rvdavid: A Web Developer's Blog

A periodical blog of experiences from the angle of an autodidactic, paranoid and narcissistic web developer…

Archive for the ‘Linux’ category

Ubuntu Karmic: No Sound on Battle for Wesnoth?

November 17th, 2009

There are times when I feel like procrastinating and when I do, sometimes I like play the popular turn-based RTS game Battle for Wesnoth. I like to play BfW with sound though. I like hearing Delfador’s thunder clap when he lowers the boom on an orc Chieftain twice his size and I like hearing the well put-together background music as I plot to defend against a legion of undead sent by the queen to try and end my attempt at reclaiming the thrown which is rightfully mine.

Anyway, to fix this issue, I installed the debian SDL library with X11 graphics and Pulse audio compiled Ubuntu Karmic has available in the repository.
Pulse audio is the default sound system used in Ubuntu Karmic.

Here’s the step by step

5 comments »

Posted in Ubuntu

Trying out some of The best 100 Linux Software from Ubuntu Repos

September 29th, 2009

Ever get the itch that there is a lot of free applications that you’re missing out on? Well I do – every now and then, I like to google “best linux software” and try a few of them out. Don’t ask me why, I just do it.

Anyway, todays post is basically to bring your attention to a site that I’ve found, posted last year, which lists 100 linux software applications that the author considers “the best”.

1 comment »

Posted in Linux Applications

Guake: FINALLY! A viable gnome native Drop Down Terminal

September 26th, 2009

I’ve been using YeahConsole for quite some time now and snobbing off Yakuake because I am using Gnome for my Desktop GUI. But missed the flashiness of Yakuake – it was flashy especially with the true transparency.

GUAKE!

Years ago prior to checking out YeahConsole, I found Guake. Guake at the time, was buggy as hell. at the time, the Developer was in hiatus and I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be great if someone could actually pick this project up.

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Posted in Linux Applications

Ubuntu Linux: Forcing sound out through your external USB Sound Card

September 8th, 2009

So… long story short, I messed up my headphone jack on my notebook which where I use Ubuntu Karmic Koala Alpha x (6 I think) as my primary OS. Luckily though, I found an old sony external sound card lying around the office at work. One of the artifcats that had been left behind by one of the developers of yester-year.

I thought great! I’ll plug my headphone into the exteral sound card and I can again block the world out with sound the next time things get rowdy in the development room.

Everything worked great! Sound was channelled nicely out through the external sound card out of the box via pulseaudio. All except flash (flashplugin-nonfree) which has been hardwired to use my internal sound card. I don’t know what the particulars are, and what causes this, but I found that completely disabling the internal sound card was the solution.

3 comments »

Posted in Ubuntu

Tags: sound Ubuntu

Ubuntu Linux: Fix for the disappearing Firefox Web Developer toolbar

September 5th, 2009

I use firefox as my browser on Ubuntu Karmic Alpha x (can’t remember which one). During one update, my firefox web development toolbar disappeared. There was nothing there aside from the blank grey bar.

How do you fix this?

To fix this, I did the following steps:

Right click on the blank toolbar – this will bring up the toolbar selection context menu.
Click on “Customize” – this will load the toolbar “Customize Toolbar” screen.
Click on the “Restore Defaults” button located on the bottom of the “Customize Toolbar” screen.

By now you should have your Web Development toolbar icons appear where they should be (on the Web Development toolbar!)

“FAIL! That didn’t work!”

Failing the above, you could try the following:

Load up the “Customize Toolbar” screen by following steps 1 and 2 above.
Using your scrollbar, locate a few of the Web Development toolbar Elements and drag it to the blank Web Development toolbar.
Click on the button called “Restore Defaults” on the bottom of the “Customize Toolbar” screen – this should restore your web development icons.

“FAIL AGAIN!! That _STILL_ did not work!”

Failing the two methods above, you should look to see if you have the popular tab enhancement add-on called tab mix plus. If you have this installed, you will not be able to see the icons for Web Developer when you open the “Customize Toolbar” screen. With me not wanting to spend more time on delving into why TMP gets in the way of the Web Developer tool bar, I decided to disable the Tab Mix Plus add-on in favour of my toolbar.

So if the two suggested fixes don’t work, try the following:

Load up the Add-ons menu and disable TMP
Right click on the blank toolbar and click on “Customize”.
You should now again be able to see your Web Developer Toolbar icons.
Locate a few of the Web Development Toolbar Elements by using your scroll bar then drag a web developer toolbar icon to the empty toolbar.
Click on the Restore Defaults button.

One of the above mentioned workarounds should work, but if your firefox Web Developer toolbar doesn’t work on Ubunutu, or any Linux distro, leave a comment. We’ll figure it out together.