Ben Kevan’s Blog

Converting your m4a music files to mp3

Have you found yourself in posession of music or audio files that were in m4a format and wanted them as mp3’s?

Well good thing it quite easy to convert them.

Here is a quick script I have made to do just that:

#!/bin/sh
# converting multiple m4a files to mp3 and removing the created wav’s.
for i in *.m4a; do faad “$i”; done
for i in *.wav; do lame “$i” “$i.mp3″ && rm “$i”; done
rename .wav.mp3 .mp3 *.mp3

I like doing it in a few different steps, so I can check the .wav’s for quality, compression and corruption before converting them to mp3’s, that is why the processes are split up.

Here is what each line is doing:
for i in *.m4a; do faad “$i”; done
Is taking each m4a file, running faad on it, which is outputting it to a wav file (the file name will actually be .m4a.wav) which is fine since we’ll be doing another round of conversions anyway. This one is keeping the original m4a files ( I do that just in case the conversion to mp3’s have lots of quality loss, or corruption). If you want to remove them while it converts them you can use this line instead:
for i in *.m4a; do faad “$i” && rm “$i”; done

On to the next command:
for i in *.wav; do lame “$i” “$i.mp3″ && rm “$i”; done
Now we are grabbing each .wav file converting them from .wav to .mp3 using lame and removing the original .wav files (I don’t care about these, since I can easily recreate again using the first command). You will notice these are named with .wav.mp3 (this was just the simplest way to keep the script clean for people to understand), so we can fix that easily with the rename command.

Lastly we just want to clean up the naming of these files, so we run:
rename .wav.mp3 .mp3 *.mp3
Which is renaming all mp3’s that have the portion .wav.mp3 to only .mp3.

I hope at least one person finds this helpful.

openSUSE 11 the perfect Ubuntu replacement (openSUSE vs Ubuntu)

With the release of openSUSE 11.0 right around the corner, you will see plenty of reviews, how-to’s and other various things about openSUSE, but how does it stack up against other distributions mainly Ubuntu/(K)Ubuntu?

I see openSUSE as being the perfect replacement for the users that have gotten their feet wet in linux with Ubuntu along side with those just looking to get their feet wet.

You may ask why, instead let me give you some comparisons that I think are important for the new user, or someone just looking at openSUSE 11.0 vs Ubuntu 8.04 (or openSUSE vs Ubuntu in general)

Installation:
Many people talk about the ease of installation with Ubuntu, but what you don’t hear is that “ease” of installation also removes to options of choice during installation. With the Ubuntu family your choice of Desktop Environments means the installation of a whole different distribuntion (ie. Kubuntu) or installing the wanted desktop environment AFTER you installed the default one. This reminds me much of the Windows Installers. A new user may never be exposed to KDE, may not even understand what a desktop environment is. Some may argue that “they don’t need to” but does that mean we should take away their choice of picking what is put on the system originally?

OpenSUSE gives you this choice during the installation, it also gives you the choice to use a seperate Live DVD installer much like the Ubuntu installer, bug again with choices. Not only do you get this choice from a single DVD, but you also get the choice to add / remove programs during the installation which is important to me, since I like to trim down my installation prior to it being installed. With that said, this does not mean the openSUSE 11.0 installer is complicated. Not only is it NOT complicated, but to me it is simpler the Ubuntu, Fedora, Mac OS and Windows installer. Again, not only is it easier, it looks a whole lot better then any other installer with its new QT4 Installer which is shown below.

Advantage:
New User: Ubuntu
User with experience (even minimal): openSUSE
(Note: Because openSUSE has the Choices, but Ubuntu has the precieved ease of installation)

The boot process:
When you start up your boxes you will immediatly see that openSUSE has more attention to detail when it comes to looks. The GRUB and Splash screens look much better. However, the major part of the boot process is the boot time. In openSUSE 10 - 10.2 I would have easily said this was a huge advantage for Ubuntu, but with openSUSE 11.0 the gap has been shrunk. However with the loading of apparmor and some other suse additions, Ubuntu is still just a hair faster (maybe this will change in openSUSE 11.1)
Advantage:
Speed: Ubuntu
Looks: openSUSE

Themes:
The first thing you see when you turn on your machine is the default theme shipped with your distributions desktop environment. Although Ubuntu has made their default nicer (not the very bland ugly brown) openSUSE is still more vibrant and eye catching. I also believe the openSUSE Menu’s are much better.
Advantage:
openSUSE

Installation of Restricted Formats:
Although openSUSE now has 1-Click Installation, it is not straight forward when you log into your package manager. This is something that Ubuntu has done very well. Ubuntu allows you to open it’s package manager and install the restricted formats package and will install everything that you need for playing your mp3’s, avi’s etc. (Note: openSUSE ships by default WITH MP3 support).
Advantage:
Ubuntu

System Management:
For those new to openSUSE you can find almost everything within one convenient location called YaST. YaST is short for Yet another Simple Tool and it is just that, a simple easy way to change your configuration for almost everything with your system. Here is a quick snippit of what YaST looks likes, and the possible options you have.

YaST in KDE 3.5:

YaST in GNOME:

Ubuntu has some great GUI based configuration tools under the system menu, but with YaST they are compiled in a single location, and some of the YaST modules are much better then their counterparts (ie. SaX for Video Card / Resolution configuration)

Advantage:
openSUSE

Package Management:
Previously Ubuntu beat the hell out of openSUSE in this regard, but with the progression of zypper this gap is closing fast, and Ubuntu may be passed up shortly. Zypper is faster, leaner and smarter then most other package management tools, but I do not yet see YaST Software Manager pulling ahead of the Ubuntu Package Management counterparts “YET”. This may very well change with openSUSE 11.1. Just to note, this is a VERY VERY slim win for Ubuntu, as both are great functionally sound, just some rough edges need to be straightened out within the Software Manager
Advantage:
Ubuntu

Security:
AppArmor. Enough said. (AppArmor is the openSUSE / Novell version of SELinux). Ubuntu has nothing on top of the Linux OS for further security.
Advantage:
openSUSE (Long shot)

Stability:
They are both Linux OS’s, they are both sound mature products, they are both extremly stable. You can’t knock either in this category.
Advantage:
Tie

The community:
Ubuntu currently has the biggest following of users and has the best structured “free support” using forums and wiki. However many distributions including openSUSE have seen this format and are fixing their way of doing things. openSUSE has recently launched forums.opensuse.org, and they have a pretty comprehensive wiki and a very informational mailing list. I think it may be a while before the SUSE forums gets the content that the Ubuntu one has, but it’ll be a great day when it does.
Advantage:
Ubuntu

Conclusion:
Ubuntu and openSUSE are both very mature and solid Desktop Operating systems. However, I give the overall advantage to openSUSE because it’s continued attention to detail and rapid development. I believe the ONLY shortfall that openSUSE has against Ubuntu is the very small gap in the Package Management spot. Once this void is closed, the rest will follow feat. OpenSUSE is more polished, more refined and gives you the choices you deserve during installation.

Now you should head over to opensuse.org and download your copy of openSUSE 11.0. Install it and enjoy the openSUSE Bliss.

You can also check out some of my previous blogs that will help you learn not only how openSUSE works, but how you can make it work better and keep it updated. Here are some related blogs I would recommend:

Things to do after installing openSUSE 11.0
Useful openSUSE 11.0 repositories for the best SUSE experience

Things to do after installing openSUSE 11.0

So you’ve downloaded and installed openSUSE 11.0. Are you now wondering what you may have to do post installation, here’s a quick run down:

Setup suggested repositories
Setup your Video Card (if you have more configurations to do, ie Nvidia / ATI)
Get Compiz running (if you wish)
Codec Support (Restricted Formats, multimedia)
Install various applications

So here we go:

Setting up repositories:

For my machine I added the following repositories for my final build:
http://download.videolan.org/pub/vlc/SuSE/11.0 (VLC Media, restricted formats)
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/KDE4:/STABLE:/Desktop/openSUSE_11.0/ (KDE 4 Stable) Note: if this was not my workbox, I would actually do Unstable to get KDE 4.1
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine/openSUSE_11.0/ (Wine, for windows emulation)
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Backports/openSUSE_11.0/ (KDE Backports, updates to Amarok and other KDE Applications)
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/XGL/openSUSE_11.0/ (Compiz Fusion, staying up to date and hip with the most recent Compiz builds, I highly recommend since it’s constantly developed on)
http://ftp.skynet.be/pub/packman/suse/11.0/ (Packman, xinelibs / codecs and so much more)
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/mozilla/openSUSE_11.0/ (Firefox, recent builds of Firefox)
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/GNOME:/Community/openSUSE_11.0/ (Gnome Community, I use for Pidgin and GIMP)
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/OpenOffice.org:/STABLE/openSUSE_11.0/ (OpenOffice is an important application for me since I use it daily for word processing or spreadsheets, keeping it up to date allows for the best compatabilities with people using restricted formats like xls/doc)
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Education:/desktop/openSUSE_11.0/ (Education - For Bluefish)
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/KDE3/openSUSE_11.0/ (KDE Stable repository, not sure why because not many changes should happen to the 3.5.9 family)

Here is a quick screenshot of my repositories:

(Note: I am running KDE, if you are running GNOME, I highly recommend the following repo:
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/GNOME:/STABLE/openSUSE_11.0/)
(Note: If you are running an NVIDIA card, setup the following repository:
ftp://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/11.0/)
(Note: If you are running an ATI card, setup the following repository:
http://www2.ati.com/suse/11.0/)
(Note: If you are running a wireless card that has a requirement for MadWifi, setup the following repository:
http://madwifi.org/suse/11.0/)

Setup your Video Card (if you have more configurations to do, ie Nvidia / ATI)
Install the packages that are associated with your NVIDIA / ATI card.

For me I downloaded the NVIDIA Driver from nvidia.com and installing running:
sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.08-pkg1.run
Since I had some issues with the 173.14 driver.

Get Compiz running (if you wish)
With openSUSE 11.0 it works out of the box, but I recommend installing some of the other packages that don’t come installed by default also updating to the Compiz Fusions newest build service.

Here are the compiz packages I have installed:
rpm -qa | grep compiz
compiz-fusion-plugins-main-0.7.6-2.6
compiz-fusion-plugins-extra-0.7.6-1.3
compizconfig-settings-manager-0.7.6-1.6
compiz-kde-0.7.6-2.5
compiz-emerald-0.7.6-1.6
compiz-manager-0.0.1_git080201-24.1
compiz-emerald-themes-0.6.0-16.1
compiz-0.7.6-2.5
libcompizconfig-0.7.6-1.6
python-compizconfig-0.7.6-1.6

sudo zypper up -t package -r “Compiz Fusion”
(Note: I named my Compiz Fusion repository Compiz Fusion, the -r switch is for your Repo Alias that you have included into your Repository Configuraiton)

(Note: Torano had a great observation that the Simple CompizConfig Settings Manager (Desktop Effects applet) moved from “Control Center” to “More Applications” after upgrading to the BuildService)

Codec Support (Restricted Formats, multimedia)
Install the restricted formats you want to (i personally do not install libdvdcss since I have no need to play dvd’s on my work machine, and it is prohibited in the US (for now)). This should allow you to play avi / mpg / mp3 / dvd’s and many other formats

You can install by running: (this requires packman and vlc repositories)
sudo zypper in libdvdcss libxine1 w32codec-all k3b-codecs

Note: if this is a home machine for multimedia I recommend also installing vlc by running:
sudo zypper in vlc

Install various applications
I typically install wine, opera, pidgin and bluefish from the repos.
I also install vmware for my daily work needs.

You can install running:
sudo zypper in wine opera pidgin bluefish
sudo rpm -ivh sudo rpm -ivh VMware-workstation-6.0.4-93057.i386.rpm
I then configured vmware by running:
sudo /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl
(Note: you have to install kernel-source, gcc, gcc++ and make)
You can install running:
sudo zypper in make kernel-source gcc gcc-c++
You can check my wiki located here for more indept installation procedures

Here is a screenshot of my machine running KDE 3.5.9, openSUSE 11.0 and Compiz Fusion:

Bonus: I also installed the Oxygen packages for yast, to beautify my KDE 3.5.9 yast, you can do the same by running:
sudo zypper in yast2-theme-openSUSE-Oxygen

Please if you believe there is more to be done after installing openSUSE 11.0 let me know so I can update this, and it can be helpful to a bigger vast of people.

Additions:
I had to install Microsoft Fonts since some of the fonts my job requires on certain documents is Times New Roman. I have blogged this, but will include the installation here:

First lets install cabextract:
sudo zypper in cabextract

Run the following commands:
wget http://download.opensuse.org/update/10.3/scripts/fetchmsttfonts.sh
chmod a+x fetchmsttfonts.sh
sudo sh fetchmsttfonts.sh

The original blog post can be found here

Tags: opensuse

Why upgrade to openSUSE 11 from openSUSE 10.x

You’re at the breaking point of what to do with your current openSUSE 10.x (hopefully at least 10.2) installation. You hear that openSUSE 11.0 is just about to come out, but why should you go from a .2/.3 release to a .0 release? Well here are some main reasons why:

QT4 Installer:
Obviously the first thing you see when you upgrade / install an operating system is the installer screen. openSUSE 11.0 introduces a beautifully designed new QT 4 installer, that runs circles around any current Windows / Linux or Mac OX Installer (in terms of looks).

Package Management (Zypper):
Zypper has gone through MANY changes since it’s time in openSUSE 10.3. Currently 11.0 is running zypper 0.11.6-4.1, and package management is done so much smarter and faster (installing application, updating repo’s everything is much faster on openSUSE 11.0 then it was in previous versions).

Xorg:
Xorg has been updated to 7.3 (upgraded from 7.2 in openSUSE 10.3) and has many updates to Intel / Nvidia based xorg drivers. (if running Nvidia / ATI I recommend installing ATI / Nvidia proprietary drivers). Also note that AIGLX is enabled by default now.

Kernel:
openSUSE 11.0 ships with the pae kernel by default and is version 2.6.25 which has seen many improvements in virtualization, scheduling and obviously hardware support since 10.3’s release with 2.6.22.

KDE 3.5.9:
Has many improvements from KDE 3.5.7 which shipped with openSUSE 10.3. Many enhancements were done to PIM (Personal Identification Manager, ie Kmail, Kontact etc) along with many bugfixes since then.

KDE 4:
Although KDE 4.1 wasn’t released in time for openSUSE 11.0 you can upgrade to it using one of the openSUSE Build Services. With that said, openSUSE 11.0 ships with KDE 4.0.4 and will stay with that line for the life of the product. I honestly think it is on its way to being a very kick ass Desktop Environment, BUT, I just cannot afford to use it as my default DE on my production machines, since there are still some issues (mostly in plasma).

GNOME 2.22:
Pretty much enough said on that. GNOME 2.22 had many many improvements in everypart of GNOME, which can be found here:
http://library.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/2.22/

There are tons of other reasons and updates that have been done, that I haven’t captured in this quick blog. This is just to help steer the people on the grasps of “Should I upgrade or not” to just go ahead and do it. Many of the other notable updates are:

NetworkManager (although it still has a few issues with communication with YaST configurations)
OpenOffice (2.4.1).
Wine (1.0 rc by default but with the release of 1.0 today, I expect it to make the update repo).
Amarok (1.4.9.1)

If you feel I’ve missed something important please let me know and i’ll add.

The most important things though:
If you have openSUSE 11.0, make sure you seed it
If you find a bug report it http://bugzilla.novell.com
This will help openSUSE mature more, and make 11.x be a great long lasting distribution.

openSUSE 11.0 Repositories have been released - If you’re running RC / Beta update now to FINAL

If you have installed openSUSE 11.0 Alpha / Beta / RC and it is now possible to upgrade to the FINAL release of openSUSE 11.0 packages using the openSUSE 11.0 repo which has been released.

The repo can be found here:

http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.0/

After you update your OSS and NON-OSS Factory Repo’s to the final REPOS run
sudo zypper dup

NOTE: My update was about 800MB from the latest factory update on the 5th.

Fat guy on Google Finance for Tomato Salmonila scare

Today, much like every other day I was checking out the US Stock Market and tracking my holdings on finance.google.com, where I saw an article about the Tomato Salmonella scare. The strange thing is the thumbnail posted for the article looked like this:

Now I was so curious how that picture was relevant to the article, I clicked on it and found this:

Now is the only relevance that the fat man is eating a whole tray of food, with what looks to be about 3 whole tomatoes? Or are they trying to scare you from eating tomatoes with the fear that you’ll be a fatass?

Tags: fat ass tomato man

Installing Microsoft Fonts on openSUSE 11.0

As you may have noticed currently there is no package in the openSUSE 11.0 update repo to install Microsoft fonts during your openSUSE 11.0 installation. As we have learned that sometimes you just need fonts like Times New Roman and many others that are provided from Microsoft.

So, are you here because you wanted to find out how to install the said fonts. So here’s what we’ll do.

First lets install cabextract:
sudo zypper in cabextract

Run the following commands:
wget http://download.opensuse.org/update/10.3/scripts/fetchmsttfonts.sh
chmod a+x fetchmsttfonts.sh
sudo sh fetchmsttfonts.sh

As you will see, you are just downloading the 10.3 script that did the installation and I have tested and verified that it works on 11.0.

I guess it’s about time to compile a “What to do after you install openSUSE 11.0″ blog or Wiki, if you think that’d be helpful please leave a comment or email me

Note: If the first time it says it fails to extract, just run it a second time.

Tags: fonts, Microsoft, opensuse

Installing IBM Lotus Notes 8.5 Beta on openSUSE 11.0

IBM has recently released a public beta of Lotus Notes 8.5 which will have many improvements and features above what the 8.0 family will give. I went to the beta site and was overjoyed to see they had RPM, DEB and their standard installer avaliable (about time IBM, about time). After I was overcome with joy, I decided to uninstall the current version of 8.0.1 and go ahead and install 8.5 via RPM package which was easily enough:

sudo rpm -ivh ibm_lotus_notes-8.5.i586.rpm

It installs, runs post installation scripts, and I go ahead launch and configure it. Not only does it have a smaller memory footprint so far, but for some odd reason it looks so much better (havn’t dug into why I think it looks better, but the fonts are much better). I notice that the sametime integration isn’t there, so I install the sametime package that came with the RPMS downloads with

sudo rpm -ivh ibm_lotus_sametime-8.5.i586.rpm

Setup sametime and was back up and running in no time FLAT. I haven’t done too much with it, other then send some emails and chat on sametime a little bit (sametime is still 8.0, even though the installer says 8.5).

Here is a list of all the RPM packages that are included:
ibm_lotus_activities-8.5.i586.rpm
ibm_lotus_sametime-8.5.i586.rpm
ibm_lotus_cae-8.5.i586.rpm
ibm_lotus_symphony-8.5.i586.rpm
ibm_lotus_notes-8.5.i586.rpm

I may install activites and symphony at some point, but right now I wouldn’t use them.

Keep posted I’ll write a wiki for installation at some point.

Note: although I have not tested with Lotus NOtes 8.5, you will probably need the following package for the application to work correctly:
libgnomeprintui

Tags: ibm, lotus notes, opensuse

Installing NVIDIA Drivers on openSUSE 11.0 & other Linux Distrubutions

You listened to many Graphics Card critics and went with an NVIDIA card for your Linux box. But just slapping the card in your machine or installing openSUSE 11.0 will not get you to fully utilize your card. Why? By default most distributions will setup your card using the nv driver which is included in the Xorg installation. So we need to download and install the nvidia driver from nvidia.com.

Now onto my installation. I downloaded the 173.08 Beta version (as I had some issues with the 173.14.05 driver (and when I did get it working it didn’t benchmark to the level the 173 driver did), so I am going to stay with the beta driver for now.

Download the appropriate driver x86 or x64

Switch to runlevel 3 (or init 3) you can do this by running init 3 as root.

Log into runlevel 3 and install the driver
sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.08-pkg1.run

Follow the onscreen instructions (really straight forward) and when done switch back to runlevel 5 by running init 5 as root.

Note: You will need the build packages. (ie gcc, kernel-source etc).

This works just fine across distributions like Fedora Core 9, Ubuntu, etc.

UPDATE: There is now a repository you can add for the NVIDIA Drivers. You can setup the repo by running:

sudo zypper ar ftp://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/11.0/ “Nvidia Driver”

Go into YaST –> Software Manager and install the driver that matches your running Kernel.

Tags: drivers, linux, nvidia, opensuse

Useful openSUSE 11.0 Repositories for the best SUSE Experience

With openSUSE 11.0’s release coming around the corner, I felt it was about time that we talk about some of the most useful repositories to make the best out of your openSUSE experience (which will be great with or without the additions of the repos I have included).

Here is the wiki I have written to show some of the most useful repositories.

Some of the repos I touch on in the wiki are KDE4, KDE3, Education (for Bluefish mainly), Compiz Fusion and many more.

Please e-mail me if you would like some added or if you felt this was helpful.

Tags: opensuse, repositories