- Do things in easy ways using DoThisNow

With DoThisNow you can easily create and customize a new action (such as setting your desktop background), then choose when you want that action to run (Every 5 minutes? Every 10 days? Once on July 3rd?). Or you can simply run the action directly from the handy-dandy Gnome Status-bar menu.

Just to get your started, here's just a few examples of what you can do with DoThisNow:

  * Set your Desktop Background to change every 15 minutes.
  * Set your Desktop Background to change for specific holidays.
  * Play an "On the hour" chime.
  * Take a Screen-shot and save it to any folder with date and time stamps... on any schedule you like.
  * Display ergonomic break time reminders.
  * Run backup scripts when you are asleep.
  * Auto-insert any text into any application with a quick click of the menu.

Cron users: DoThisNow uses its own built-in scheduler. This means that you can try it out and use it without making any modifications to your cron jobs.

DoThisNow lets you do things. In more ways than you could before.

Download and Installation:
Ubuntu 32bit .deb 
Ubuntu 64bit .deb

source:http://linuxpoison.blogspot.com/2010/04/13578167757996.html

- How To Install VirtualBox on openSUSE Linux

VirtualBox is a cross-platform virtualization application. What does that mean? For one thing, it installs on your existing Intel or AMD-based computers, whether they are running Windows, Mac, Linux or Solaris operating systems. Secondly, it extends the capabilities of your existing computer so that it can run multiple operating systems (inside multiple virtual machines) at the same time. So, for example, you can run Windows and Linux on your Mac, run Windows Server 2008 on your Linux server, run Linux on your Windows PC, and so on, all alongside your existing applications. You can install and run as many virtual machines as you like -- the only practical limits are disk space and memory.

VirtualBox is deceptively simple yet also very powerful. It can run everywhere from small embedded systems or desktop class machines all the way up to datacenter deployments and even Cloud environments.

Installation:
Click openSUSE 11.1 / 11.2 i386 | AMD64

This will download the YMP file and open it automatically with YaST Package Manager. The fist screen will prompt you to add the VirtualBox Repositories & openSUSE update repositories. Click Next.

In the next Sofwtare installation window, click Next. And, again click next on the Summary window which informs of you of the addition of repositories and the installation of VirtualBox software. This will download and the repositories, then install VirtualBox software and required dependencies including the kernel module for VirtualBox (virtualbox-ose-kmp-default). Click “Finish” in the final installation window.

You may also install the additional packages virtualbox-ose-guest-tools xorg-x11-driver-virtualbox-ose for video and mouse drivers for Xorg X11

To install additional packages,
From Computer, click Install Software and search for virtualbox. This should showup the above packages, select the packages and click Accept to install the packages. That should install all the required packages.

Once installed you’ll need to add your user to the vboxusers group, which can be done using:

sudo su -c ‘usermod -G vboxusers‘

Note: You’ll have to log off, then log back on for the group memebership to take affect.

Starting VirtualBox for the first time will lead you to the default VirtualBox Console window. From here you can control the Virtual machines, Virtual Disks, Edit settings of Virtual machines including adding/removing CDROM/images, changing network settings like NAT, memory Hard disk etc.

source:http://linuxpoison.blogspot.com/2010/04/135781677519813.html

- How to Split mp3 audio files - Mp3splt

Mp3Splt is a utility to split mp3 and ogg files selecting a begin and an end time position, without decoding. It's very useful to split large mp3/ogg to make smaller files or to split entire albums to obtain original tracks. If you want to split an album, you can select split points and filenames manually or you can get them automatically from CDDB (internet or a local file) or from .cue files. Supports also automatic silence split, that can be used also to adjust cddb/cue splitpoints. You can extract tracks from Mp3Wrap or AlbumWrap files in few seconds. For mp3 files, both ID3v1 & ID3v2 tags are supported. Mp3splt is split in 3 parts : libmp3splt, mp3splt and mp3splt-gtk.

Installation
OpenSuSe user can install Mp3Splt using "1-click" installer - here
Ubuntu and Fedora user can install Mp3Splt from here

After successful installation, go to terminal and type command: mp3splt-gtk to open up the application.

source:http://linuxpoison.blogspot.com/2010/05/135781677510185.html

- Automatically clean-up your trash on Linux

Autotrash is a simple Python script which will purge files from your trash based on their age or the amount of free space left on the device. Using autotrash -d 30 will delete files which have been in the trash for more then 30 days. It uses the FreeDesktop.org Trash Info files included in the new GNOME system to find the correct files and the dates they where deleted.

Features:
  * Remove files that are older then a given number of days (see the -d option)
  * Purge older files to ensure a specific amount of disk space is free (see the --min-free option)
  * Check for remaining disk space, and only delete if you are running out (see the --max-free option)
  * Delete regex matching files first

Installation:
Ubuntu user can install Autotrash using following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bneijt/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install autotrash

Once the installation is done, open the manual page to see what it can do, and do your own setup man autotrash

Using AutoTrash:
Use following command to tell Autotrash to delete files that have been in the trash for more than 15 days ago.

autotrash -d 15

Moreover you can also setup the above command into your crontab to get executed on the daily bases.

source:http://linuxpoison.blogspot.com/2010/04/13578167752759.html

- Add Multimedia support in Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx)

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx) cannot include support for MP3 or DVD video playback or recording. MP3 formats are patented, and the patent holders have not provided the necessary licenses. Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx) also excludes other multimedia software due to patent, copyright, or license restrictions, such as Adobe Flash Player and RealNetworks RealPlayer.
That doesn’t mean you can’t play .mp3 files in Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx), it just takes a bit of work (not much).

Follow these instructions to get mp3 and other multimedia support on your Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx).

$ sudo wget --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/$(lsb_release -cs).list
$ sudo apt-get --quiet update
$ sudo apt-get --yes --quiet --allow-unauthenticated install medibuntu-keyring
$ sudo apt-get --quiet update

After adding the repositories, install the codecs:
Install non-free-codecs:

$ sudo apt-get install non-free-codecs

Install DVD Support by using following command:

$ sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2

Windows codecs:

sudo apt-get install w32codecs

VLC player and Mplayer:

$ sudo apt-get install vlc mplayer

Adobe Acrobat Reader

$sudo apt-get install acroread acroread-plugins

source:http://linuxpoison.blogspot.com/2010/05/135781677511700.html

- Splitting and Joining multiple files with lxsplit

lxSplit is a simple tool for splitting files and joining the spitted files on UNIX-like platforms, such as Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc. It is fully compatible with the HJSplit utility which is available for other operating systems. Splitting is done without compression.

Installation:
OpenSuSe user can install lxSplit using "1-click" installer - here

Using lxSplit:
lxSplit splits and merges files with the -s and -j flags respectively.

To split a big file into smaller pieces of 15 MB each, run the following command:

lxsplit -s hugefile.bin 15M

Output size can be given in (M)egabytes, (k)ilobytes and (b)ytes.

To merge (join) the already split pieces into the original big file, run this command:

lxsplit -j smallfiles.bin.001

All resulting files (from either splitting or joining) will be placed in the current directory.

Note: Same thing can be done using 'split'  (to split the files) and 'cat' command (to join the files) -- here

source:http://linuxpoison.blogspot.com/2010/05/135781677517257.html

- Split and Merge files using GNOME Split

GNOME Split is a tool that allows you to split files and merge them back. It is written in Java and uses a GTK+ user interface (thanks to the java-gnome project). The goal is to offer a native implementation of similar projects which can handle multiple file formats (e.g. Xtremsplit).

Features:
  * Split and merge using the GNOME Split file format.
  * Split and merge using the Xtremsplit file format.
  * Split and merge using the KFK file format.
  * Split and merge using the YoyoCut file format.
  * Split and merge using a generic file format (like "split" and "cat" tools).
  * File integrity verification using the MD5 algorithm.
  * Notifications to show the end of a split or a merge.
  * Asssistants to make split and merge easy for new users.
  * Speed indicator to know how fast the action is performed.

Install GNOME Split 0.6 in Ubuntu Karmic and Ubuntu Lucid
Open Terminal(Applications - Accessories - Terminal) and copy-paste the following command

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome-split-team/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gnome-split

source:http://linuxpoison.blogspot.com/2010/05/13578167754494.html

- How to create a customize Ubuntu distribution – Reconstructor

Reconstructor is a GNU/Linux distribution customization and creation toolkit. It allows for the customization of the Ubuntu and Debian GNU/Linux distributions. Customizations include boot logo image and text color, wallpaper, themes, icons, applications, and more.

To start using Reconstructor (it's free) go to https://build.reconstructor.org/ and signup.

Requirements
To use Reconstructor, you just need a modern web browser (Firefox, Safari, Chrome, etc.) with Javascript enabled. We strongly recommend against Internet Explorer, but if you must use it, Reconstructor is only known to work with Internet Explorer 8.

Documentation
View the Reconstructor User Guide

source:http://linuxpoison.blogspot.com/2010/05/13578167756199.html

- Linuxpoison now on Twitter

Now get the linuxpoison posts (tweets) on twiter.
Follow us on - http://twitter.com/linux_poison

source:http://linuxpoison.blogspot.com/2010/05/13578167752396.html

- A professional quality Non-linear video editing suite for Linux (KDE) - Kdenlive

Kdenlive is a non linear video editor for the KDE desktop environment. The software provides project management and editing tools while relying on a separate rendering program to perform the editing operations.

It is based on the MLT video framework which relies on the FFmpeg project.

Kdenlive Support is planned for transitions, effects, multiple file formats, and full project and asset management support. The current beta release is capable of editing raw DV or AVI DV files, with tools such as move, razor, and resize, selecting parts of clips using in/outpoints, and exporting the result to another raw DV file.

Kdenlive supports all of the formats supported by FFmpeg (such as MOV, AVI, WMV, MPEG, XviD, and FLV), and also supports 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios for both PAL, NTSC and various HD standards, including HDV.

Video can also be exported to DV devices, or written to a DVD with chapters and a simple menu.

Features include:
  * Multi track editing
  * Video Preview
  * Accepts many audio / video / image formats: mpeg, avi, dv, vob, wav, ogg, mp3, gif (non animated), jpg, png, svg, ...
  * Export to most formats: mpeg, dv, vob, realvideo, flash, theora, wav, mp3, xvid, quicktime, ...
  * Audio and video thumbnails
  * Basic audio / video effects: blur, sepia, volume, brightness, ...
  * Basic transitions: crossfade, push, picture in picture
  * Real time preview of all effects
  * Add markers and guides to easily manage your project
  * Copy & paste of clips, effects and transitions
  * Easy firewire dv capture
  * Customizable layouts
  * Desktop integration (add files to your project with drag & drop)
  * Multi track view (preview monitor is split in 4 with one track in each part)

You can also control the tool with the keyboard, and switch between the Select, Razor, and Spacer tools from the keyboard. Kdenlive provides the ability to set guides/markers, and you can navigate those from the keyboard by using Alt+ the right and left arrow keys.

Installation:
Ubuntu users can simply copy-paste the following command in Terminal to install kdenlive

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sunab/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install kdenlive

Now, simply goto Applications  Sound & Video > Kdenlive in your Ubuntu to get a taste of this all new Video Editor for Ubuntu.

OpenSuSe user can install kdenlive using "1-click" installer - here

source:http://linuxpoison.blogspot.com/2010/05/135781677516849.html

- How to Accelerates the Performance of PHP Scripts - XCache

XCache is a open-source opcode cacher, which means that it accelerates the performance of PHP on servers. It optimizes performance by removing the compilation time of PHP scripts by caching the compiled state of PHP scripts into the shm (RAM) and uses the compiled version straight from the RAM. This will increase the rate of page generation time by up to 5 times as it also optimizes many other aspects of php scripts and reduce server-load.

The XCache project is lead by mOo who is also a developer of Lighttpd. Lighttpd is one of the fastest web-server programs and outperforms Apache and many other open source web-serving projects so the same is being done to XCache.

If you're interested in some benchmarks of XCache, eAccelerator, APC, etc. then checkout the Five Opcode Cache Comparison on PHP on Fire.

Installation
OpenSuSe user can install XCache using "1-click" installer - here

After sucessfull installation check the entries in your /etc/php5/conf.d/xcache.ini configuration file to suite your web-server requirement.

Restart apache using following command:

# /etc/init.d/apache restart

Make sure XCache is working, type following command:

php -v
PHP 5.3.0 (cli) (built: Oct 27 2009 17:41:09)
Copyright (c) 1997-2009 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.3.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2009 Zend Technologies
    with XCache v1.3.0, Copyright (c) 2005-2009, by mOo

If you wish to set up XCache administration page, configure an alias in httpd.conf of Apache to point to the admin subdirectory (/usr/share/php5/xcache/admin) within XCache.

source:http://linuxpoison.blogspot.com/2010/05/13578167755850.html

- Mount, Encrypt and Manage Image file and Physical Disk Drives on Linux - eMount

eMount is a free system administrator tool for Linux that can mount, encrypt and manage disk image files and physical disk drives. It relies on cryptsetup, which implements the LUKS disk encryption specification.

Features
  * Create plain and encrypted disk images using one of the following file systems: ext2, ext3, ext4, FAT-16, FAT-32, HFS, HFS+, NTFS, ReiserFS and XFS.
  * Create encrypted volumes from physical disk drives.
  * Mount system partitions and virtual disks from the GUI or command line. The source can be plain or encrypted. List of supported file systems is O/S dependent. ISO images are widely supported.
  * Enlarge disk images (ext2, ext3, ReiserFS and XFS).
  * Copy to clone devices and disk images.
  * Supports all ciphers and hash algorithms provided by the operating system.

Installation:
OpenSuSe user can install eMount using "1-click" installer - here

Ubuntu / Debian:
Download eMount for Ubuntu / Debian - here
Using the terminal go to the directory containing the file and type:

sudo dpkg -i emount_0.10.0-1_i386.deb

Fedora / CentOS:
Download eMount for Fedora / CentOS - here
Using the terminal go to the directory containing the file and type:

sudo rpm -ivh emount-0.10.0-1.i386.rpm

After successful installation, go to terminal and type command emount to open up the application

source:http://linuxpoison.blogspot.com/2010/05/13578167756108.html