Another linux question

So, just for fun, I installed a copy of Ubuntu. Everything works fine and I haven't had any problems, but one thing is bugging the crap out of me. My screen is SO BLUE looking! In Windows, I could use Adobe's Gamma Loader (or ATI's configuration tools) to fix this, but I can't seem to find any equivalent tool here.

Does such a calibration tool exist? Where can I get it? All I really need is something that will allow me to independently adjust the levels for R, G, and B for my monitor.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Well, this is a laptop, and there are no controls for that sort of thing. In Windows, what I did was just use ATI's utility to slightly lower the gamma for the blue channel, and it worked great and looked normal again.

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I'm also having trouble installing the Musepack plugin for XMMS. (Most of my music is in MPC format.) Can somebody walk me through this? I have a package full of files (I guess it needs to be compiled or something). It was much easier in Windows. Open zip file. Drag plugin to C:\winamp\plugins, and use.

Oh well, perhaps having things more complicated will help me kickstart my mind again.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I already tried that, I can't find any listings for that.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

You're talking to a total linux idiot here, cut me some slack.

In the meantime, I'll try what you said.

Edit: Cool, it worked.

My screen is still a shockingly blue color though.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Awesome, my display looks normal again. Thanks!

Quote:

You would then stick that command into a file in your home directory named .xinitrc, and append a " &" to the end of the line, like so:

Dummy question: Do you mean the directory named home, or my own personal root directory, ( /piccolonamek/ ) or something even higher up in the tree? Also, does this file already exist, or do I need to create it? I did a search and found a file named .xinitrc, but there's nothing important in it, and it's buried in a pretty deep directory.

Also, I was trying to modify a file so that my Windows NTFS drive would be auto-mounted each time I started up, but I wasn't allowed. Do I need to log in as root? I tried logging in as "root" and a number of other names, but to no avail.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Awesome, now what about my hard drive?

Edit: Bah. I created and saved the file exactly like you said, but it didn't do anything when I restarted by computer. Everything was still blue, and I had to enter the command manually.

Double Post:
On another note, how do I get this MPC encoder working. The file I downloaded from musepack's website only contains one file "mppenc-linux-libc6-1.15v.tar-1".

I don't want to have to compile any shit. Damn.

FELIPE NO

I have the XMMS plugin for playing MPC files, but there's nothing about an encoder (which I need and frequently use.)

At any rate, I still have no idea what I'm supposed to do with this cryptic file.

Another thing I am going to have to do is figure out how to run Cool Edit 2000 on this system. I don't want to have to boot back into windows just to work on some WAV files. No other audio editor will do. CE2000 is the best of the best for plain old waveform editing, and nothing else even begins to compare.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I didn't mean to seem snotty, it's just that I've tried everything else, and I mean everything else, and nothing even comes close in terms of speed, ease of use, user interface, features, and configurability. I edit audio for a living, so all of these things are important. Only super high end tools such as Protools could possibly match Cool Edit's greatness, but they are in another class entirely.

And yes, I searched for mppenc. Nothing. But the tar unpacking command worked, thank you. (Edit: Too bad the files are useless by themselves. Doesn't anything just work with this OS?) I got the gamma command to work on start up as well, thanks a bunch for that.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

On Windows, it does "just work". I open the zip file, drag the mpc batch encoder .exe onto the desktop, tell it where the encoder is, and boom, it's ready to go, just like that.

I unpacked the tar file, and got two files, mppenc and another file, static-mppenc, or mppenc-static, one or the other, whatever. No readme file (or any files other than the encoders) was included. Clicking on on them does nothing, and they can't be run from a command line either. I also realized that there are no good linux frontends for the encoder either. I suppose I'll just have to do it all manually, once/if I get everything working.

Oh well, it isn't that big a deal. I can always reboot into Windows when I need to encode some WAVs. Other than that, everything is working fine. I was hoping to eventually abandon Windows completely, but It just doesn't seem fesible. I can't even imagine how hard it would be to get Cool Edit working over here.

Just wait until I try to network this PC with the other PCs in my house... *psycho strings*

For now, I'm going to bed. Later.

How ya doing, buddy?

Heh, Audacity is full of sadness and fail compared to Cool Edit. One thing that I couldn't stand about it was that when playing a WAV file it wouldn't scroll smoothly, it would rapidly jump ahead when the marker got to the end of the current segment. That's very annoying when you have to listen to the file while you're editing it. And when I noticed an error I needed to fix, I actually had to press stop! In Cool Edit, clicking the waveform stops the scrolling, even if you're still playing.

CE2000 also has a significantly more advanced compressor, something that I use very frequenly. Audacity doesn't even let me change the release time. And, VERY stupidly, if you apply any effects while zoomed in on the waveform, it zooms all the way out! What the hell? The blue on gray color scheme is annoying as well, and unfortunately, it can't be changed. It also seems like the whole interface is running at 5 FPS.

The level meter in CE2000 is actually maked in db from total silence all the way to clipping, and has convinient clipping indicators as well. This is useful for knowing where the noise floor is and how loud the signal is in comparison.

Small things like this matter, and make anything other than Cool Edit completely unusable to me.



Truly one of the best programs ever written. I've attatched an example of my work, a before-and-after. Listen to it, it's actually quite funny.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I wasn't expecting a Windows clone. I what I wasn't excpeting was having to use such laborious and roundabout measures to do simple program installs with a Linux distro that is supposed to be extra newbie friendly.

But I will deal with it. Despite all of my whining, I learn quickly, and soon I'll look back on my difficulties and laugh. Eventually, I would like to attempt to emulate Cool Edit, because it is the one Windows program that I really need. Otherwise, everything is working very well. If all else fails, I can keep my windows partition just for running Cool Edit.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I sure hope I know what I'm doing with Windows; I've been using it since Windows 3.1 came out! Speaking of terminals and command lines, I was an MS-DOS master! I knew every command and could navigate my way around almost as quickly as I can clicking on directories in Windows. I hope I can achieve the same proficiency in Linux.

Anyway, everything is running smoothly now, except for the fact that my laptop won't suspend properly. It seems a lot of other people have this problem as well. Also, there seems to be a problem with sound playback. I was watching a video on Youtube, and the sound was nearly one second out of sync with the video right from the get-go. It also sounded very muffled, like there was no treble at all. It runs and sounds just fine on Windows...

Not a big deal at all, but what it causing it? XMMS' MPC plugin sucks as well, it abruptly stops playing the file about five seconds before the end of the actual song, and the timer constantly goes out of synch.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Heh, about three minutes ago, my copy of Linux actually crashed. I went to take a shower, and when I came back, the screensaver was on. So I moved the mouse, and bam, total system crash. I was forced to restart.

I don't really need the screen saver at all, but that is just ridiculous that trying to stop the screensaver would cause the system to fail.

Double Post:
Speaking of suspend mode, does anybody know why my sound quits working when I come out of suspend? It displays an error message, but it isn't there long enough for me to read. Is there any way I can capture this message for a bug report?

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I have another question. Does anyone know of a good GUI-based partitioning tool for Linux? I've got this configured to the point where I can use it for 99% of my activities. The only thing I need Windows for is to run Cool Edit, Photoshop, and possibly some games, so I want to make that partition smaller, and this one bigger.

FELIPE NO

Now how do I get it to let me edit the partitions?

How ya doing, buddy?

I tried unmounting it; it still wouldn't work.

I also encountered something lame tonight. I wanted to install my preferred torrent client, ABC, but you have to compile the source yourself. Of course, there is NO documentation whatsoever. They just assume everybody knows how to do this. So I tried Azureus next, (it is on "the list") but it's dependant on a bunch of java libraries, (understandable) and, for some stupid reason, the Mozilla web browser suite (WTF). Well, I already have Firefox, so I don't need Mozilla installed, sitting around and being useless and taking up space.

Shit.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Quote:

Also, about compiling, Merv pretty well explained the process. Change into the source directory, ./configure --help, then ./configure with appropriate options, make, and sudo make install. Google would have even told you this, if you search for "Linux compile process".

I tried that. Didn't work. Should I use my camera to make a video of it as proof?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Well, I'll just use the app you suggested then.

Double Post:

Quote:

Let me guess, you're trying to work on /dev/[h|s]da, right? That'd probably be the same drive where Linux is installed. You cannot unmount the drive if Linux pulls files from it while you are within the OS. Use fdisk -l to get a list of partitions, and cat the /proc/mounts file to see what is where.

It doesn't matter any way, it seems it is physically impossible to make my Windows partition smaller and reallocate the freed space to my Linux partition. Either that, or the program simply isn't advanced enough to do it.

This really sucks because I need more space to store all of my Mp3s on this partition, and just more space in general. The only way I can see of doing this is wiping the whole HD clean and restarting from the beginning with nothing but Linux, but that really isn't an option.

How ya doing, buddy?

It doesn't matter, I just deleted the whole Linux partition. It's too difficult to work with and just isn't usable enough, so I scrapped it.

It sucks, because that was the first Linux distro I've ever liked. It just isn't ready for use as a primary desktop OS, though.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

There are reasons other than that. For example, my laptop wouldn't suspend properly, and when I did, I would lose all sound upon waking. Only restarting would bring it back. I always suspend my laptop when I'm not using it, so that was just unacceptable. Sound playback itself wasn't as good, either, with an obvious drop in quality and severe lagging when playing videos.

Lack of tools equivalent in quality to the tools I use in Windows was another factor. This isn't really Linux's fault per se, but rather, the fault of people who either A) Won't release their software for Linix, or B) People who write crappy programs for Linux. I'm sure it would be possible to have a Linux sound editor that's equally as awesome as Cool Edit. It's just that nobody has created it.

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You see, here's the thing: I shouldn't have to do all of that just to keep my sound working. I shouldn't even have to make a one-time script.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

It shouldn't work like windows per se. It should just work. Ideally, all operating systems would just work. But alas, this isn't an ideal world. Maybe some day.

You're right, though. Linux and I just weren't meant for each other, so I had to let her go. Sucks, too, she was pretty, and nice. . You're definitely right about my mindset, too. I want to worry about (and work on) the internal functions of my computer as little as possible. I don't care about how my computer works or the nature of the programming and how it interacts with the system. I don't want to compile code or write scripts just to keep something working. I just want it to get the hell out of my way so I can actually get some real work done.

You know what I need? A Mac. Many of the people I work with use Macs, and I use their computers regularly, so I'm fairly familiar with them. Maybe when I have the money I'll buy one. Then I can have the security and stability of a Unix-derived OS and also something that "just works".

FELIPE NO