro? Below are two sites which keep a track of Linux users. One can get his machine registered to get into the official Linux universe. Furthermore you can even use the badge to showcase in forum signature or on your website.

Linux Counter

Ubuntu Counter

If you know counters for other linux distros, mention them in comments so that I can merge them in the main post.

Screenshots are vital when reviewing an application or giving visual assistance to those problems whose solution is difficult to jot down in words. For starters, when you press the ‘Prt Scr’ i.e. ‘Print Screen’ button the computer will automatically print what is currently being displayed on the screen & prompt you to save it as an file. The Screenshot application found under GNOME provides further options to finetune screenshot capturing as per your needs. While this will work fine when you’re running under a GUI but what would you do if you want to take screenshot when you are in a shell? The print screen button on your keyboard won’t work in at the command prompt. In such a case you’ll need to use the following command.

$ import -window root /home/LaymanLinux/Pictures/screenshot.png

The above command will save the screenshot of the current screen without any delay into the ‘Pictures” directory of user ‘LaymanLinux’ with the file name as ‘screenshot.png’. The file saving location need not be necessarily pictures directory & you can give any location in your home directory. Do remember to change the name of the output screenshot file to avoid conflicts.

You can even issue the command with a delay;

$ delay 20; import -window root /home/LaymanLinux/Pictures/screenshot2.png

The above command will take screenshot after 20 seconds and save it to the location entered by the user.

For further application of the import command, you can refer this page.

As the title reads, Fedora 13 has blasted off & is ready to land on your computers. After couple of delays, Fedora 13 releases with many exciting new features. Go ahead, experience the cutting edge Fedora experience!