Joe's Linux Blogs!

03/26/08
Getting DVDs to play in Linux... This is an issue that many people are wondering about, so I thought I would touch on it just a bit. First it is possible. You need to install win32 codecs and some other stuff and you will have all the multi media you can handle. Try this link for openSuSE users, http://opensuse-community.org/Multimedia pick eithe gnome or KDE and install. Presto! Your system will now support DVDs and other stuff too. One little glitch I ran into is this... Oh boy here it comes... Totem is the default DVD player for gnome and it might be the only one that DOES NOT WORK! Oh crap you say. Not to worry there are many other players and all of them work on my system. So, if Totem crapes out try theses...

xine (click here to learn more about xine)
kaffeine
codeine
Mplayer (not so sure of this one yet)
VLC media player
Kplayer
gnome Mplayer
SMPlayer

Starting to see a pattern here?

I use xine and I like it a lot. (gump) So, there it is. For what ever reason Totem will not work on my system. It works on my son's computer just fine, it might work on yours too. Might be the video card? Might not? But I can play DVDs, I have full flash and java support in Firefox too. I can even play most Internet videos using the Totem plug in... Go figure? So go to the link on this page and fear not... Well that's it for this time... Happy Linuxing. Is that even a word?

02/18/08
Well. I installed a new NVidia card and the video is much better. I was using a 7300 SE chip set and found it to be a bit slow and it would freeze up too. Now I have the 7600 GS and all is well. Much faster and so far as of about three months now no freeze ups yet... Keep the fingers crossed...

02/18/08
Econtrol is the name of the latest syntax editor I am using from time to time. It is win32 based but runs just fine with wine. I installed it in a native XP boot and then run the exe file with wine from a launcher in Linux with gnome as the desktop. Go here http://www.econtrol.ru/syntedit_demo_e.html and try it and let me know what you think. I suspect it would install from wine as well. If you have never used wine try this link http://www.winehq.org/ or check your distribution for a package suitable for install to your Linux setup. Other programs I have run with wine are: WinAmp and Notepad, and I’m sure there are many others that will run using wine. The best way is just try it and see. I have yet to crash the system with wine. If it does start to use a lot of resources and bog the system I just log off and then log back in… Well that’s my latest blog for now. Keep checking this page out for more tidbits as I think of them. Oh ya. I almost forgot. I am still using openSUSE v10.3 and so far so good. A lot a patches and three Kernel updates later and all seem well… I say, GO FOR IT !!! The alpha of v11.0 is in the works. Goto http://www.opensuse.org if you dare and give it a spin. Please do not install an alpha on a system that you depend on. even a so called stable beta can give you a hard time…

Link: http://www.wolf-spider.com

As you may have noticed I switched from OpenOffice.org to KompoZer. I did this because I have found that OO.o is great as a word processor and as an office suit in general. However it is not so good at writing clean html code and its functions are some what limited. So I would recommend to anyone who is looking for a nice html editor and doesn't have the bucks to shell out to give KompoZer a try. I did and I am now using it to edit this page. Please feel free to send a comment to me and let me know what you think, or if you have any suggestions for other software that I might like to try. Thanks...

01/29/08
I'm using KompoZer now. Whats that you say? Go here and check it out http://www.kompozer.net/ I like it a lot (Gump?) and I think it dose a much cleaner job of writing the source in the background... It does give you the option to write the source your self and keep the page just the way you like it. OpenOffice was writing some real trash code. Don't get me wrong OO.o is cool and all but it's just not a good html editor.