GNU/Linux Stuff

Cloning Partitions To A New Disk

Posted Thu, 12/10/2009 - 19:43 by andrew1056

 I ran into a little bit of a problem the other day. My root partition got full. A year ago I would have thought it would never happen, but installing mythtv and a host of other applications just filled up the 25GB partition. I blame apt-cacher-ng for most of it, but it's helped save my bandwidth. The reason I'm doing this is because mI can't resize the partitions because /home is an XFS partition (for mythtv). I wanted a bigger root partition, but can't resize the current ones. Here's what you can do. Read more »

More Ubuntu Install Options

Posted Fri, 10/30/2009 - 14:55 by andrew1056

This thought kind of hit me while I was thinking about how to make it easier for the average user to install programs in Ubuntu (that aren't in the repos). There are different levels of *buntu users so why not have an installer tailored for each of them?

As it is the installer takes 7 (?) clicks to install Ubuntu. What if we added another screen which let you customize what types of programs were installed? Read more »

Ubuntu Isn't Ready For Mainstream #1

Posted Fri, 10/30/2009 - 14:41 by andrew1056

I started a post awhile ago about why Linux is ready for mainstream, but there are also reasons why it isn't ready for the average user just yet. The biggest issue is installing software.

Now, with Ubuntu 9.10 installing software is pretty easy with the software centre, but what about those packages which aren't in the repositories? Read more »

Mirobridge Won't Download Torrents!

Posted Wed, 10/28/2009 - 12:03 by andrew1056

I understand why the MythTV developers disabled importing torrents with Miro. They have their own software guidelines and torrents just aren't allowed... even if they're legal ones. Of course, they didn't make it that hard to enable torrents again which I'm very happy about.

Please note that these instructions are for the avenard.org Ubuntu packages. If you can't find the files I'm talking about just do sudo find / -name mirobridge. Read more »

MythTV + Miro = Awesome!

Posted Tue, 10/27/2009 - 14:44 by andrew1056

I'm a fairly new MythTV user I'll admit it. I've only had our house fully converted to linux for about a year and a half and only been using MythTV for about six months. I started with the 0.22 release because I bought an HDPVR. Now it seems like I might not need to pay for cable anymore.

I have already seen miro and what it can do, but I don't really like sitting in front of my computer watching TV. I don't feel like going through another LIRC configuration marathon again either. Read more »

Linux Is Ready For Mainstream #1

Posted Tue, 09/22/2009 - 11:57 by andrew1056

I read quite a bit of posts by people that say linux (or gnu/linux) is ready to take off. I wanted to take that a step further in a series of posts about the little things that are what is making linux ready for mainstream. Read more »

Nvidia 190 Linux Driver Makes 1080P VDPAU work!

Posted Tue, 08/04/2009 - 18:56 by andrew1056

Since getting VDPAU working with mythtv I haven't really spent much time fiddling with it since than. For some weird reason I couldn't set the resolution to 1920x1080 because mythtv playback was tearing; however 1366x720 worked just fine so I left it like that for awhile. Read more »

ID3 Tagging in Linux

Posted Wed, 04/15/2009 - 19:21 by andrew1056

I figured that Linux had some great way to automatically tag all my MP3's and I was right. The one thing that I really hate doing is manually renaming and tagging my music collection. It seems like such a waste of time. Read more »

Ubuntu 9.04 Beta thoughts after upgrading

Posted Tue, 04/14/2009 - 16:09 by andrew1056

Well, I've had Ubuntu 9.04 Beta installed for a couple days now and I like it. There are still some bugs which really 'bug' me, but overall there are many improvements.

This is in no real order, I'm just writing my thoughts as I think of them. Read more »

Upgrading to Ubuntu 9.04 (preparations)

Posted Fri, 04/10/2009 - 20:48 by andrew1056

Ok, it's time... I love when new versions come out and my favourite desktop distro is coming out with 9.04 in a couple days. I figured I'd give the beta version a whirl and see what all the fuss was about.

First I have to make sure I'm prepared. I'm 98% certain that I won't run into any problems that I can't fix with the beta version, but just in case I'm cloning my install to an old external drive I have laying around. Isn't Linux great? I can enter one command and clone a drive. Here's the command I'm using to create my backup: Read more »