Linux: March 2006 Archives

As I mentioned a few days ago, I am currently toying with the idea of podcasting. I got some excellent feedback from people about the physical equipment that I should be using and have since been exploring the software options under linux, as I will be doing it from my home desktop which primarily runs Ubuntu linux and not windows. In terms of hardware I should have Shure SM58 microphone within a few days. I'll be able to hook that into my soundcard via the XLR to jack cable that I already bought off eBay. In the meantime I may resort to using Skype. I came across a script which supposedly lets you record your skype conversations without having to use two pcs, however I haven't been able to test this yet (Anyone wanting to help me test this theory please email me!) The choice software for mixing the audio on linux seems to be restricted to Audacity. It's supposed to be functional, although the GUI is really ugly. In terms of listening to podcasts iPodder seems to be the most reliable software client that I've come across. The other issue that I needed to find a solution for was the actual publishing of the podcasts themselves. While I know that feedburner supports podcasts I wanted to explore other options as well. Should I publish podcasts here or on a separate podcast blog? I'm erring towards a separate blog simply to manage the feeds etc., but I'm still not sure. One interesting article I came across gives some insight into using torrents as well as, or as a replacement for, standard mp3s. I'm not sure how easy implementing that would be, but it could be worth exploring in greater depth.

Well not exactly .... Rob posted about a silly misunderstanding that arose in the US when a web server running Centos was not configured correctly. Although the default Apache homepage for most distros, including Centos, explains exactly what it is and why it is being displayed, one "tech savvy" city manager seems to have had "issues" with it and accused the Centos developers of hacking the site! More coverage here and here

I originally mentioned setting up mp3 support for Rhythmbox on breezy. I've since upgraded to dapper and have had to go through the process again. This time round the solution was to install the oddly named package gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly Depending on which repositories you have enabled you may find more than one version of it and as dapper is still in active development you may need to look for slightly different versions: sudo apt-cache search gstreamer|grep ugly

MadTux have released a bootable USB Pen Drive: "1.0GB USB Pen Drive with the entire contents of the Ubuntu 5.10 Live Release and added special code to make it bootable. Just plug it into the USB port of your computer (BIOS capable of booting USB flash is required*) and boot into Ubuntu Linux" Further information on their site EDIT: Link updated to point to the category on their site with various linux distros including Ubuntu on bootable USB