Monthly Archives: October 2009
7-ZIP SFX Maker Source Code
I’m not getting time to work on this program so I am releasing the source code. The project has been uploaded to Sourceforge.net. If you are good in VB.NET programming then you can download the source code and develop it further, or you can use the code in your own program. Since the code is released under GNU GPL v3 any derived works will have to be open-source.
How to install Picasa in Ubuntu
Add Google’s software repository to your system.
Go to System->Administration->Software Sources.
In the Third-Party Software tab click Add.
Copy/Paste the following line and click Add Source.
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ stable non-free main
Install Google’s public keys
Download Google’s public key file from here:
https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub
Go to System->Administration->Software Sources.
In the Authentication tab click Import Key File…
Import the key file that you downloaded earlier.
Install picasa
Now open a terminal window and type the following
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install picasa
That it. Picasa will be downloaded and installed. You will find the Picasa under Applications->Graphics.
Note: Google is using wine to run Picasa under Linux. So the program will look a little ugly (screenshot below).
You can remove Picasa using the following line:
sudo apt-get remove picasa
How to login as root in Ubuntu
Ubuntu normally doesn’t allow the user to login as root due to security concerns. However you can login as root if you want to.
Do the following:
Go to System->Administration->Users and Groups
Click on the Unlock button and enter the Admin password when asked. The Admin password is the password that you set for your own user account before installing Ubuntu. Your user account gets added to the Admin group and the root password is set to a random hash value.
Select the root account and click Properties. Under the password section enter the new password for the root user-account.
Logoff and wait for the login window to appear. You can now login as root using the password that you set earlier.
Edit:
Please note that changing the root password is not recommended. The random password that is generated by Ubuntu during installation is much more secure than any password that you set yourself for the root account. You can always use the gksudo and sudo commands to start programs with root privileges. More info is available on the following page:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo
If you wish to disable your root account again, type the following in a terminal window:
sudo usermod -p '!' root
How to update MPlayer & MEncoder in Ubuntu
The MPlayer version that is available through the official Ubuntu repositories is very old (1.0 RC2, released in April 2008). When you run a program like SMPlayer, it will complain that the MPlayer version is very old and some of the features won’t work properly.
To update MPlayer to the latest version, open a terminal window, copy-paste the following text and press Enter:
sudo sh -c "echo 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/rvm/mplayer/ubuntu karmic main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list"
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 03E02400
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mplayer mencoder smplayer
Thats it! All the required packages will be downloaded and installed, and MPlayer will be updated to the latest version. To check the MPlayer version, open a command window and type mplayer.
Note:
The following repo is maintained by the SMPlayer developers and is regularly updated to include the latest MPlayer builds:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/rvm/mplayer/ubuntu karmic main
If you are using an older Ubuntu release then replace the word karmic with the corresponding nickname. For example, if you are using Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) then replace karmic with jaunty.
