The easiest and the best thing to do is to install “VLC Mediaplayer“. Open a terminal and do:

yum install vlc. And you are done.

The other way is to use fluendo’s mp3 decoder if you are using GNOME, which uses gstreamer. Use these links:
1. http://core.fluendo.com/gstreamer/src/gst-fluendo-mp3/
or
2. https://shop.fluendo.com/

The first link is for the source code. Do the regular, compile-install stuff if you like it that way.

The second link takes us to the fluendo webshop, select the mp3 decoder which is ‘sold’ free-of-cost, go through their process and download the file. Unzip the file and copy the ‘libgstflump3dec.so’ file to “$HOME/.gstreamer-0.10/plugins” or if you are a root copy it to “/usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10″. Once this is done, run a test, “gst-inspect-0.10 flump3dec”. If it doesn’t return any errors then we are done. We can open any application that uses gstreamer to enjoy the mp3 music.

I said installing VLC is easiest and best because it is a ‘mediaplayer’ with decoders for all possible formats, not only the mp3 format.  So, by installing VLC we also get to listen music file in other proprietary formats, and get to watch  proprietary format movie files.  The second option though is only to enable mp3 support in the mediaplayers that use gstreamer.  Anyway, isn’t it good to know more than one way of doing things.

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The Dell customer care had sent an engineer to check the installation and operation of the newly purchased laptop. But the guy instead of correcting things just erased my harddisk and went giving a complaint copy… Actually my Dell Restore CD did not have any drivers for Vista in it. I told him about the problem and that all I needed was the RescueCD with drivers for Vista but otherwise the system was ok. The guy told instead that the CD does have the drivers, that probably I did not install the OS properly and that re-installation is the only solution??? He installed the Vista again by erasing everything in the disk but still could not find the drivers in the Rescue CD?! Ayyo papa… He then asked me to get the drivers from Dell’s website and filled a complaint form stating that new Rescue CD had to be sent to the customer, took my signture and went.

I was so angry with him for not listening to me but calmed down later when I came to know that the guy is from my native and speaks Tulu Not just that, the guy’s father is a priest in the Sri Dharmasthala temple! Hmmm… maani, e onji sarti budute pola… so much for the brotherhood

I had taken my Ubuntu CD to my office to install it there! I didn’t have the patience to wait so I just installed Fedora 8. Everything works even with Fedora… It even has option to configure wlan, but I don’t know how to configure it. Has to work on it. Otherwise, everything seems to just work.

Let me live with the ‘Werewolf’ till the ‘Sulphur’ is released.

Contrary to what I read in the net as to how Vista may trouble dual booting, my experience was quite normal. I had read that we should not use any Linux partitioning apps to partition the Vista space (mine was the regular company install with whole drive being the C drive). The author had suggested using Vista’s ‘Shrink Volume’ utility. Thankfully I read it after I did partitioning with GParted LiveCD. I had partitioned the drive the very same day I received my laptop!

I just put the Ubuntu 8.04 CD inside my optical drive and started the liveCD mode after reboot. Once inside, I clicked on the ‘Install’ button and everything went smoothly. Only thing I noticed was that inspite of 2GB RAM and a Intel Core2Duo processor, I thought the speed was not as good as on the desktop with only 1GB RAM and an old Sempron processor. Anyway the installation took less than 35 minutes and after I rebooted I was greeted with regular dual boot option.

I logged into Ubuntu and spent some time there and created a FAT32 partition so that I can share data between Vista and Linux. I again restarted my system just to see if I have any problem booting into Vista. Thank God, nothing such happened. Its working normally. Even the FAT32 partition created for data share is working properly.

Ofcourse, I’ll have to check the system performance for quite some time to come to any conclusions. But as of now, there seems nothing to worry.

Happy mobile computing with Linux!

I now have some experience in installing the Release Candidates (RCs) and found that essentially not much changes in the release after a distro development reaches this stage.  May be last minute touch-ups, polishes…  We can safely download a RC version and install it on our system for regular usage.  Anyway we can use update manager to keep up-to-date and to get rid of any bugs.  Its a good idea also from the point that once the distro is released the servers a bombarded by eager users to get the latest offering thus making our downloads a lot slow than it should be.  The download requests at RC level is comparatively low and if we go the ‘bittorrent’ way our headache is further reduced.  Infact I was surprised that I could download around 700MB file in less that 1 1/2 hour!

Ok, I downloaded the iso file, checked the md5sum and confirmed the integrity, burned it to a blank CD and put it in the DVD-writer tray and hit the restart button.  The first screen has changed a bit (not too much).  It asks whether we want to try it before installing(live CD mode), install it, CD check etc…  I choose the live CD mode and was in the default screen in no time.  I just moved here and there in the desktop, used firefox and afterwards hit the install button.

The installer has not changed much and all it took was around 15-20 minutes get installed on my harddisk.  This time however, the grub bootloader was not forcefully installed.  Nor did it ask whether to install or not.  I have Debian installed on my system and I always want my Debian bootloader to manage multi-booting.  Ubuntu behaved as if it ‘sensed’ my preference and left bootloader uninstalled.  I just logged into Debian, edited the /boot/grub/menu.lst to include Ubuntu option and am booting fine into Ubuntu now.  But one thing I see in liveCD is that unless it auto installs the grub, we only see an initrd.img*.bak file, not the initrd.img* file.  If we use this file we cannot boot into the OS.  Don’t remember the exact error message though.  So, I copied the initrd.img.*.bak file to initrd.img.* file and used it in ‘initrd’ argument in the grub loader file.  Correct method or not, its working for me!

Once booted into Ubuntu the first thing that I liked is the default theme, background.  The default theme, which is always a point of complaint againt Ubuntu, has improved a lot this time.  There are minor changes in the layout, default programs etc… For example, Brasero is the new CD-Burner, Transmission is the bittorrent client…etc. All my media is clubbed under ‘Removable Media’ now, though I think my harddisk partitions should not have been there (We have always been taught that HD is a fixed disk )   Otherwise, the look and feel has not improved drastically.  May be its good especially when we know that the actual changes are seen in the way the programs now behave.  Most of them are being executed fast, no crashes as of now, programs look more polished and hopefully are less buggy.

Coming to multimedia, Totem is the default media player.  The .ogg and .wav files played natively but for .mp3, .mpg, .vob etc I had to install the ugly plugins…which ofcourse was as easy as confirm, enter, enter… stuff.  The .vob file does not play that good though.  We see some distortions… I cant explain it in ‘engineering’ terms… but its not clean, kind of hazzy…  Don’t know if its problem with that particular file or the format itself.  Let me confirm that later…

Firefox version is the latest 3.0 beta 5 and I found it to be extremely fast…probably as secure…  Evolution, is the default mail client.  Though I like Thunderbird more, I usually am forced to use Evolution as it has support for the Microsoft Exchange server which is not available in Thunderbird.  Evolution is slow and buggy.  But what to do… either the Evolution team have to deliver better or the Thunderbird team has to provide the Exchange server support.

Although my internet connection is working out-of-the-box, when I go to the Networking Tool, I see that the options are locked.  I clicked on ‘unlock’ and gave my sudo password, still its not unlocking!  Have to try that again sometime later.  And it has not recognised my wireless adapter which is D-Link DWA-110G USB adapter.  May be I have to use ‘ndiswrapper’.  Again, will keep it for later.

Well, overall I’m very much pleased by this release of Ubuntu.  Everything seems to work…work fast too…  Its not as eye catching as some of the other distros like Fedora, openSUSE, Mandriva… but it still has smooth and clean interface.  I’ll try my hand at Fedora 9 (Sulphur) too and then decide which one to install on my newly bought Vostro-1400 laptop.

Fedora, my love, you have a great competitor this time.  Its very tempting.  Keep up to my expectations or bare with the infidelity…

The configuration is more than enough for me. It has:
1. Intel Core2Duo 1.4 GHz processor,
2. 2GB DDR2 RAM at 667MHz,
3. Intel X3100 graphics card,
4. DVD writer,
5. Built-in webcam, bluetooth module…

Since, I’m not much into gaming or heavy graphics, the X3100 card is more than sufficient for me. I’ve not gone for Home Premium or any higher version of Vista with ‘Aero’ experience

I’m now googling around to see how I can dual boot my laptop with Vista and Linux side-by-side. I would have gone for a full install of Linux, but for proprietary office related softwares. Anyway, co-existing with windowz is not a new thing for me and anyway isn’t tolerance a virtue?  

Today I installed it and wow I should say its wonderful. Why did not I came across it before? Everything, except support for local (read Indian) fonts, works out-of-the-box. Linux seems way behind in this regard, frankly. This is what I call ‘just works’.

If you are interested take the test at: http://www.nerdtests.com/ft_nq.php

I’m also a FOSS fan and its my desire to bring both the spirit as well as products of FOSS to Kannada language. I’m also interested in localization project. That is because, I believe the vast treasure of knowledge available on the internet can reach and benifit the people living in the remote corners of the state only if it is available in their local language. Instead of making the whole population learn a foreign language in order to gain from the knowledge revolution the knowledge should be made available readily to them in the language they are most comfortable with. Our brothers in the neighbouring states and elsewhere in India have succeeded to a great degree in this regard. If they can achieve it we too can!