My Ubuntu Blog

Ubuntu Story is a new web site promoting Ubuntu by sharing the stories of people who use Ubuntu as their operating system. The web site has a beautiful design that highlights the key benefits of using Ubuntu Linux. These key benefits are:

1. Flexibility
2. Speed
3. Simplicity
4. Appearance
5. Stability
6. Freedom
7. Security
8. Community

Most user stories revolve around these benefits. They are the main reason for many people to switch from Windows/Mac/other Linux distros to Ubuntu Linux. I have talked many people about Ubuntu. I tried to convert my friends, family and neighbours to Ubuntu. I noticed that it is appearance, visual appeal and simplicity that impresses new users at first. Once they have used Ubuntu for a month they start loving it for security, stability and freedom.

I was looking for something to help me manage my movies collection. Ubuntu comes with many collection manager applications. In this post I will talk about three of them.

GCstar

Predecessor of Gcfilms which is not developed any more. GCstar is not just a movie manager. Basically it is a collection manager to manage your movies, music, games, books, etc. It is a GTK/Perl application and blends well with in Ubuntu. It has many features that you would want from your personal collection manager and then a few more. For example:

• When you add a new item to your collection you can search and retrieve information about that item from the internet with just one click.
• You can import your collection data from other catalog or collection managers such as Alexander, DVD Profiler, Ant Video Manager, tellico, etc.
• GCstar also allows you to export your data in CSV, HTML, LATEX, SQL, .tar.gz, tellico and XML formats. I particularly loved the way it exports the in HTML format. The default templates are quite good and the page generated is good enough to be uploaded to a web server. See my sample list.
• You can locate the video file on your hard disk and play it.

Griffith

Griffith is a simple media collection manager. It does not have as many features as GCstar but it is good enough to maintain a list of your collection. Just like GCstar it can fetch information from the internet, retrieve thumbnail posters from the web. Griffith can export the collection in PDF, HTML, iPOD, CSV and XML formats. I didn’t like the PDF it generated which was just a simple list with the title of the movies. I liked the HTML page it generated which had the links to the imdb pages for the movies, poster thumbnails and a few other details. See my sample list

There were a few little things that I didn’t like about Griffith. First of all Griffith does not have a play button. Which means if I have my collection of movies saved on my hard disk there is no way I can play the movie from inside the Griffith. Secondly, I can not understand how to add my own tags to the movies.

Tellico

Tellico is a collection manager for KDE. It has all the features of GCstar and then some more. It can be used to manage your collections of books, games, movies, coins, stamps, wine, files, etc. You can import GCstar and Griffith data into tellico. You can also import and export data in various other formats (See my tellico sample list). Tellico beats GCstar with the “Search and Add” option. Using this option you can search the web for an item, fetch the information, add it, and then keep searching for other items to be added. This makes adding items to tellico faster than GCstar.

Definitely Tellico wins with a clear margin for its intutive approach to manage, display, import, export, search, retrieve and manipulate data. But since I use Ubuntu with Gnome Desktop environment I would stick to GCstar.

Today I downloaded and installed Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron Beta version. There are several new things in this upcoming Ubuntu version. First of all it is a long term support version, which means that if you install it you will receive support and updates for up to three years and that will be totally free and no Genuine Advantage icon would ever bother you.

Ubuntu is not just free, it is better too. As I mentioned in my earlier post that Windows XP and Vista fail to detect my hardware during a default installation. Ubuntu detects and configures all my hardware in the default installation. With Ubuntu Feisty I wasn’t able to use amazing visual effects. I had to apply a hack to do that and even then the effects were not at all plea sent. But now, Ubuntu Hardy Heron takes full advantage of my hardware and compiz effects are enabled by default and they work fantastic.

This new version of Ubuntu has Firefox 3 Beta 4 installed as default web browser. This was my first time trying Firefox 3. I didn’t like the way it suggests URI’s as I type something in the address bar and I can not install Google’s browser sync plugin, I hope there is a work around to get it working. But for the first time Firefox looked like a well integrated part of Ubuntu.

There is a new tool called “Hardware Testing” accessible from Applications > System Tools. This little wizard attempts to detect your hardware, prepares a report and you can then send this report with your launchpad email address. I think it is a great way to collect information about user hardware and help them troubleshoot common problems.

Hardy Heron also has a new tool to manage “Passwords and Encryption Keys”. Which helps you create and manage your PGP and SSH keys, cache your pass phrases and encrypt/decrypt your clipboard content.

The Language support for Urdu remains like it was in previous version. I had to go through a well practised procedure to enable my computer for Urdu. It is quite easy for me to do that but for new Ubuntu users it is still difficult. I wish that Ubuntu makes ttf-Nafess (already available in the main repository) installed by default and the Urdu/Pakistan keyboard layout should be replaced by this one. The default Ubuntu Urdu/Pakistan keyboard layout has its keys placed differently and new users find it difficult to use and eventually they replace it with the one I mentioned above.

The release notes mentioned Inkscape, which made me and others believe that it would be installed by default. But it is not installed by default in this beta version. It may be available by default in the final release. The final stable version will be available in April 2008.

Overall I am very pleased with Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron Beta, I used Dapper for a very long time and I loved it. I hope that Hardy will be even better than the Dapper and will help me convert more people to freedom.

More screenshots:

This post is about how to install Debian GNU Linux from your hard disk, with the help of your Ubuntu GNU Linux operating system and without using CDrom, floppy, or any other removeable media.

I have tried a few Linux distros and of course Microsoft Windows and I can say confidently that Ubuntu’s installation is the easiest and the best. All my hardware works out of the box like they were made for Ubuntu (They were not actually my hardware is very Windowish). This time, I was now trying to install Debian (testing) on one of the remaining partitions on my hard disk. Debian’s net install cd booted just fine but failed to deal with my CD-ROM drive. I was asked to provide drivers for it or manually select a driver. I didn’t have a floppy with drivers and none of the Debian drivers worked. After spending a few hours to get the installation media work, I finally gave up and opted to install from USB flash drive. Once again for some unknown reasons I failed to boot from USB.

Then I tried to install Debian from hard disk and it worked smoothly. I think you can install Debian from any operating system but not from an NTFS partition. In my case, I installed it from Ubuntu and it was much easier this way because Ubuntu itself is a GNU/Linux/Debian based operating system. Instructions to do that are available on the official Debian Installer Manual (Debian Installer Manual’s instructions are not Ubuntu specific but it does not matter). I would just try to make it a little more simpler. Please note that there are many other ways to do this, it will be a good idea to review other methods before trying this one.

In this example we are trying to Install Debian tesing. You need to download:

• initrd.gz
• vmlinuz
• debian-testing-i386-netinst.iso

Place these three files in /boot/newinstall directory. Now open Grub menu.lst located at /boot/grub/menu.lst with your favorite text editor.

Scroll down until you see something like this:


title Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic
root (hd0,6)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=3599efe8-de32-4c9f-aed1-33c1c61d4bdf ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic
quiet


Note the root (hd0,6) line this is the partition where your Ubuntu is installed. It could be different for you depending your partition location. And now, we are going to boot Debian Installer from here. Add the following lines to your Grub.lst file.

title New Install
kernel (hd0,6)/boot/newinstall/vmlinuz
initrd (hd0,6)/boot/newinstall/initrd.gz


Now save the file and reboot your computer and you will see Grub showing you “New Install” as an option in the menu. Select it to boot Debian Installer and install it.

There is a similar way to install Ubuntu from a GNU/Linux based operating system. You can also Install Ubuntu, Debian and many other Linux distributions from your Windows or anyother operating system by using UNetbootin. To be very honest, I am kind of surprised to find out the many ways to install freedom for my computing needs.

Grub is the GRand Unified Bootloader that comes as the default boot loader in most modern linux ditributions including all flavors of Ubuntu. In easy words it is the software that shows you the operating systems you have installed on your computer and allows you to choose one when you start your computer.

Many new users of Ubuntu often come across situations where they need to re-install boot loader. It happens particularly when you attempt to install or re-install Microsoft windows on a computer that already has Ubuntu installed. Windows wipes out Grub boot record, making user unable to boot other operating systems at start up. But don’t worry there are many ways to solve this problem easily. Visit the Ubuntu Community Docs “Recovering Ubuntu after installing Windows” help page for all these solutions. You will also find many threads about this on Ubuntu Forums.

Right now, I would like to talk about the solution that I found easiest and I think that most new Ubuntu users would also find this solution easier and helpful. This solution also applies to any Linux distribution using Grub.

UNetbootin is the software that allows you to fix your Grub Boot Loader from with in Windows. It allows you to use Super Grub Disk with out floppy, usb, or CD.

1. Download UNetbootin for Windows(download .exe file) and install it. Once the installation is finished you will be asked to reboot your computer. On rebooting you see a menu similar to Grub that asks you whether you would like to boot Windows or UNetbootin Supergrubdisk. Select Unetbootin SuperGrubDisk.
2. Now you will be presented with a menu where you will find following two options among others:
   Super Grub disk (With Help)
   Super Grub disk (No Help)
   Select Super Grub Disk with help because as the developers of the project say that Super Grub Disk is also an educational tool that teaches you a little about how boot loaders work. It will not take more than five minutes to read help text. Scroll or skip the help text by pressing enter key until you are presented with another menu to choose Language. We see help text again and then we are presented with the menu.
3. Select Gnu/Linux from the menu. You are then asked what you want to do.
   Fix the boot of Gnu/Linux (Grub)
   Boot Gnu/Linux
   Boot Gnu/Linux directly
   Gnu/Linux (Advanced)
   Select fix the boot of Gnu/Linux (Grub). It then presents you with a list of Gnu/Linux installed on your system and you have to choose a /boot/grub/stage1 file. You will see Ubuntu listed, select it and press enter. Super Grub Disk will now try to fix your boot loader and at the end you see “SGD has succeeded”. You are done now, press any key and then select the option to reboot your computer.
4. You will see Grub at the start up, select Windows as we need to perform one last action. Once logged in you will be asked if you would like to remove UNetbootin and all its components. Select Yes and UNetbootin will be uninstalled.

Even if somehow Super Grub Disk fails to restore your Grub, you can still boot into your Ubuntu by selecting “Boot GNU/Linux or Boot GNU/Linux directly” options mentioned in step 3. You can then attempt to fix Grub from with in Ubuntu.

Recently I had to format my entire hard disk and re-install Microsoft Windows XP and Ubuntu once again. Despite the usual headaches of such a painful procedure, I feel that it was kind of a good learning experience. First of all I had to backup all my important data. Since I try to save all my work on web based services such as Google Docs, so there was not much to backup. After that I inserted Windows XP professional’s CD, formatted my hard disk and installed Windows.

If you are going to install Windows and a Linux based operating system on the same computer then you better install Windows first. Because if you first install Linux then the chances are that windows will remove your boot loader (Grub in most cases) and you will have to reinstall boot loader with your live cd once again.

After the successful Windows installation, I rebooted with Ubuntu 7.10 Live+Install CD. During the installation I created a FAT partition, an ext3 partition and a swap portion. Now I have heard people complaining that they do not really understand the partition process during Ubuntu Installation. I feel that it is just their fear of losing their data accidentally. Otherwise the partition process during Windows Installation is a little more complicated than the Ubuntu One. Ubuntu’s partition manager Gparted recognizes all your partitions and provides you a GUI to perform the actions. You can even undo partitioning before applying your changes.

The interesting part comes after the installation. I am using a computer with Intel G965 Express chipset. After the installation Windows didn’t recognize my audio hardware, my built in LAN card and didn’t have suitable drivers for graphics. So I had a Windows XP with no internet and no sound. On the other hand Ubuntu recognized and provided drivers for all my hardware. So I had to install drivers from Intel’s website, save them on Windows Partition, reboot and install these drivers. Even after the installation of drivers Windows didn’t have any sound. I found out that I need some kb888111 update installed on my computer before I could use Intel’s drivers. I downloaded and installed this update and even then the sound didn’t work. However after installing this update Windows realized that I have audio hardware with no drivers. But was unable to provide a suitable driver.

Then I suddenly realized that there is an Intel disc that came with my computer and had drivers for my chipset utility. I had to dig out this CD from a huge pile of discs. Now this CD had an installation process that required me to reboot my computer more than five times. It took nearly 20 minutes to finish and when done I finally had volume icon available in the taskbar.

What I am really trying to say is that installing Ubuntu on a computer is not more difficult than installing Windows. Depending on your hardware, sometimes it is much easier than Windows. It is just that people have gone through Windows installation and have more knowledge of the procedure which makes them feel a little more confident. Otherwise installing Windows XP is quite complicated and sometimes it doesn’t even recognize hardware that is originally built to be used with Windows.

If you don’t believe me then have a look at Radagast’s comparison of Ubuntu and Windows XP installtion. He has a very detailed account of installing both operating systems. He also had trouble finding drivers for network and sound on Windows and then he had to go through lengthy process of installing different software using 6 different CDs.

Translating movie subtitles is my new hobby. I had no previous knowledge of what subtitles are, how they are embedded in a DVD movie, how to rip them off, how to create new subtitles, and then finally how to prepare a DVD with translated subtitles that could be played on most popular software, hardware and standalone DVD players. I found out that it was not an easy job to embed UTF-8 encoded text on DVD as a separate subtitle stream. So I decided to hardsub my movie, which means that users will not have the option to turn off the Urdu subtitles.

First I needed to rip the DVD to my hard disk and there are some very good tools available for Ubuntu Linux that work great. (Warning: As always, check the relevant copyright laws for your country regarding the backup of DVDs). I used dvd::rip which rips and transcodes the files into avi format. It also provides the option to rip the subtitles separately, but since most DVD movies has subtitles embedded in streams with Pictures it was basically useless for me. However there are other tools that rip the subtitles and also help you save them as text using OCR.

There are many tools available for Ubuntu/Linux to create or translate subtitles in many different formats. I needed to figure out a Subtitle format that supports utf-8. Then I needed to find a software that allows me to embed the subtitles on the Video without any significant quality loss. After trying Subtitle Editor, Gnome Subtitles, Gaupol and Ksubtitle; I finally settled on Subtitle Editor. I had lots of trouble to use the preview features but some how I worked my out. I started working on subtitles and was very disappointed to find out that the preview didn’t display Urdu characters perfectly. Even though the subtitle format I was using had formatting and stylizing support too.

I decided to work on my subtitles without previewing them but even then I need to know if I have the tools available that would demux my subtitles on the video. Luckily we have a very nice dvdauthor tool available. It comes with a tool called Spumux. I generated a movie with my sample translated subtitles and the results were very bad. The quality of video was outstanding but Spumux didn’t displayed Urdu Characters correctly. May be, it was all my fault, may be I forgot something. But even after hours of checking through subtitles, xml file (required to use with spumux to tell it about the job) and creating many clips; I wasn’t able to get my text right.

I was disappointed and had to log on to Windows XP to see if there are any open source software for windows that do what I wanted to do. While there, I opened Windows Movie Maker, playing little with it I realized that I can add Subtitles with Windows Movie Maker. Windows Movie Maker not only did the subtitles but it also displayed them beautifully on the screen. I saved the clip and it was brilliant. But then it occured to me that if Windows Movie Maker can do this then there must be some alternate to it for Ubuntu Linux.

So lets see what we got in Linux to do the job. For video editing I tried Kino, Cinelera, and LiVES. To be very honest, it was a really very frustrating experience for me to figure out how these tools work. Kino is probably the most user friendly of all three but still Kino is a difficult thing to learn and you definitely can not work with it if you are working on an entire movie. It is good for movies you capture using your mobile phone, cam corder or other such devices. Even if I saved my movies in several small clips, it was difficult to navigate around my storyboard and add subtitles on a precise location. I wouldn’t spend time telling you about how it went with Cinelera or Lives. They both have horrible user interfaces and they are bundled with features that were completely useless for me.

In short I failed to add subtitles to my videos using Ubuntu Linux. I am now doing it on MS Windows XP, using Aegisub
and some other little open source or free applications. Aegisub is available for Linux but I was not able to install it on my Ubuntu 7.10 due to unmatched dependencies. I feel that the options for video editing are not very good for Ubuntu/Linux users. The tools we have are not user-friendly, advanced and there is not much to choose from.

Even if I failed to do my work with these tools but it does not mean that they are useless for every one else too. In fact some of them are quite sophisticated and as it is with most open source applications, they give you a lot more control than proprietary solutions. What we need to do is to concentrate more on improving them. We need to use these software, file bug reports, submit feature requests and help each other using these tools. We need to appreciate all those who are working on these projects (Guys if you are reading this, your tools didn’t help me. But thank you anyways). May be the community should organize some events where we gather around to focus on these tools and improve them.