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.

Did you have to adjust that in Windows as well? If so, you might want to use your monitor's controls to make things right instead.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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.

Most amazing jew boots

Ubuntu uses GNOME by default......I'll try starting into GNOME when I get home and seeing if I remember anything, but I think the setting might be around somewhere in the Gnome Control Panel.

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

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.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Install xmms-musepack though Synaptic or apt or Adept or whichever interface to the packaging system you use. It really couldn't be easier. Try running basic searches through your program (I know Synaptic can do this) in search of packages--a lot of it is already in repos for you to use without having to build yourself.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

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

FELIPE NO

You need to enable the universe repositories.
Do this through Synaptic, or manually edit your /etc/apt/sources.list file and add universe to the end of your "deb ..." lines for general packages. Alternately, you can provide it here and I (or someone else) can show you the changes.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad 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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

You being new is why I added the bit at the end about one of us being able to help you with it if you wanted.

Beyond that, though, I don't know anything about gamma correction.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

There's this command line utility called xgamma. You can access its manual by typing "man xgamma" into the terminal. Play around with it until you get decent results, I'm sure someone else here will know how to apply the command on the start of the XServer.


Edit:
I posted a sources.list for Ubuntu Dapper here. It should give you access to all branches of the official repositories. You might want to change the region-specific prefixes in some of the lines though ("au" in the list I posted, "de" in mine, yours could be "fr").

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

Getting it to act along with the server startup is simple.

Let us say you decide upon using this (replace the argument values as appropriate):

xgamma -rgamma 1.0 -ggamma 1.0 -bgamma 0.8

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:

# xinitrc
xgamma -rgamma 1.0 -ggamma 1.0 -bgamma 0.8 &

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

Hehe, another useful config file (three years Linux and it never caught my attention). My best bet would have been the KDE autostart but since the regular Ubuntu comes with Gnome...

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?

By "home directory", I mean your personal folder, where your profile information, program settings, and personal files are stored (by default). "Home directory" is a fairly common term in the Linux world, and bash (the command-line) helps to accomadate you here. In Bash, you can switch to your home directory quickly by typing simply cd as a command. Also, the character ~ is used to reference your home directory in Bash as well, such that:

~/.xinitrc is translated by Bash into /home/piccolonamek/.xinitrc.

To get the .xinitrc up simply, run this on the terminal to fire up gedit using the proper filename. If a file doesn't exist by that name, gedit will write it for you when you save your work.

gedit ~/.xinitrc

FELIPE NO

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.

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

.xinitrc needs to have 0644 permissions (or better). Does it? To check, run "stat ~/.xinitrc" and see what the Access line shows. You can also go and add it to the Sessions in Gnome by using System > Administration > Sessions or something to that effect--add the command with a priority of 20 and it should work fine.

MPC encoder? Do you have a command available on your computer called "mppenc"? That's the musepack encoder. Search your repos for mpc/musepack and see if anything looks helpful?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by PiccoloNamek

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

Compiling is the easiest three-step process ever, provided you don't have to fulfill any dependencies (and that you have build-essential installed.)

./configure
make
make-install

Done and installed.

But there should be an XMMS musepack plugin already in the repositories, I think.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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.

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

Originally Posted by PiccoloNamek

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

Did you even look for mppenc? But that file you have is a tar, so you will need to unpack it using the tar command.

This should work:

tar -xf FILE

Quote:

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.

With that attitude, I can't help you find anything comparable. You don't even want to try anything else, it seems.

How ya doing, buddy?

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.

I was speaking idiomatically.

It doesn't "just work" on Windows, either. You have to install the encoder there. Here, you do the same thing. Unpack that tar, then read the README file enclosed.

Though Merv's commands should build and install it for you. I really don't see what's so hard, here. It worked fine for me on Ubuntu, SUSE, and Gentoo. :\

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

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?

You can run such binaries by entering "./[file name]" in the command line. If it does not work, run "chmod +x [file name]" first (gives the file executable rights). Copying a binary into /usr/bin will make the program available system wide (and without the "./"). The static version should work in most cases since the library data needed to run it was included in the binary when compiled (the regular/dynamic version relies on libraries installed on your system, if these are missing or versions don't match, it won't work).

As for frontends, I'm not sure wether there is anything similar, that does not rely on KDE's extensive libraries but K3b's CD ripping component is pretty configurable. I feed it a certain LAME command line for example.

And while Audacity's interface is ugly as hell, at least give it a try for basic wave editing.

Originally Posted by Merv Burger

Compiling is the easiest three-step process ever, provided you don't have to fulfill any dependencies (and that you have build-essential installed.)

It's those dependencies that usually become such a pain in the ass. Exept for very simple tools and my custom kernels I never compiled anything myself (though I tried numerous times over the years). MPlayer comes to mind as THE baptism-by-fire-app. Besides, it's usually nicer to install programs with the package manager of your distribution, so you don't have to preserve any uninstall scripts.
I know there is make-kpkg for Debian-based distros (I use that for kernel building) and I presume creating ebuilds for Gentoo isn't that hard either. I'm probably just lazy and had the luck to switch OSs around the time when getting by on Linux without compiling became feasible for power users.

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

That's not "just working", Namek. You still had to do work to get it installed, much less working. You should not expect switching your OS to be an easy feat at first (even from Windows to OSX), or else you will be looking for trouble. About the readme, that's odd. The version I download always had a README file, but it also needs to be compiled, so...

Oh, also. As a random note, you may need to be mindful of your paths when you use mppenc. As an example, if the path to an audio file has Japanese in it anywhere, mppenc bombs on this end. It may not for you, or this might not be relevant to you (English-only filenames), but just a warning.

Be careful about modifying anything in /usr/bin, and make sure you don't nuke or change anything you don't know about in there, since blowing up things like gnome-control-center would be quite inconvenient.

Jam it back in, in the dark.