OpenSolaris Text installer screenshots.

OpenSolaris iso's with the text installer is now available here

I tried it in virtualbox, it works without issues.

more infos here and here

Now here are the screenshots that i made:

gstreamer stuff on OpenSolaris

I've compiled some "encumbered" stuff for gstreamer. (and added the mp3 codec available from fluendo.com)

if you want to give it a try.. download them:

gstplugins support a wide range of audio + video codecs

install instructions:
download it, unpack it, put it in /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/

so:

mkdir /tmp/gst
cd /tmp/gst

wget http://pkgsrc.sartek.net/gst/gstplugins.tar.gz

gtar xf gstplugins.tar.gz

pfexec cp gstplugins/* /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/

cd
rm -r /tmp/gst


opensolaris graphical boot

XMMS is back in Slackware!

As you may know XMMS was removed on Mar 15 2007 from Slackware.

But on Sep 11 2008 was re added:

xap/xmms-1.2.11-i486-1.tgz: Added xmms-1.2.11. This is an audio player that
is similar to audacious, but uses about a third of the CPU power.

Well done Pat!

Boggle For Linux (with Maemo support)

GBoggle is a classic boggle game for GTK+ platform.
you can download it at the official page at http://gboggle.sourceforge.net

Features

* Support for internationalization of dictionaries and alphabets. Currently English and Hungarian are supported.
* Visual feedback is provided on the board for input words.
* Shows missed words at the end of the game.
* Support for maemo platform (Nokia Internet Tablets)

Confused

I started a thread on desktop-discuss with title "mplayer with sun studio"
I asked them if somebody hacks mplayer to be compilable with sun studio, dennis clarke said that blastwave has it but still not pushed to their repo, ok we asked about the patches, he said that they will pushed to the svn repo too, [...] and he said:

"don't be so whiney about a *free* software package service that tries to *give* you what you need."

if I understand correctly: we do not need the sources, use the software and stfu.

I only wanted to see those patches upstream, my dream is "./configure;make;make install" on solaris without any additional effort.

The funny thing is that in another thread he said:

"I support the open source needs of the Solaris customer."

so, he talks about only the "open source" philosophy not about the actual source, or the patches are not sources or what? don't understand.

PS: I dont like blastwave's repo, but that's another story

Egg attack !!

Want to throw eggs at ballmer?

Click here: http://www.egg-attack.com

Quote from the site:
"Live as a CEO is not easy. Especially when your company is Microsoft.
Last week Steve Ballmer was egged by an angry student during a speech at a Hungarian University. Ballmer showed great reflexes and dodged the attack, hiding behind the desk."

MPlayer from source with 3GP support on Ubuntu

Everyone knows MPlayer - The Movie Player, but because licensing issues 3GP support cant be included. So please before proceeding read the "Legal Notice" at the 3GP (AMR) for Linux site.

We need to compile the AMR codecs (first) and (then) MPlayer from source, plus benefit is that Linux distributions (in general) ships MPlayer with broken patches and disabled stuff in it such as codecs.

* Download the required packages .
# sudo apt-get build-dep mplayer
# sudo apt-get install subversion

* Download MPlayer, MPlayer skin (for the gui), 3GP AMR codecs.
NOTE: we will get the current sources of MPlayer not the stable RC2. It has more features, bugfixes.

# svn checkout svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/mplayer/trunk mplayer
# wget http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/skins/Blue-1.7.tar.bz2
# wget http://ftp.penguin.cz/pub/users/utx/amr/amrnb-7.0.0.1.tar.bz2
# wget http://ftp.penguin.cz/pub/users/utx/amr/amrwb-7.0.0.2.tar.bz2

* Extract the files.
# tar xvjf amrnb-7.0.0.1.tar.bz2
# tar xvjf amrwb-7.0.0.2.tar.bz2
# tar xvjf Blue-1.7.tar.bz2

* Compile and install amrnb
# cd amrnb-7.0.0.1
# ./configure --prefix=/usr
# make
# sudo make install

Note: we need to specify --prefix=/usr because: see my previous post

* Compile and install amrwb
# cd ../amrwb-7.0.0.2/
# ./configure --prefix=/usr
# make
# sudo make install

* We can now compile MPlayer.
# cd ../mplayer
If you need GMPlayer (GUI) please use --enable-gui.
For more configuration options see:
# ./configure --help

I will enable GUI this time because I want to show how we can install Skins for it.
# ./configure --enable-gui
After this you can read what will be enabled and disabled, what you will see will be enough.

Now we can compile and install it:
# make
# sudo make install

NOTE: it seems that the current Makefile is broken so the GUI wont be installed we need to execute:
# sudo make install-gui

* Install the Skin and Font.
# cd ..

This will copy the Blue directory recursively to /usr/local/share/mplayer/skins
# sudo cp -R Blue /usr/local/share/mplayer/skins

We need to create a symlink because else MPlayer won't recognize it:
# sudo ln -s /usr/local/share/mplayer/skins/Blue /usr/local/share/mplayer/skins/default

For subtitles and menus we need a font:
So, we create a symlink.
# ln -s /usr/share/fonts/truetype/freefont/FreeSans.ttf ~/.mplayer/subfont.ttf

* Remove the "working directry".
# cd ..
# rm -rf ~/build
NOTE: You can keep this time at least the mplayer directory if you want to weekly checkout the sources and rebuild it.

Now you can enjoy your movies :)

PS: if something is not clean or it fails somewhere, please leave a comment or:
- you can subscribe to MPlayer mailing lists at the MPlayer site
- you can enter #MPlayer at Freenode

Install XMMS on Ubuntu ( 8.04 ) Hardy Heron

First: I'm not an Ubuntu user, but I would like to help newbies to get XMMS working on Ubuntu Hardy Heron.
Why: a) A guy entered #xmms on Freenode and wanted to install XMMS on him Ubuntu, so I tried to help him.
b) XMMS is still a good player, and if somebody wants to use it, why not help him?

We will install XMMS from source, but there are alternatives though like:
1) change your distro
2) try gutsy packages

OK, let's start

First Step:
We need to download the required packages to compile XMMS
# sudo apt-get install autotools-dev automake1.9 libtool gettext libasound2-dev libaudiofile-dev \
libgl1-mesa-dev libglib1.2-dev libgtk1.2-dev libesd0-dev libice-dev libmikmod2-dev libogg-dev \
libsm-dev libvorbis-dev libxxf86vm-dev libxml-dev libssl-dev build-essential make

Depending on your internet connection and your machine this may take some minutes.

Second Step:
Prepare the XMMS for compiling
Create a directory in your HOME directory:
# mkdir ~/build
Change the working directory to it:
# cd ~/build
Download XMMS sources:
# wget http://xmms.org/files/1.2.x/xmms-1.2.11.tar.gz
Unpack it:
# tar xvf xmms-1.2.11.tar.gz
Change the working directory to the source directory:
# cd xmms-1.2.11/
Third Step:
Compiling it:
This generates the necessary files, and checks your system:
# ./configure --prefix=/usr
The actually compiling
# make
Fourth Step:
Install it:
# sudo make install
After install we no longer need the source directory:
# cd
# rm -rf ~/build

That's it, now we can run XMMS: press ALT+F2 write xmms there and hit enter and enjoy your music.

NOTE: many people say that XMMS is old, buggy,no UTF-8 support, etc. Yes maybe all is true, but it's an audio player not a media library organizer, so it plays music and you listen, that's all and it does that job.

UPDATE:
Flac Plugin

We need to get the build dependencies
# sudo apt-get build-dep flac

You already know what's this ;)
# mkdir ~/build
# cd ~/build

Get flac's sources
# apt-get source flac

Another well known step:)
# cd flac-1.2.1
# ./configure
# make

It's enough to copy the plugin, not to install the whole flac stuff, this is good if will be flac update, note, an update wont break the plugin.
# cp src/plugin_xmms/.libs/libxmms-flac.so ~/.xmms/Plugins
# cd
# rm -rf ~/build

UPDATE2:
Knuta's Ubuntu & Debian repo

Check out here