Wicd: customizing networks configuration

Hey,

As a good Xfce user I know some gnome-kde alternative applications. One of the best of this crew is certainly Wicd, a Network manager. First of all it handles wired and wireless networks in a cute graphical environment, but most important it works flawlessly with many wireless cards and chipset, has a ndiswrapper support and it is relatevely easy to open a backdoor and create your profile as you need.

I mean if you have a strange wifi setup due to your system admin at work or internet provider at home, or a reserved wifi connection in your university campus, you can create a simple text file to send required parameters to wifi-supplicant wich still does its job.

MakeMKV Updates

Here we are,

as I promised I found some news about MakeMKV. First of all in the "multimedia" gentoo overlay you can find MakeMKV. It sounds to be very easier to install, just few steps, anyway it seems to have not the latest version.

Second, if you have troubles trying to view Avatar it seems to have a kind of encryption still not supported. As always those stuff have useless copyrights guards etc... I'll never understand that.

Third I have a good workaround for testing the program some time more, but please, support those guys and their work!

Boot time tuning chapter third: fastest boot ever 9s

Hey there. Amazing. I just got an incredible result. Boot time under 10s. I found a way to real optimization and full use of my box power. You can see my latest bootchart graph here. The steps are really painless but beware the result might be a not booting machine.

Please notice that the machine is not a micro-kernel eeePC or netbook or embedded device. It's a Core2Duo, 4GB Ram, OCZ Vertex serie SSD Laptop, MSI PR201, hand assembled and customized, but still a common PC.

The first ingredient of our soup will be OpenRC, seen few posts ago.

The rest is some luck (as it never hurts) and some risk-taking hand-made modifies.

Bluray on linux: no rip! MakeMKV and VLC

Hi guys,

today I want to share with you a plain way to see a bluray on your linux box without ripping it. Ripping takes time and a lot of space, and especially for linux users a few GB (64GB on my box) half-filled SSD, the space issue it's really discouraging. Actually there is a plain way to see a bluray on your box. No rip and no license to buy.

Wanna get into the magic? Let's go!

[EDIT: Ubuntu users follow this guide!]

The keys of the whole stuff are MakeMKV and VLC. The first is a sort of encoder for DVD and Bluray, coming as shareware so you have a 30 days license to try. Actually I don't know if it is possible to get evaluating period longer for free, I'll get into and bring back some news. [EDIT: look at MakeMKV updates]The second application is the well known media-player, very popular even among Windoze users. The trick we are going to use is simple: MakeMKV can create a video stream as a server, we are going to read it live with VLC. Cool!

Boot time tuning chapter second: OpenRC

Yesterday we saw how to install bootchart and understand what's in its report image. Today we are going to make a small step for a user but a big step for your box: install OpenRC.

Your box works with baselayout1:

"Originally Gentoo's rc system was built into baselayout 1 and written entirely in bash. This led to several limitations. For example, certain system calls need to be accessed during boot and this required C-based callouts to be added. These callouts were each statically linked, causing the rc system to bloat over time. [...] This led to a development of baselayout 2, which is written in C and only requires a POSIX-compliant shell. During the development of baselayout 2, it was determined that it was a better fit if baselayout merely provided the base files and filesystem layout for Gentoo and the rc system was broken off into its own package. Thus we have OpenRC.

OpenRC is primarily developed by Roy Marples and supports all current Gentoo variations (i.e. Gentoo Linux, Gentoo/FreeBSD, Gentoo Embedded, and Gentoo Vserver) and other platforms such as FreeBSD and NetBSD." Taken from Gentoo Handbook

Boot time tuning chapter first: bootchart

"Jack gets up and lights a cigarette. Then he turns his laptop on and go to the kitchen to have a coffee cup, a toast and he comes back to his freshly opened desktop..."

Sounds familiar? Tired of a boot up that takes ages? Here come some advices on how you can squeeze some blood out of your gentoo box (or at least improve performances). Obviously I'm not going to talk about Windoze...If you have a Win box, I'll give a good tip: move to Xubuntu and enjoy Open Source!

We are going to introduce bootchartd, used as a tool to monitor timings, and OpenRC, that's actually what makes the difference. Advanced users can find a way to start avoiding login managers using a mingetty autologin.

At last a link to a fresh, shiny and beautiful splashscreen (Powered by Gentoo) to beautify your startup.

In this first chapter I'll treat bootchart installation and configuration. The rest is coming up soon.

How to install a Lexmark new generation Printer on Gentoo Linux wireless

Lexmark is one of the printer producers that is making steps toward linux world. New printers are nice and useful (I own a S405 Interpret) but most important a couple online driver for linux are available. A pity they are closed source. A very pity this procedure is FORCED if you want to print wireless, as they use a proprietary printing backend.

G for Gentoo

I'm proud to introduce you guys a friend of mine: Gentoo

Gentoo is indeed one of the most interesting linux distros I've tried in my linux-user life. It is like a charming woman, ones you try it you can't think at anyone else. And that's terribly true.

The most important thing, and the real distinguishing mark is emerge. It is the package manager for gentoo, something like synaptic in ubuntu: it brings no binaries but sources for any application you want to install! It controls compilation trough some keywords in specific files and delivers you the best binary available for your computer.

Hello World

like C-programming

Hi everyone, maybe you are here just by chance, maybe not (I send you a link to follow hehehe).

This is my first blog experience. It is meant to be a place where i can share to everybody loads of useful things: the most common will be linux workouts, but I'm going to post some other interesting stuff from time to time ^_^

Here in Italy Friday the 17th sound like an unlucky day... No matter, I don't trust this silly belief!

I pretend to be a Biomedical Engineer, actually there are few things left: in six months I'm going to discuss my degree thesis, so tell me "good luck!"

Real posts are incoming, stay tuned!