Open Source, Open Blog
We’re back…but the forum has some bugs in it…so I’ll be forced to reconstruct some of the SQL statements. In the meantime, the forum will be down for at least today. Sorry for the extended time down…things took longer than I thought they would but for good reason.
I built a multimedia machine and am installing mythTV on it. I am keeping a journal and plan on posting the results for anyone wanting to use Debian and MythTV. Look for this sometime in the near future.
As always, thanks for reading!
The site will be down sporadically this weekend. I’m migrating the server to a new computer. I host this on my own Linux box that is in a standard ATX case. I’ve decided to go to a Shuttle case with it to save space and to look stylish. Space is always an issue. Recently, I upgraded to a 17-inch flatpanel LCD monitor that replaced my bohemoth of a 21-inch CRT monitor. So, more space = happier devnet and happier mrs.devnet. Plus it is easier to clean and what not.
If you experience this downtime, I apologize and please check back later. The site should only be down for a small amount of time…perhaps an hour. The only thing I’ll need to do is a restoration of config files, mySQL backups, and then copy the site files across and ensure permissions.
So, in pure Linux Blog fashion…I’ll post about this and how I did things so that perhaps others can apply this as well for on-the-fly-fast migrations. Thanks for reading!
PS: Update on the experiment…During the downtime, we’ll be installing PCLinuxOS 8.1a onto disk as well. Check back for mrs.devnet’s initial take on this fantastic distro on Sunday or Monday.
Larry Rosen, an intellectual property attorney and open source advocate, has called to action all open source advocates to battle against patenting standards via a consortium called OASIS. OASIS is chock full of powerful members from businesses around the globe including friend of Linux IBM, HP, and foe of Linux Microsoft. So, what’s the deal with this? When I read the article, I didn’t really know what the heck these guys were talking about. So I went to the OASIS webpage to check out what all the hubbub was about.
What I found was similar to an old western movie. How so? You’ve got the sheriff and his posse rooting out any of the “bad guys” in various ways; first by deputizing anyone and everyone that can buy themselves in and secondly by making up any laws they want to and going out to enforce them. How is this? Let’s say that IBM and HP develop a standard together…for the sake of argument, let’s say that they have a new file format and they call it BVL. Ok, so BVL is a new cool format that allows RSS syndication of 3D images to be syndicated…(hypothetical here). They push this BVL format onto their little consortium OASIS and all of the members think it is just the cat’s pajamas.
They ratify and adopt this standard. They look at three IPR modes (Intellectual Property Rights) to release their BVL standard under…Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory (RAND),” “Royalty-Free (RF) on RAND Terms,” or “RF on Limited Terms”. In each instance, this standard would prevent open source from interacting with it.
Continue reading “OASIS & RAND…Danger Will Robinson! Danger!”
Are you trying to take screenshots in Linux but don’t want to use KSnapshot or the built in Gnome Screenshot Utility? There are quite a few ways you can take screenshots in Linux. The thing is, most of them are unknown. It’s almost like the ability to take a screenshot is the best kept secret in Linux. So if taking screenshots is something you need to do on the fly or from a shell, or in a GUI that doesn’t have the utilities you need…read on.
XWD & XV
For X Window desktops such as GNOME and KDE, the command xwd -out filename.xwd lets you click a window to make an XWD image of it. Adding the -frame option will capture the entire window manager as opposed to just the open application. The popular utility xv also does screen captures so check that out as well. Use xwd and xv in the following ways:
%> xwd -root -out myimage.xwd
%> xv -grabdelay 2 myimage.jpg
IMAGEMAGICK
If you have imagemagick installed, you can use it to capture your screen as well. This is done by executing a simple command via shell:
%> import -window root wholescreen.jpg
(to grab the entire screen) or:
%> import window.jpeg
(and then click a window you want captured)
If you’re not sure whether you have ImageMagick installed, type any of the above commands just to see if they respond, or type in “man import” for help/instructions on usage.
SCREENSHOT ‘MOVIE’
There is also a really great tutorial on how to make a bash script take a ‘screenshot movie’; that is, multi-screenshots of every single window you open up.
THE GIMP
The GIMP can also be used to grab screenshots. Go to File >> Acquire >> Screenshot
FBGRAB
Another really great utility is fbgrab which can be used to capture the Linux framebuffer and convert it to a PNG image. This is handy for shell screenshots. This package is in the testing branch of Debian.
SCROT
This little utility allows you to do lots of things you wouldn’t even think of doing with screenshots such as autogenerating filenames and other things like taking screenshots of multiple displays and gluing them together. Find out how to use scrot here.
Conclusion
Screenshots don’t have to be a hassle. The use of many different utilities can simplify and streamline the process. Now you can capture various screens and show them off to all your friends…or capture various screens and hide them from your friends so they don’t know what a big Linux geek you are 😉
Do you have another method for screenshots? Visit the forum and post your method so that others can benefit. Not a member? Register here.
Hello all! Sorry to be the harbinger of bad news…however, we had to go out of town this weekend and therefore mrs.devnet did not get a chance to experiment with MEPIS over the weekend. She still would like to spend about 2-3 more days to do it the same justice for a review as she did with Mandrake. So…once again, sorry about the delay for SimplyMEPIS…rest assured that she will use the same approach to SimplyMEPIS and won’t pull any punches nor hide anything that she thinks. Stay tuned this week for her review!
The blog has recently blocked a large influx of spam. In the process, some user’s comments were blocked. I now offer them to you here. If the user making the comment would comment on where they originally were posted, I will post that as well. Here it is:
1. [REJECTED: Invalid captcha] – [#29, Name “Darl McBride”, E-Mail “”, URL “ip-wars.net”, User-Agent “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0 StumbleUpon/1.999”, IP XX.XX.211.165] – [Thanks everyone!
You all get a signed 8 by 10 and a scox mousepad!]
[2005-02-05 14:58:15]
Sorry Mr. McBride…one other person got their comment snagged by the old spamblocker. They too forgot to enter the captcha (or couldn’t see it). They reposted. Please let me know where the comment belongs and I’ll place it there.
