Transmission is a popular bit torrent client, but I don’t know why it is not officially inside the Ubuntu repository. So, if you want to run Transmission, you need to build it from the source code. And from Transmission official web site, it also doesn’t provide a very clear instruction how to do it.

Below a detail walk through:

First, download the source code.

Then while downloading it, you will need openssl-dev and libgtk2.0-dev to install on your desktop then your compilation will make it.

sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev libssl-dev libgtk2.0-dev 

Extract the source code. By default it will create in a folder called “transmission-1.32”

tar xvjf transmission-1.32.tar.bz2
cd transmission-1.32

Build the source code

./configure –prefix=/opt/transmission
make
sudo make install
sudo ln -s /opt/transmission/bin/transmission /usr/local/bin/transmission
sudo ln -s /opt/transmission/bin/transmissioncli /usr/local/bin/transmissioncli

Just type transmission then you can run it. While you can delete the temporary folder “transmission-1.32” you have created early.

One of my favourite applications on Windows, Launchy has finally come to Linux! I heavily rely on this software on Windows instead of looking for the software I want from the Start Menu.

Besides Launchy, there are also similar software for Linux, such as Gnome Do, but I’m still not very used to it. Gnome Do takes up to 20MB of space but Launchy takes less than 7MB.

On the latest Launchy 2.1.1 released on this 6 Aug 08 has deb package version and platform independent version.

Link: SourceForge

While I have been away for quite a long time, there were many software upgrades we commonly used on Linux. So, it is time to upgrade your outdated software.

Releasing of Ubuntu 8.04.1 - http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.04.1/. 8.04.1 was based on LTS 8.04 and make great amendment.

Opera 9.51 - http://www.opera.com/download/. Although more preferable browser on Linux is of course Firefox! But if Opera also open source, I would say it is not a bad choice either. The loading speed and light weight has been great improvement since the last update. However, I still very not use to their widget things on browser.

Pidgin 2.4.3 -  http://www.pidgin.im/download/. While waiting Digsby to come onto Linux, Pidgin has come out a release. But I really hope Pidgin can have social network and email notification feature like what Digsby have.

Wine 1.0 - http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wine/wine-1.0.tar.bz2. After long wait, we have Wine1.0 final release. Trust me, you need it if you rely on MS Windows a lot in your life.

Songbird 0.6 - download. I still think it is buggy, however they claimed the memory reduction of 15~20%.

I thought Pidgin can be heading towards more user friendly wise to gain on the IM market shares. But years already, I still didn’t see very aggressive GUI improvement from Pidgin.

One of the problems, I’m still facing is I want to minimize the buddy list during start up. In Pidgin default setting or the command line, you could not any of this. But here is a way how to get it done in just 3 simple steps.

Step 1. Install pidgin-extprefs from Synaptic

Continue Reading »
Minimize Pidgin during Startup

Previously I have solved my problem with Miro, now it comes another new issue. The problem occurred because Ubuntu has updated the libxine to 1.1.10-1, but Miro depends on libxine1 earlier than 1.1.8 to run!

So, in the end, either you can install Miro 1.2 with libxine1 1.1.7 or Miro 1.1.2 with libxine1 1.1.10 on Hardy Heron or latest gutsy.

Hope Miro can solve this problem as soon as possible.

One of the purpose of my Linux desktop is to play media files! Yes, I subscribe plenty video feeds on Miro. It will automatically download new video files and play directly on it.

Good day does not last long, out of sudden my Miro starts to crash every time it plays to the last video on the playlist. Then I ran my Miro using the terminal console and found out that the error shown was "Segmentation fault".

This is not an isolated case, I have seen a lot enquiries about such problem. None of the any reply from Miro team or fixes for this problem. Here is a solution for your problem.

Continue Reading »
Solution for Miro’s Segmentation fault

You have dual boot working on Windows XP and Linux running with GRUB, but for certain reason, you want to get rid of GRUB. So how to uninstall?

Here is the simple method, just boot up with your Windows XP cd, then goes to the recovery console, type in:

$ fixmbr

For Windows 9x and DOS:

$ fdisk /mbr

On Windows, you have Launchy, a small application that saves your time by just type in the application name rather than just go through Windows Start Menu to do the searching. Same on Linux, there is such similar feature software called GNOME Do.

Besides the basic function, GNOME Do has awesome plugins which allows you to send email, instant messenger, play music, search the web and more. GNOME Do not only for GNOME, it also works on KDE!

You can actually mount ISO mirror image just with one click only! How? First you need to have a small tool called Gmount-iso to be installed on your desktop. It was written in PyGTK and Glade.

Just install with the command

sudo aptitude install gmountiso

You can use the command to do the job

mount -o loop -t iso9660 testing.iso /mountpoint

Or through the GUI at Applications -> System Tools -> Gmount-iso

Wine has released a new build 0.9.53 today.

Some changes on this build:

• RunOnce and Run entries now executed on startup.
• Beginnings of support for emulated disk devices.
• Many Richedit improvements.
• Nicer looking color dialog.
• Lots of bug fixes.

But just in case you don’t know what Wine is. Wine is a translation layer software that let you run MS Windows software on your Unix\Linux. This software has started since 1993. Just after 12 years, in 2005, it then released their first beta 0.9 version. Hope this has answer your curiosity of why haven’t this software gone into version 1.0.

According to their development roadmap, they still have approximately 80 bugs to be fixed before a really 1.0 version will be announced. The main reason of the slow development speed is because MS Windows is a closed system.

Download: WINE 0.9.53