PClinuxOS 2008 MiniMe Remastering

When You start on PCLOS latest distro which is PCLOS 2008 MiniMe and start updating the latest package. for some reason the Make LiveCD on System menu does somehow doesnot work perfectly there is a quick solution for it.

1. fireup you console/terminal
2. switch to SuperUser using "su" command
3. Enter SuperUser Password
4. then just type "mklivecd --nodir ^/media,^/backup,^/home --fstab rw,auto --splash verbose --ufs unionfs --bootloader grub livecd.iso"

thats it happy remastering ^_^

How to Make a PCLinuxOS 2008 MiniMe Flash drive in Windows

CD and then booting from the CD to perform the USB flash drive install from another iso. We really like the latest release of MiniMe from PCLinuxOS and think you will enjoy it as well.

PCLinuxOS MiniMe 2008 is simple, small, clean and works very well on a USB flash pendrive.

Update: the fixMiniMe script now moves the extracted files to the flash drive automatically. It has been tested to work in both XP and Vista.

PCLinuxOS 2008 MiniMe Screenshot:

Essentials for installing MiniMe 2008 from Windows:

• PCLinuxOS MiniMe 2008 ISO
• fixMiniMe3.exe (does the USB conversion)
• 512MB or larger USB flash drive (we used a 1GB stick)
• A Windows host PC to perform the build
• HP USB format tool (optional)
  

How to install MiniMe 2008 on a flashdrive using Windows:

1. Download the HP USB format tool and format your stick using a Fat16 or Fat32 file system
2. Download and run fixMiniMe3.exe, a MiniMe folder is created
3. Download the PCLinuxOS MiniMe 2008 ISO and copy it in the MiniMe folder. More Download Links for the ISO can be found HERE
4. From your MiniMe folder, click fixminime2.bat and follow the onscreen instructions
5. Reboot your PC and select your USB device from the Boot Menu or system BIOS and proceed to boot MiniMe from your USB device

If all goes well, you should now be running MiniMe from a USB flash drive!

Creating the file for saving your changes (persistence):

1. Boot your PC from USB MiniMe 2008 and login as root
2. Open Konsole and type fdisk -l and locate which device is your flash drive
3. type mkdir minime && mount /dev/sdx1 minime (replacing x with your flash drive letter)
   
4. type dd if=/dev/zero of=minime/changes bs=1M count=256
5. type echo 'y'|mkfs.ext3 minime/changes
6. Reboot your PC and enjoy having the ability to save and restore your changes on every boot

This info is brought to you by http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ there is also a lot of info there about installing other linux distros to your pen drive so check it out ^_^

Thanks Again to http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

Tweaking your wireless on PCLinuxOS

Sometimes wireless card is troublesome to install. but there are always solution for it. here's mine

1. first is to know that kind of wireless device installed on your system. Have a copy of the drivers and save them to your hard drive. (for example im using a BCM4318 or Broadcom, BCM4318 Airforce)
2. open your text editor available and open /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist (note: must be a SuperUser to access or edit it)
3. go to the last line and input the following

#broadcom native driver

blacklist bcm43xx (bcm43xx is the device code for bcm4318)
4. save & close
5. open up terminal on SuperUser mode
6. type "rmmod bcm43xx" (or the device code you put on the blacklist)
7. type "rmmod ndiswrapper"
8. type "modprobe ndiswrapper"
9. type "ndiswrapper -l" (this give the list of wirelesscard installed on you linux system)
10. remove all of them one by one using "ndiswrapper -e" Example: " ndiswrapper -e Wsd33x" (wsd33x is the device code sample)
11. after removing them try checking by type "ndiswrapper -l" again
12. go to the directory where your driver is saved. Example "cd /home/yourusernamehere/drivers"
13. type "ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf" (note: this command will install the driver to your ndiswrapper using the .inf file {bcmw5l.inf is the file which is located on that folder} )
14. type "ndiswrapper -l" to check if it is properly installed
15. type "ndiswrapper -m"
16. restart your system and reconfigure wireless card to the PCLinuxOS Control Center.

after that lets hope it works perfectly fine ^_^

Thanks for phil0083 of the PCLinuxOS and Rayman411 of http://www.linuxquestions.org

is my instructions are not understandable go here
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-wireless-networking-41/how-to-for-the-bcm4318-airforce-one-card-473194/

My most required Program in PCLinuxOS

here are the following Programs/Application that is on my list when ever install PCLinuxOS

1. Pidgin
2. Openoffice.Org (office program needs)
3. Web Browser (FireFox)
4. Mplayer
5. Frostwire
6. Adobe Flashplayer
7. Adobe Acrobat Reader
8. Ktorrent(BitTorrent downloader/uploader)
9. GIMP (GNU Image Manilpulator Program)
10. Kuickshow(fast photo/image viewer)
11. Amarok
12 TiMidity++
13 K3b (CD/DVD Burning tools)
14. Realplayer
15. rar & unrar
16. beryl
17. Audacity(Audio manipulating program)
18. devede (VCD/DVD movie maker/recompiler)

other dependencies
1. avifile-win32
2. avifile-xvid
3. samba
4. win32-codecs-all
5. LAME

for kids
1. tuxpaint
2. tuxtype

Pidgin NoSound Solution

For some reason, Pidgin, do give a sound output to your computer even though the sound card and drivers works perfectly.

the best solution for that is do the following.

1. In Pidgin, select Preferences from the Tools menu (or simply press Ctrl+P)
2. Click on the Sounds tab
3. In the Method drop down list, select Command
4. In the Sound command text box, enter the following: aplay %s
5. Select an event with an assigned sound from the Sound Events list
6. Click the Test button. You should now hear the notification sound
   
7. Click the Close button.

many thanks for Peter Ridge for the guide ^_^

Converting WMA to Ogg

somehow some WMA versions are hard to convert to ogg or mp3 or any audio file.
but linux has a very good solution to it by using wma2ogg.pl.

how to use it?
1. fire up your terminal
2. go to the directory where the wma can be found
3. type the following
wma2ogg.pl -f filename.wma -br 128

Here the options, so you can understand better

-f, -file	filename
-a	converts all wma files in the current directory
OPTIONS:
-t	output filetype (ogg, mp3) [default=ogg]
-lame	I wanna use L.A.M.E. sure enough!
-br	bitrate (kb/s) [default=from the wma]
-del	remove wma file(s) after the transcoding

therefor "wma2ogg.pl -f filename.wma -br 128" tells that -f filename.wma is obviously the wma file and -br 128 is to convert it to ogg with 128 bitrate.

after you have successfully converted the WMA to Ogg you can now convert the audio file easily in MP3, wav or any other audio format.

TiMidity++

General Information

TiMidity++ is a software synthesizer. It can play MIDI files by converting them into PCM waveform data; give it a MIDI data along with digital instrument data files, then it synthesizes them in real-time, and plays. It can not only play sounds, but also can save the generated waveforms into hard disks as various audio file formats.

TiMidity++ is a free software, distributed under the terms of GNU general public license.
The History

TiMidity++ is based on TiMidity 0.2i, written by Tuukka Toivonen *1, released on 1995. No new version of this original project is developed since then. Development has been continued by Masanao Izumo et al. in the new project named TiMidity++. ++ is to show the difference from original project.
♪ Features

* Plays MIDI files without any external MIDI instruments at all
* Understands SMF, MOD, RCP/R36/G18/G36, MFI
* Converts MIDI files into various audio file formats: .wav, .au, .aiff, .ogg and so on
* Uses Gravis Ultrasound compatible patch files and/or SoundFonts as the voice data
* Displays information about the music that is now playing
* Various user interfaces: ncurses, gtk, Win32-GUI, and others
* Plays remote MIDI files over the network
* Plays MIDI files in archive files
* Displays sound spectrogram for the playing music
* Trace playing

some terminal commands commonly used in TiMidity++ to convert midi file into wav & ogg format
1. timidity -Ow [sourcefile.mid] [objectfile.wav]
this command convert the source midi file to wav.
2. timidity -Ov [sourcefile.mid] [objectfile.wav]
this command convert the source midi file to ogg

playing midi on web using firefox
In order to play midi files on the web you must have both Timidity & Mozplugger installed in your system

Using RPM's

RPM Package Manager (originally Red Hat Package Manager, abbreviated RPM) is a package management system.[1] The name RPM refers to two things: a software package file format, and software packaged in this format. RPM was intended primarily for Linux distributions; the file format RPM is the baseline package format of the Linux Standard Base.

Originally developed by Red Hat for Red Hat Linux, RPM is now used by many Linux distributions. It has also been ported to some other operating systems, such as Novell NetWare (as of version 6.5 SP3) and IBM's AIX as of version 4.

"RPM Package Manager" as it is used today is an example of a recursive acronym.

now how to use it? well there are lots of commands or sub commands in using rpm.

here are the following and most commonly used:

to used it, we have to fire up our terminal/console mode then type the following if needed.

1. "rpm -i filename.rpm"
- Basically this is the command to install the rpm file that you want to put in your linux system.

2. "rpm -U filename.rpm"
- This command will be used to update the old rpm file installed in your system.

3. "rpm -i filename.rpm -nodeps"
- This command is also used to install the rpm file but this one disregards dependencies needed for your program to run properly. (note: beware of suing this command)

4. "rpm - e application-name"
- This command is used to delete/erase an application installed in your linux system.

5. "rpm -q software"
- This command is used to query the rpm database. or this will check is the software/application is installed on your linux system.

6. "rpm qa"
-This command gives you the list of packages installed on your linux system.

7. "rpm qa | less"
-This command gives you the list of packages installed on your linux system but with a scroll option.

7. "rpm qa | grep kde"
-This command gives you the list of packages installed on your linux system but will only loook for packages which names contains a specific word. like for our example is kde.

How to stop printing in Linux

If you wanna stop the printing process in Linux and having trouble using the GUI printing tools, you can always stop it using the terminal/console mode.

HOW?

1. start up your terminal
2. type lpstat -v
(This command give the list of printer name available or installed in your linux system)
3. type cancel -a [printer name]
(cancels printing job of a specific printer; that is why we use the command lpstat -v first to know which printer should we stop)

if this does not work then instead typing lpstat -v we use lpq (which give the list of the printer that has a job in the queue). After that repeat step 3.

if this still does not work then the printing process is done through network. If so, locate the computer and stop the printing process there.

hope this help a lot cause it does to me Big ^_^.

Good Day!!!

Configuring in console mode

its is still good to know the use of console mode specially if something bad happen to your GUI or in your Xserver.

the best way to do it in PCLinuxOS is by typing "pcc" (PCLinuxOS Control Center).

there are a lot of tool you can find and reconfigure your system if GUI is not working like:

1. 3d Desktop Effects
2. Auto install
3. Boot loader
4. Display
5. Firewall
6. Internet connection sharing
7. Keyboard
8. Mouse
9. Network & Internet
10. Partitions
11. Services
12. User and Groups

I usually use this pcc command specially when im changing video cards. cause sometimes when you change video cards it will usually go to console command and will require you to reconfigure your display.

hope this will help you a lot. ^_^

till next time ^_^

How to play karaoke files (*.kar, *.mid) in linux

I Love sing and i love computers,The good thing is there are karaoke files for pc. before, i usually use karaoke file in windows but i was happy that i found one for linux ^_^.

if youre the same as me these are the steps to follow:

Step 1:
Use Synaptic/Smart (or any package manager you have) and install: TiMidity++, timidity-patch-freepats, kdemultimedia-kmid

Step 2:
open a shell and become root by entering "su -" (without the quotes) and providing your root-password. Now in the root-shell do:
a) enter the command: modprobe snd-seq
b) use your favorite text editor and create a file called "MidWrapper" (without the quotes) and insert the following two lines:
#!/bin/sh
timidity -iA -Os
c) save and close the file, make it executable and move it to the right location:
chmod 755 MidWrapper & mv MidWrapper /usr/bin/
d) start it: /usr/bin/MidWrapper &

Step 3:
exit as root-user by pressing Ctrl-D. Now as normal user, use your favorite text editor and
a) create a file called "MidStart" (without the quotes) and insert the following two lines:
#!/bin/sh
MidWrapper &
b) save and close the file, make it executable and move it to the right location:
chmod u+x MidStart & mv MidStart ~/.kde/Autostart/
c) create a file called "MidExit" (without the quotes) and insert the following two lines:
#!/bin/sh
killall timidity &
d) save and close the file, make it executable and move it to the right location:
chmod u+x MidExit & mv MidExit ~/.kde/shutdown/

Step 4:
start kmid and verify that in "Settings - MIDI Setup..." you select e.g. "TiMidity TiMidity port 0 - ALSA device" (or another TiMidity port) instead of the default "Midi Through Midi Through Port-0 - ALSA device".


kmid is now functional and you can now play your .kar file by a double-click with the mouse or by entering the following command in the shell: kmid &
Note that the MidStart and MidExit needs to be copied into the home directory of each user who wants to use kmid.

Thanks to: Pinoc & Maik353 for showing me how to do it ^_^

Mounting ISO's

mounting ISO is like having a virtual drive in linux ^_^

if you have and ISO file(a CD image which have ISO extension) and want to mount it to your hard drive.

do the following:
1. go to your terminal
2. type "su"

---su stands for Super User

---(note: you must have/know the password for root)
3. type the command "mount -o loop filename.iso /directory"
---the "filename.iso is the file which contains the image file and the "directory" is the destination where you will put the content of the image file

thats it. ^_^

Enjoy Mounting!!!!
myLot User Profile

Tips & Tricks: re-installing MBR on a dual boots

if you happen to have both Windows and Linux or dual boot on a single pc (which is cool ^_^) and have problem with windows (for example a file has been corrupt, malware or virus infection) and you happen to reinstall the windows.

what happen is that the MBR was also re-written. So, what you'll do to make dual boot possible again rather reinstalling linux in the system (which is no trouble at all since installing linux is faster than windows)is just follow this quick steps ^_^

1. boot with linux cd (usually called LIve CD)
2. login as root (usually the username and password for Live CD is "root" and "root")
3. got to the terminal
4. type "mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1" (without the quote ^_^)
this command mount (hda1) which is a partition of your hardrive to directory "mnt/hda1"
5. type "chroot /mnt/hda1 /bin/bash"
this commands relocate the /bin/bash directory to the hda1 rather than to the Live CD
6. type "grub-install /dev/hda"
this command re-install GRUB to the hda partition


replace the drive letter(hda,hdb,hdc depends how many drives you have) as per your installation.
if you have more than one partition mount all of them ie \ home usr etc. etc.
then it should work ok.

hope his helps ^_^

My First Post!

Hi! and welcome to my Blog!
Well in this blog is where i put all important things about the basic in Linux and specially about PCLinuxOS

I love Linux and its a great alternative on Windows OS, plus its is much secure than any other OS in my opinion ^_^.

I'll posting new info about Linux and PCLinuxOS Every Week So keep in touch!

Thank You for visiting and ciao!!!