Restricted Extras. Codecs & Flash on Linux Mint 18

Well, first day using the Opti -mostly- as my main rig.
Yesterday took about six hours to restore backups and then install and configure most of the programs I use (bored out of the hell and back and back again... That is the most annoying thing when it comes to dealing with computers... Overnight, the email got dloaded, easy peasy all around.
The thing looks nice and so far delivers pretty, pretty good, not much lag, and found no problems so far... Even Suspend works Ok.

Now, today things got a little messy, even tho I'm positive I did check the mark to download extra software during the install, I found out that I wasn't able to reproduce mp3 files (nor Flash worked)...
(Installed and) Started Rhythmbox and lo and behold, it only found some 10 themes, instead of the many thousand files I had.
First of, tried issuing a:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

But, even after re-starting Rhythmbox, the mp3 files didn't show up...
Then, I've read about the easy way of adding mp3 support on Linux Mint 18... Right under my nose... Simply:

Start Menu > Sound and Video > Install Multimedia Codecs

(The option will dissapear after using it)

Then again, after re-starting Rhythmbox, the mp3 files didn't show up... No matter what, it always showed only non mp3 files...
So, I closed Rhythmbox, and renamed the file:

mv ~/.local/share/rhythmbox/rhythmdb.xml\
 ~/.local/share/rhythmbox/rhythmdb.xml.OLD

Started Rhythmbox and the magic started right away... The little Optiplex was churning away indexing my thousands of mp3 files onto my beloved Rhythmbox...

With Flash things went easier... I've noticed I was missing Flash when accessed Spotify web to play some music, and it belched that Flash was needed...
So, installed like this:

sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer

• No Multimedia Codec Linux Mint 18 + How to Install It

The Opti Got Its Cinnamon

Ok, the quest for getting Linux Mint across the board goes on...
Today installed Linux Mint 18 (Cinnamon) from scratch on the Optiplex.
No major problems, except that I had to connect a regular monitor to make the actual install, using the Apple Cinema Display -with the ADC adapter- was a no go...
I simply got no video... But, after making the install, connected the Apple monitor, booted, and everything was kosher.
Moving on...
Now restoring backups, installing and configuring stuff, what a major drag...

Sunday 28-08-2016

Stop ~/.bashrc From Telling Your Username

By default, Bash will print your username on every Terminal you open (as well as the hostname)... I hate that, I find no reason to do so, really, it uses screen real estate, and, besides whoami is just a type away.
In order to stop that, edit the file ~./.bashrc as in the picture above, basically, remove all of the "u@" from that file.

Pruning df Output

From this:

 

To this:

Thru a ~/.bashrc alias configuration:


alias df="df -H -x cgroup -x sysfs -x proc -x devpts -x pstore -x debugfs -x mqueue"

The (Near)Deadly Comma

Yesterday I was really, really close to f*cked up my fresh Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon install, and I got really close to having to re-install it.
A typo editing the "/etc/fstab" file (I know right?...) What can I say?
The system booted A OK, X Window failed to load, I could login without any problem tho...
Whole mess caused my lovely, fresh system to boot as read only...

Am I a schmuck or what?

In the end I booted onto the recovery mode, but I had to make that mode read and write, since it works as read only by default, because I needed to edit the dreaded "/etc/fstab" file, it just a freaking period, instead of a comma...
On the GRUB menu, press Shift, select the recovery kernel, press "e" and edit the option from:

linux   /boot/vmlinuz-4.4.0-34-generic root=UUID=76b16fbf-3bb6-47ec-a6e0-51bdf1e6b47a ro recovery nomodeset

to this:

linux   /boot/vmlinuz-4.4.0-34-generic root=UUID=76b16fbf-3bb6-47ec-a6e0-51bdf1e6b47a rw recovery nomodeset

Save the file, and boot.
I've edited the "/etc/fstab" file and rebooted.
Presto.
The first screenshot aboce shows the correct fstab, while the second one shows the fucked up one...

(No) Movies During The Weekend

We had a couple of pretty, pretty hectic weekends around here lately... Belive it or not, we couldn't watch a single movie during the last couple of weekends...
Modern life they call it...
Last weekend we started with episode one of the fourth season of House Of Cards, tho...

Swapping SSD To Cambodia

First step in order to say bye bye to Unity.
Replace the HDD, dude!
Pic taken on Monday, after pulling the drive from the T60p...
I usually rotate HDDs instead of just installing a new distro or version on top of the previous, that way, I keep the old one intact -at least a few days- in case I have to go back pronto.
The old drive, then, finds its way to an older or different box.
In the end, every HDD gets somehow used, here or there...

Unity-less (Once Again...)

Well, guess is time so say good by to Unity...
I've tried, I really did... And I said this same thing before...
But it is definitively not my thing... No matter how I try, I still hit a wall on a daily basis, something small, stupid, but it breaks the work flow...
Everything looks like I'm going back to Cinnamon.

108K and counting!

Yeap, that's right... Another thousand up...
Music all around, all the time!!!

New Favorite Photographer

Matthias Heiderich

The Color (Scheme) That Fell To XFCE

A couple of XFCE customizations I'm testing on the Optiplex these days...

• Gruvbox color scheme for XFCE4 terminal

Save the file as "gruvbox-dark.theme" (doh!) and copy it to:
 /usr/share/xfce4/terminal/colorschemes/

• Gruvbox themes for Gedit

Copy the files to:

/usr/share/gtksourceview-3.0/styles/

then reload Gedit... In order to use the new theme, go to:

Edit > Preferences > Fonts & Colors and select the newly installed Color Scheme.

Still Rockin'

...That is, the mighty Apple Cinema Display... Even after all this years...
The thing just works, they way it should... Connected to the Optiplex thru my now venerable ADC to DVI Apple adapter, hidden underneath the table.

The Unity Desktop

Another desktop screenshot...
This time on the T60p, showing the hyper trendy Papirus Icons.
The Linux Desktop look sexier and sexier...

Monday 15-08-2016

The current Linux Mint (XFCE) desktop

It seems like these days at OEseDiez its all about the Optiplex...
My nice, simple, minimal (?) setup, using the Optiplex, hooked to the ancient Apple Cinema Display.
A bit of a mit of themes (the sleek, fancy and modern Arc) & icons (my beloved & classic GNOME Colors) running on the screenshot.

Once Again: Fire Hazard

So, I got a little time today, the GF went with a girl friend away for a couple of days -we usually spend together every weekend- so, it was time to tidy up stuff a little bit around here, what the hell!
Like the title says, this was an excellent opportunity to make the whole thing a fire hazard, but that is hardly news around here... (Link 1 & Link 2)...
I'm complete and utterly impressed by the Optiplex and its capabilities as a Linux Workstation.

Typical Mid-Friday Mess

Yesterday, around noon...
I've been playing a bit with the Optiplex once again... You know, the usual distro/ hardware hopping here and there...

107K and counting!

Hell yeah! Another thousand up!
I'm about 5 thousand to break last year record.

Movies During The Weekend

Three movies this past weekend, looks like its going to be our standard for the moment being...

• Elvis & Nixon

Nice enough... It is waaaayyy better than, say, "Moonwalkers", but ITOH, which movies isn't, right?
It was nice to bump onto Frank once again... A good test run to get the GF & me ready to watch the latest season of "House of Cards" in the upcoming weeks...
 

• Life

Cool one, personally, I haven't seeing a bad Corbijn film yet.
I wasn't aware that James Dean was so young when they took the famous Times Square photo.
The actor that portrais him makes look a bit foolish, specially the voice, but who knows, right?
 

• The Nice Guys

The GF wanted to see this one.
It is nice, but perhaps a bit too long...

Evolution on Xenial: TLS belches continuously

The reported error was "Error running STATUS: TLS connection closed unexpectedly".

I'm getting this error all the time on Evolution (on Xenial)...
Its driving me nuts.
Happens on all my Xenial boxes so far, and on any network I happen to be connected, so its not a problem related to a specific box or place...
Another one of those hints... I'm sure no one uses Evolution anymore...

Saturday 06-08-2016

The Unity Desktop

The current Desktop on the X140e, or I should say, the Moka icons beauty (specifically, the Faba Mono)!
Changed the GTK theme aswell, this is the "Ambiance-Minimal" which works amazingly well on Xenial.

Take Screenshots on Lubuntu

I've noticed that a plain vanilla install of Lubuntu (maybe only the PPC version?) doesn't include any program to take screenshots.
So, this is what I added as an alias to my ~/.bashrc file:

sleep 10 && lxsession-default screenshot

It waits 10 seconds, to give you time to minimize the Terminal window, and then takes a full desktop sceenshot, it saves the file as a PNG file

Lubuntu 16.04 on the PowerMac3,5 (Quicksilver)

Yesterday installed Lubuntu on my old Quicksilver, mostly because I thought it would be a fun thing to do.
The install was painless, just remember to press the Option key, in order to select booting from the DVD Drive... I don't know why, but I was sure that if you press the C key upon booting, the PowerMac would boot from the DVD drive automagically... But it doesn't.
Then there was the partition your drive stage, I always do that by hand, and since I was installing onto two 80 GB IDE HDD, I did the partitions by hand.
I went with the following partition scheme:

Drive sda:
newworld     134 MB
/          70883 MB
swap        9000 MB
Drive sdb:
/home        81964 MB

One caveat tho, you have to be patient! The install takes time, and it looks like sometimes hangs, but it is still fighting down there... After all, the box has a Dual Proc @800 MHz and 1.5 GB of RAM.

For the love of Jeebus, I forgot how much noise a running PowerMac makes!

Movies During The Weekend

Not many (movies) only one actually, but ITOH we watched a whole series, so I guess that might count for something...

• Keanu

The GF wanted to see this one, no matter what.
Even tho I like ey & Peele a lot, I sort of slept thru the movie... Its nice and funny, but I was dead tired.

• Stranger Things

We binged watched this one (IMHO, this is the only way of watching series nowadays...)
We both loved the series, I was afraid of something like Super 8, a rather flimsy attempt at nostalgia, but it turns out it was fantastic.
Great acting, great casting and a nice enough story.

The Unity Desktop

The hunt for the perfect Ubuntu/ Unity theme (on Xenial) continues...
This time Arc Black Ubuntu, a dark, yes, but not as dark as the theme I was testing a week ago or so: OSX Arc Shadow.
The icons are still the Moka magnificence.
Like I said, this new theme is not as dark as the previous, it seems it has just the right amount of darkness... The later had a couple of problems dealing with web forms, you know, black text on black background, which made things rather annoying to deal with.

Finally! ~/Desktop/sync.local.sh

I can't believe I haven't done this before...
I've been doing local backups to a series of external USB drives for ages and ages, I have way too much data to make backups on internet or to a remote server, what I do is that I simply stored on a different location one os those USB drives.
Of course, one of the boxes is the Master, and it pushes to the external USB drives the changes, and the other boxes are the Slaves, getting the changes from the USB drive.
Problem was that, since obviously the function changed, I had to remember which script file was the one I was supposed to execute on each box.
What I finally did was to create an alias on the Desktop of each of the lappies I'm using at the moment, pointing to the correct script for either backing up or restoring to or from the external USB drive.

106K and counting!

Thousand upon thousand this little thing keeps going on and on and on...