Saturday, October 22, 2011

Installing Avidemux on Ubuntu 11.10

Well for Ubuntu 11.10 the video editor (converter for me :) ) avidemux is not yet ready. So i though of finding a way to install this may be from an older release of Ubuntu to give it a try.

I chose natty since its more close to oneiric even though oneiric is based on Gnome3 and Natty is based on Gnome2. So i downloaded the debs from  https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/avidemux/1:2.5.4-0ubuntu6/+build/2158020
. Well when i tried to install the debs i got a error saying it cannot continue because avidemux-plugins-common_2.5.4-0ubuntu6_i386 is looking for libx264-106. But oneiric comes with libx264-116. So though to give a another try by changing the dependency version in the deb. To edit the deb file i used the  scripts at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=636724 thanks to the guys up there who post the bash scripts. I change the libx264-106 to libx264-116 and save the deb.

Well then i again try to install and this time it works, and i open up avidemux and try to convert a video for my droid and it worked great. So i hope this post will help you if your looking for avidemux on oneiric.



Thursday, October 20, 2011

Terminal launcher with drag and drop location for Unity

The following launcher configuration will allow you to add a Gnome Terminal launcher into your unity launcher bar. This has the ability of opening the terminal for a given folder which. To do that you can simply drag the folder onto the launcher shortcut which will open the terminal in the dropped folder. The motivation behind this effort was that the open terminal nautilus extension is not working properly with nautilus 3.2 right now on my Ubuntu 11.10.


[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Gnome Terminal
Comment=Drag and drop a folder to open in.
GenericName=youtube uploader
Exec=gnome-terminal --working-directory=%u
Terminal=false
X-MultipleArgs=false
Type=Application
Icon=gnome-terminal
Categories=GTK;Graphics;
MimeType=inode/directory;
StartupNotify=false
TargetEnvironment=Unity
X-Ayatana-Desktop-Shortcuts=NewTerminal
[NewTerminal Shortcut Group]
Name=New Terminal
Exec=gnome-terminal
TargetEnvironment=Unity

Thursday, October 6, 2011

My experience with Screenlets and Conky

Last few days I looking for some thing new for natty desktop after sysmonitor screenlet gave up on me. Well my options were
1. Running plasma under gnome.
2. Conky.
3. Continue with screenlets.

Well the first option I gave up soon as I saw how to get it running. Damn I'm not ready to give up Nautilus desktop to plasma :D. So next option was to try out was conky. Well it was not quit good experience to get it up and running. Since it didn't had a GUI to manage the widgets it was bit hard at first. Then I thought to give it up and update the existing screenlet installation using the PPA. Well again I though why I should I sacrifice my memory (since screenlet took nearly 9mb per each widget) I gave a another try on lovely conky. Well I must admit that I was enchanted by the lovely widget which was there on OMG and Davianart. It took less memory as well (around 2mb). Well going through the manual helped me alot. And nice thing is the concky script syntax was really easy to catch-up when compared to learning python :). It turned out to really nice once I did some changes in widget and ran it to see how it looks like. And chaging the script cause the widget takes changes instantly which is really great.
So I think I'll let go screenlets and stick with conky :)