Read about Repository Control in PCLinuxOS

You’ll be looking for the ’sections’ blank when viewing repository details and you’ll just need to add ‘testing’ to the end of the line (don’t replace the entires there already).  Once that is done, click the reload button in Synaptic and allow it to refresh your local rpm cache.

Click the ’search’ button and search for the keyword ‘kernel’.  Look for the highest number of kernel that is returned.  At the time of this writing, the 2.6.26.8 kernel was the newest kernel for PCLinuxOS (it has .27 patches all over in it…so it’s quite a nice kernel).  Click and install that kernel and allow it to select any packages it needs to install.  Once installed, you can remove the word testing from the repository (this is recommended to prevent your system from downloading ALL testing packages/updates) and click the reload button for Synaptic.

Reboot and choose the new kernel on your grub menu.  Test things to see how they work.  If everything is good to go, congratulations!  You’ve just installed the latest kernel in PCLinuxOS.

To make this kernel the default one, you can use the PCLinuxOS Control Center and Change the Way the System Boots.  I’ll cover this in a later post.  Hope this helps a few of you out there.  I know it is often asked on IRC.

Install the Latest Kernel in PCLinuxOS originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on December 17, 2008.

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Build Your Own PCLOS

So, HowtoForge has a perfect desktop for PCLinuxOS 2007…how about something similar for 2008 MiniMe? I won’t go into near as much detail as they do there but I’ll go over how I get my desktop up and rolling after a fresh install of PCLinuxOS Minime 2008.

MiniMe is the lesser known offspring of PCLinuxOS 2007 that ships with a 2.6.22.15 kernel and is a minimalistic installation of the KDE desktop 3.5.9. Texstar provides this distribution for those wanting to remaster their installations…it’s a base for other remastered projects like PCLinuxOS Gnome. Remastering and the Make LiveCD wizard enable users to customize their distribution and make a bootable backup CD with all their customizations OR release their own customized distribution. You can also use the Make LiveUSB wizard to create your very own thumbdrive PCLinuxOS.

I found it strange that no one had written anything about MimiMe-to on getting PCLinuxOS 2008 MiniMe up and running as a desktop replacement so I decided to give it a go. The aim of this article isn’t to copy Howtoforge’s great series on perfect installations…but to show how I get PCLinuxOS 2008 Minime up to a perfect installation for me. This means all web video, audio, fonts, and tools I need are installed. So let’s get at it.

What Do We Need?

First and foremost, do a complete upgrade of your fresh installed system. Open Synaptic >> Reload >> Mark all Upgrades >> Apply. It’s going to take a while to get all the updates you’ll need. Do NOT enable the testing repository until after you install your graphics driver at the end of this article…just perform a straight update from main.

Now let’s start installing stuff that is needed on a daily basis. I’m more of a lightweight type of guy so I don’t need robust office applications so my tastes may not line up with yours. Please substitute applications where you see fit…the repositories most likely have them.

To give a brief, high level overview of my daily use applications:

• firefox3
• Opera
• K3B
• konversation
• pidgin
• skype_static
• koffice
• gimp
• Amarok
• claws-mail
• kdeaddons-kate
• kdeaddons-ark
• kdegraphics-ksnapshot (for taking screenshots)

Those are the high level applications I use on a daily basis to get things done. Whenever you are prompted to mark other packages for install, go ahead and and choose “mark”. Click apply and let the your daily use applications install.

Handy Wizards for PCLinuxOS 2008

MiniMe 2008 comes with some handy wizards for you to use to get started. On your desktop after install is a folder called “Utilities”. If you open this folder up, you will find the following options:

1. ATI-Nvidia Driver Install
2. Alsa Sound Configuration
3. Internet Setup
4. Make LiveCD
5. Make LiveUSB
6. Redo-MBR
7. Set Clock

You can use any of these you want to get things rolling. You’ll have to enable your network through the PCLinuxOS Control Center because MiniMe does not setup a network connection by design out of the box. Remember, it’s a base for building, not a full fledged distro. We have to craft it how we want it. I recommend NOT installing a graphics driver until the very end…mainly because there are some problems currently with the 173.xx driver conflicting with some packages in the testing repository. So hold off on graphics install if you can until the very last.

Make LiveCD is exactly what it sounds like. You can make a LiveCD based on your install. So after you get everything setup the way you want it to be, you can double click Make LiveCD and a wizard will guide you through creating your own customized LiveCD backup of your install.

Make LiveUSB is also exactly what it sounds like…you can make a bootable version of a USB stick with PCLinuxOS MiniME. This how-to does not cover this since we’re going for a desktop replacement and not a minimalistic install. You may want to select this option though after you’ve got things configured as you want them.

The rest of the options are fairly straightforward and do exactly what they say. Make sure you take the time to get all things working (except graphics driver) before you move on.

What Else Should We Install?

We’ll need to install a few more things to get seamless operation for PCLinuxOS on the web. There are also some packages that will make your PCLinuxOS experience a bit better that we’ll install at this step as well:

• gtk-qt-engine
• RealPlayer-rpnp
• flash-player-plugin
• java-1.6.0-sun
• flac-1.2.1
• mplayer-skins
• mplayer-gui
• mplayer
• win32-codecs-all
• sound-juicer
• flash-player-plugin-opera
• cabextract (for extracting wireless drivers if you have need to)
• webcore-fonts
• unrar
• rar
• xine-plugins
• AdobeReader_enu

Please remember to allow synaptic to mark anything extra that the packages require. After installing these packages, your browsing experience and overall appearance of PCLinuxOS should be ready for improvement. I’ll go through how I setup a few applications to give them a nice look and feel. Let’s start first with GTK applications look and feel.

Setup gtk-qt-engine in PCLinuxOS

Open the KDE Control Center and look under “Appearance and Themes” for the section “GTK Styles and Fonts”. Use the drop down menu to pick out your favorite GTK theme…and if your favorite isn’t there, fire up Synaptic again and do a search for it…chances are, it is there. Once you’ve chosen a style (I use clearlooks) click “Ok”.

This package gives your GTK applications a Gnome Feel in KDE. Without it, things look ugly. Face-in-pillow-to-be-kind-to-burglars ugly.

Get Your Fonts Setup

Configure Fonts

I setup my fonts a bit strange. I use the same webcore font (Microsoft Font) for almost everything because I like the way it looks. To do this, I set it up in the KDE Control Center and choose “Appearance & Themes” >> “Fonts”. Then, I setup each area except Fixed Width with Verdana for the font. You may like Ariel or another font…so choose it there. Don’t be afraid to experiment! Find fonts that suit you and make your desktop shine

When you’re through with the KDE Fonts, don’t forget to setup fonts in Firefox and Opera as well (if you desire to…I always do).

Setup KDE default Applications

While still inside the KDE Control Center, choose “KDE Components” and then “Component Chooser”. On this page, make sure your favorite applications are present as the default application for each area. Those to choose from are email client, text editor, instant messenger, terminal emulator, and web browser. For my email, I setup claws mail by clicking “use a different email client” and clicking the small square to browse applications. I did the same for web browser to make sure KDE knew to use Firefox and not Konqueror.

Enable Super Key for Compiz (if you use it)

If you use compiz and wanted to install it the package name is task-compiz-fusion-kde. Install this package but do NOT run it yet if you have an ATI or Nvidia card. We’ll need to install the graphics driver first. If you have another chip manufacturer (Intel, S3) for your graphics card, you should be able to install and use compiz right away.

To enable the super (windows) key, open the KDE Control Center, go to “Regional & Accessibility” and then to “Keyboard Layout”. Toggle check “enable keyboard layout” and make sure your region is in the right hand side box area as active. Click apply.

Setup Konversation in a Sane Manner

Configure Konversation

I think the default configuration of Konversation isn’t very friendly. So I take a few minutes when first firing it up to configure things. Perhaps you’ll agree with me on these. For example, I don’t like tabs on the bottom of my screen. I’d rather have those channels of chat on the left hand side so I can see them. I also like to have shell-like tabl completion. That means when I hit the tab key after typing a few letters of someones nickname, Konversation will complete their name without me typing it…much like the shell (konsole) can do with directory names. Start up Konversation. Click edit and then click the edit button again. Make sure you’ve input the nickname you need to input. If you are a freenode regular and have a registered nickname, enter NICKSERV and your password in the blanks under “Auto Identify”. Click “ok” twice and then connect.

Under “Settings” choose “Configure Konversation”. Go to the section “Behavior” and choose “General”. In “completion mode” use the drop down menu to select “Shell-Like”. I like to minimize Konversation into the tray and also like it to notify me when my name is mentioned. To do this, inside this same window toggle check “Enable System Tray” as well as the two other check boxes underneath it.

Now lets move the tabs to the left: Under “Interface” click “Tabs”. On the “placement” drop down menu choose “Left”. That’s it for Konversation.

Setup Kopete in a Sane Manner

Hiding Groups & Users

If you use Kopete instead of Pidgin, I’ll walk you through setting it up so that it has a more pidgin appearance. When you first launch Kopete, it will prompt you to setup your accounts. You should have no problem setting up all but the gtalk ones. Go ahead and setup all the other ones…we’ll set gtalk up in a second. First, let’s get the existing ones to display in a sane manner.

Under “Settings” choose “Hide Offline Users”. Then choose “Hide Empty Groups”. This will make sure not to display your offline buddies (of which I have too many all the time) in Kopete.

Next choose “Settings” and “Configure”. Click on Appearance. Click the “Chat Window” tab and choose “Get New”. A window will pop open with new themes to install. I like the theme called Fresh so I highlight it and click the install button. Close out all the windows except the configure one and then highlight “Fresh.AdiumMessageStyle” to switch to it. Click Apply.

Now click on the “Contact List” tab. Un-check “Arrange metacontacts by group” & “Show tree branch lines”. Under “List Style” choose right aligned status icons” and then check the “Use contact photos when available” checkbox. Click Apply.

I like my messages to open only one window with a new conversation opening a new tab. This prevents me from having 3 windows pop from 3 different chats from friends. Click on the “Behavior” icon on the left side of Kopete. Click on the “Chat” tab. Under “Chat Window Grouping Policy” choose “Group All Messages in Same Chat Window”. Click on the “Events” tab and make sure to uncheck “Show bubble” (unless you like notification bubbles…I hate them…I just want Kopete to flash on notification). Click Apply.

Click on the “General” tab. Make sure that the checkbox for the system tray is checked. Check the “Connect automatically at startup” box or Kopete won’t connect when you start it up. Toggle the radio button for “Open Messages Instantly”. Click Apply. Click Ok.

That should be it…I know it’s a lot but this really makes Kopete feel at home for me…almost pidgin style with better KDE integration.

Setup your gtalk follow the instructions here and make sure that if you are prompted with a pop up window choose never show this again and accept (it’s certificates for SSL and gtalk).

Improve Firefox Performance

There are tons of guides out there. I’ve looked through many of them to try and tweak Firefox performance and the one I’ve found to be the best collection of handy tips and tricks is at hugpages. Pay close attention to #13 which is the speedup I found to really make a difference.

KDE Artwork…Add More!!

I wrote an article on how to beautify the PCLinuxOS 2007 Desktop through installation of icon themes, cursor thems, wallpapers, and other improvements. Make sure that you check that post out and customize PCLinuxOS Minime 2008 and make it your own That beautification article is still valid for Minime 2008, which uses the 2007 repositories. Some of the package names may have changed but you can use the search button in synaptic to search “description and name” and find most if not all the packages.

Graphics Card

video driver installer

Setting up your graphics card is last for good reason. It should be the last thing you do unless your resolution is so horrible you need to set it up at the beginning. There is a problem with Nvidia drivers and minime. If you installed the 173.xx drivers and try to upgrade to testing, it will flag a bunch of problems. To fix things, launch konsole, su to root and apt-get clean, then apt-get autoclean.

After doing that, apt-get update and then close konsole. Use the utilities folder on the desktop to un-install the 173.xx drivers. Then perform the testing upgrade without the drivers conflicting. After the upgrade is complete, install the 177.xx drivers. This is only for the latest and greatest video cards. REMEMBER, the utilities folder has a graphics card installation tool. This is used for ATI and Nvidia cards and will install the official driver for both. A list of chipsets for each driver is inside the utility (screenshot on right) so make sure that you pick the correct driver.

If you use any other chipset besides Nvidia or ATI, your driver should be enabled by default.

Extra TidBits I like to Install

I like to be able to right click any music file in Konqueror and convert it to any format I choose. This can be done with the audiokonverter package. Search for that in Synaptic and install it if you’d like to do the same.

Ever want to search through programs you can install without opening Syanptic and without using the command line? Install kio-apt and you’ll be able to do jus that using apt:/ in the address bar where the url normally goes. Options include:

apt:/search?search expression
apt:/show?package
apt:/policy?package
apt:/list?package
apt:/fsearch?package

Want to resize your screen on the fly? Press Alt-F2 and type krandrtray. Notice the small icon that appears inside your kicker tray by the clock. You’ll now be able to resize your screen resolution on the fly. This is sometimes handy for those users who dock a laptop that has a different resolution on laptop screens than desktop ones.

Miss the Nvidia Icon in your tray like in Windows? Install nvdock and then execute it from the menu (System >> Nvidia Dock) and watch as your nvidia icon magically reappears. Right click and be brought to Nvidia Control Panel Settings.

Want some desktop search action without google desktop or the beast that is Beagle? Not a fan of tracker? Try recoll which can be installed through Synaptic.

Need a personal wiki to keep notes? I know I do. That’s why I install zim which is a personal wiki written in GTK. It allows you to quickly jot down notes and scales quickly to even provide multiple page and project tracking for your own personal notes.

Ever run across stuff on the web you wish you could clip out of a webpage and save? Enter basket. It can handle images, webpage snippets, store URLs and anything you might come across, can be saved for easy centralized access.

Screensavers are not installed by default. If you want to install screensavers, try the following packages:

• xscreensaver
• xscreensaver-base
• xscreensaver-common
• xscreensaver-extrusion
• xscreensaver-gl
• xscreensaver-matrix

Did I Miss Anything?

Did I miss anything with my helpful how-to? If so, please leave me a comment letting me know what you’d like to see added to it. I will consider this a working how-to and update it with as much as I can. These are only the applications I find useful and use on a daily basis. I installed these on a fresh install of Minime 2008 on my main system and wrote this how-to while doing it. I wanted it to be minimalistic…I don’t need much in order to be happy. Hopefully, this helps inspire you t

Customizing PCLinuxOS 2008 Minime originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on October 17, 2008.

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This is a pretty easy thing to do, but it seems many people come to Yet Another Linux Blog searching for exactly how to do this. ClarkConnect does not come with GCC installed by default. If you download software and attempt to compile it (using ./configure, make, make install) it will complain:

configure: error: no acceptable C compiler found in $PATH
See `config.log' for more details.

So, SSH into your ClarkConnect server and install cc-devel to install all the tools you need. Please be advised, it’s a rather large package weighing in at 87.5 MB when I installed it today.

apt-get update

apt-get install cc-devel

After this package is installed, you should be able to compile software from source. Hopefully, this makes your life easier and is easier to find on the web.

Install GCC on ClarkConnect originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on October 12, 2008.

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The only problem with this is that ping.fm is in beta stage…and a closed beta at that. So, I began to read various different blogs to try and find any other service that might do the same thing as ping.fm.

During my search, I cam across profilactic.com, which is a central aggregate place similar to friendfeed.com. The interesting part about profilactic is that it plugs into ping.fm and every single user can be part of the closed beta for ping.fm!

This means that you can microblog/status message bebo, blogger, brightkite, facebook, hi5, Jaiku, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, Mashable, Myspace, Plaxo Pulse, Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr, Twitter, and Xanga through one single interface OR through Instant message (there is a ping.fm bot).

Here’s the kicker…profilactic.com supports 186 sites as well as the ability to create a custom site. There are too many to list. Check out their supported sites.

So, you can utilize ping.fm to instant message status updates or microblog and instantaneously have it sent out to close to 200 different sites all at once. This is handy for me since I like to use pownce a bit more than twitter but my coworkers use twitter more. My status updates are still broadcast (on 60 second delay) on twitter through my instant message to the ping.fm bot. Ping.fm also supports the iPhone and has the ability to have custom triggers.

To take advantage of these great services, head over to profilactic and signup. When you’re setting up your sites, you’ll be able to plug into ping.fm (it will require that you signup using the profilactic beta password that profilactic will provide for you during setup). Don’t forget to visit my lifestream and add me as a friend Happy micro/status/blogging!

Microblogging, Status, and Blogging 2.0 originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on June 19, 2008.

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What is Openbox?

From the Openbox homepage, “Openbox is a minimalistic, highly configurable, next generation window manager with extensive standards support.” From using it, I often think of it as fluxbox with the benefits of being able to dip into Gnome or KDE for the items that I want to use. Your desktop will then run with speed and simplicity using only the elements you want to use with it.

So…Let’s get Started…

This How-To will assume that you’re running Foresight Linux, you’re logged into Gnome and that you’re familiar with conary, the package manager for Foresight. First and foremost, install openbox:

lostwork:/home/devnet] sudo conary update openbox obconf obmenu

This installs the needed components to run Openbox on your system. Openbox is minimal by default though so if you login to the environment npw for the first time, there will be no taskbars, nothng…just a large blank area for you to work with. We will need to install some extra components to give a bit more functionality. If you’d like a panel menu, I recommend using pypanel. This is a small python panel that allows applications to dock and houses a notification area. You can also setup an area to launch apps from so it really is quite nice.

There are other panels that are packaged with openbox in mind for Foresight; fbpanel is available, which is a very fast and functional menu bar. I like lxpanel also, which is fbpanel with some easier configuration options. For a full list, please see openbox documentation. For our purposes here, we will install pypanel:

lostwork:/home/devnet] sudo conary update pypanel

Now we need to copy the default configuration file for pypanel so we can build our panel to our liking:

lostwork:/] cd ~/
lostwork:/home/devnet] cp /usr/share/pypanel/pypanelrc ~/.pypanelrc

From there, configure your ~/.pypanelrc accordingly. Documentation is available inside the .pypanelrc file.

Let the Configuration Begin!

The hard part (install) is now out of the way thanks to the conary package manager. Now we need to configure Openbox so that it’s ready for us when we logout of Gnome. The configuration files will need to be copied to /home/user/.config/openbox.

Visiting there now will show that there aren’t any files in this directory. The file we’ll absolutely need to create is autostart.sh. Other files that will be in here are rc.xml which is for obconf (openbox configuration) and menu.xml (openbox menu system). We’ll copy menu.xml from a default copy there later. The other file should autocreate when loading for the first time (rc.xml)

The autostart.sh file is what starts all of our services and our pypanel we just installed as well as setup our wallpaper and other items. Instead of going through the options you can place in here, I’m going to share my autostart.sh to get you up and running quickly. Please note that if you chose not to install fbpanel and use the gnome-panel or other panel instead, you’ll need to comment the pypanel line below and uncomment what you’ll be using:

lostwork:/home/ddevine/.config/openbox] cat autostart.sh
# This shell script is run before Openbox launches.
# Environment variables set here are passed to the Openbox session.
##############################################################
# Panel Section
##############################################################
# Kiba-dock and awn require a compositing line from the compositing section to be uncommented.
# They are a bit buggy in openbox but CAN be run.  Uncomment if you'd like t
# kiba-dock &
# avant-window-navigator
# pypanel, my favorite panel for openbox
(sleep 3 && pypanel) &
# Use the wbar Launcher if you would like 
# wbar &
# If you're going to use the gnome-panel, put a '#' in front of fbpanel & above and uncomment the next line
# gnome-panel &

#############################################################
# Gnome Integration Section
#############################################################
# This section let's Gnome give us some of its desktopiness 
gnome-power-manager &
glipper &
nm-applet --sm-disable &
/usr/libexec/gnome-settings-daemon &
gnome-volume-manager --sm-disable &
gnome-keyring-daemon &

###########################################################
# Other Add-on's for Openbox
###########################################################
# Make your wallpaper restore to last setting using Nitrogen.
nitrogen --restore &
# Let Conky do it's magic
conky &
# Mugshot is a program from Red Hat that aggregates many social media websites.  See mugshot.org
mugshot &

############################################################
# Compositing Section
############################################################

# Arch Wiki xcompmgr line
#xcompmgr -cC -t-3 -l-5 -r5 -I0.3 -O0.03 -D2 -f &

# Freedesktop.org standard line
#xcompmgr -c -t-5 -l-5 -r4.2 -o.55 &

# My Customized one
#xcompmgr -c -f -F -t-3 -l-3 -r5 -I0.018 -o.45 -O0.01 -D1 &

# DO NOT USE SERVER SIDE FOR XCOMPMGR (shown below).  Doesn't work well.
#xcompmgr -a -s &

Download my autostart.sh

To create the menu system file for openbox, we’ll copy from the default installation to our .config/openbox directory (so we can use obmenu…otherwise, that command will give us an error) so use the following command in a terminal:

cp /etc/xdg/openbox/menu.xml ~/.config/openbox/

Now you’re ready to login and reap what you have sown Logout of Gnome and change sessions in GDM to Openbox. Notice that your pypanel starts up and has the gnome applications we recorded in the autostart.sh file above running and docked! You can add more options to your autostart.sh file and you can also edit .pypanelrc (in your /home/user directory) to store settings for your panel.

I’ve Installed and am Running, Now What?

Now you get to customize the Openbox menu with your favorite applications. Menus are activated by right clicking anywhere on the desktop. There are a few default applications…I choose obconf right away so that I can choose a theme I like and increase the text size since I’m using a high resolution. After that is done, I right click for the menu again and go to applications >> xterm. When the terminal pops up, I type obmenu. From there, I’ll be able to edit my right click menu.

Now instead of entering obmenu in a terminal each time, let’s add it to our right click options. In obmenu window that you opened in the last paragraph, expand the Openbox 3 option. Find obconf and highlight it. Click ‘new item’ and add obmenu for a label, execute for action, and obmenu for Execute. This will add obmenu to your right click options so you don’t have to open a terminal each time to do things. You can also customize any of the items you find in applications…I put a few things I normally need such as thunderbird, firefox, gnome-terminal, etc. Feel free to add whatever you need…you can have many submenu’s . It’s setup is pretty straightforward.

Nitrogen requires a small tweak as well to get working. What I did was create a /home/user/Photos/Wallpaper directory and then loaded it up with my favorite desktop wallpaper. Good places to go for cool wallpapers is desktopography.com and vladstudio.com

After your first login, you’ll need to add a menu entry using obmenu to call the nitrogen browser. So create the menu entry and the action you call is:

nitrogen /home/user/Photos/wallpaper

So What Have we Done?

Today, we’ve installed Openbox 3.4.2 on Foresight Linux. We’ve given it a pypanel so we have a place to dock applications and we’ve customized the Openbox right click menu and added a wallpaper program called Nitrogen. Hopefully, this shows you the customizable features of Openbox and also shows you the speed that Openbox operates at. It’s a very minimalistic environment, yet one that can be very powerful.

Installation Notes of Interest

pypanel

Some things I’ve noticed when running openbox…network manager has problems with pypanel. I added the sleep command inside my autostart.sh and this is much better now…but there may be similar problems with network manager. It’s really NM searching for a network and it causes the panel to flicker a bit. Not a real show stopper.

Gnome-panel

Gnome-panel running inside openbox causes a few errors to pop up when I login. This could be due to the fact that I’ve started things in my autostart.sh out of order…I’m also not all together sure what is causing these errors. The problem seems to be with the docking area of gnome-panel as when I minimize programs they are not docked. Easily fixable, but annoying nonetheless.

Alternative Panels

There are quite a few alternative panels out there. fbpanel is one. Perlpanel is another. fbpanel and lxpanel are available in the Foresight repositories. You can also add other launchers like wbar if you so desire.

Screenshot

Installing Openbox on Foresight Linux originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on February 8, 2008.

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Working on a separate 20 inch monitor with a distribution in development however is another story. The fonts didn’t look beautiful at all. After some installation of custom fonts, things looked better, but the resolution is a bit higher on this LCD at 1400×1050. Easy to fix right? Just increase the DPI in the KDE Control Center to 120 right? Not so fast…even when it’s set to 96×96 there, it isn’t always set to 96×96. So let’s take a look at how you can force KDE to run at the correct DPI for your monitor which will, in turn, make your fonts look MUCH better. For those of you who are satisfied with your fonts, you might want to check out the commands below to see if you’re running at the DPI you think you are.

Open Konsole and let’s check your resolution:

xdpyinfo | grep dimension

This will tell you what the actual resolution of X is on your desktop. Next, look at the DPI setting.

xdpyinfo | grep resolution

Surprised? I was. I found that at the high resolution I was running at, the DPI was set to 86×86 despite my attempts to force it to 96×96 in the KDE Control Center.

So how does one combat this? It takes a bit of calculation with a formula followed by a one line entry into your xorg.conf. Easy enough? Almost too easy…couldn’t the KDE programmers, say, employ a control center menu for this? It’s possible…let’s hope it’s in KDE 4.0.

FORMULA

First, the formula. Using the dimensions you found above, you’ll have to calculate 2 numbers…one for horizontal and one for vertical. As my resolution is 1400×1050, I will use this as the example. The formula is as follows:

displaysize = (<pixelsize>/DPI-Desired)*25.4

In my case, displaysize = (1400/100)*25.4. This equals 355. I wrote this down for later. Now I need to use 1050 (my vertical setting for resolution 1400×1050) in the same formula (displaysize =(1050/100)*25.4) which comes out to 266. Keep these two numbers handy…remember, if you want 96 or 120 DPI for your monitor…sub in those numbers for the DPI-Desired and divide your resolution by them as shown in the formula above.

EDIT XORG.CONF

Open up xorg.conf in your favorite text editor..for example, my favorite is kate so I issue the following command: Alt-F2 (a run dialog pops up) >> kdesu kate /etc/X11/xorg.conf. You’ll be prompted for your root password to access this file. After it opens, find the “Monitor” section. Just before “EndSection” place a line like the following (substitute the values you found using the formula above):

DisplaySize 355 266 # 1400×1050 100dpi

Your display size may be different…just remember to place horizontal first, followed by vertical. Now you’ll need to restart X. Close all your applications and hit Control-Alt-Backspace. Log back in and issue the command we used previously for DPI:

xdpyinfo | grep resolution

If you followed the directions above correctly, your altered DPI settings should display. Gnome does this through a handy menu that’s very easy to use. It’s head and shoulders above what KDE does with fonts and setting DPI. Using Gnome at work for the past 4 months has shown me the many areas that KDE falls behind…but it also shows me the many areas where Gnome just doesn’t get the job done. In this case, KDE fails horribly on configuring DPI for nice looking fonts. Luckily, I was able to assemble information from various places on the web to get the job done. The page that helped me the most was Matt Parnell’s Brain, a weblog that had an entry with this formula. I wanted to reproduce the information here with a bit more hand holding so new users would be able to use the tip without getting confused. Hopefully, this helps!

KDE and Xorg, Fonts and DPI originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on September 20, 2007.

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First, let’s mention what this guide will not cover:

1. Remote Controls
2. IR Blasters
3. Picture Quality Settings

Why won’t I cover those? Because there are infinite possibilities for each one…and it would be impossible for me to investigate them all…hardware not in my possession besides. So, this will cover installing mythtv and omit the items above. Mythtv has those items covered quite well in their documentation.

Hardware Specifications:

1. HP a1520n
2. ATI x300 PCIe VPU
3. PVR150 and PVR350
4. Sharp Aquos 37″ LCD TV
5. USR MaxG PCI Card

Install PCLinuxOS…with a twist

When I installed PCLinuxOS, I created a user “mythtv” for my main desktop user on my media center pc. This is an easy way of ensuring that your user is part of the multimedia group that some how-to’s speak about. I recommend you do this also.

I created 3 partitions on my hard drive: /boot, /, and /home. I used ext3 for /boot and /, and XFS for /home…because /home will be where my video is kept. The /home partition is rather large for me since I have a 250GB Hard disk…and boot only has 100M with / having 15GB. /home gets the rest

Another thing I did was connect a network cable despite having a wireless adapter. This is so I could setup ntp right away during first boot. It’s imperative that the time be correct for your timezone because the MythTV guide data is totally dependent upon it. Since part of the installation is downloading guide data, I also recommend you do this.

After PCLinuxOS Install

After installing, I created a directory inside my /home/mythtv folder. I changed the permissions on this folder with the following command:

[root@localhost~]# chmod -R a+xrw video/

This will be the directory I use to store liveTV recordings and shows that I record. I also made sure that the current user (mythtv) owns this directory by listing the directories with the -l flag (ls -l).

Open Synaptic, click the reload button, click the mark all updates button, click the apply button. This will install all updates for the distro and bring us up to current.

Getting Ready for MythTV and Multimedia

Next up we have to get PCLinuxOS ready to play any media we throw at it. If this is legal in your country, install the following:

• RealPlayer
• RealPlayer-rpnp
• win32-codecs
• webcore-fonts
• dvdrip
• mysql (needed for mythtv)
• ivtv (for Hauppage Cards)
• dkms-ivtv

Make sure you accept all dependencies that are marked for installation by the package selection above. Texstar and the gang know what’s going on so you’re very safe with their dependency selection.

Optional Installation Candidates:

• Google Earth
• Picasa
• Google Desktop
• VLC

Before you install the MythTV packages, we need to make sure the MySQL package we installed is up and running. Open up a Konsole and type the following:

[root@localhost~]# service mysqld status

If the mysql daemon is running, great! If not, start it with ‘service mysqld start‘. Open up the PCLinuxOS Control Center and go to System >> Services. Make sure the checkbox is toggled on mysqld so that it will start on boot.

When you installed mysql in the step above…it installed with no root password set. This is bad for security reasons…especially if you later plan on using the web plugin for MythTV where you can access program data from the web. To change this, do the following:

[root@localhost~]# mysql -u root

This logs you into the mysql console. You’ll then be able to:

[root@localhost~]# mysql> SET PASSWORD FOR root@localhost=PASSWORD('password');

Make sure you replace the word ‘password’ with a password of your choosing. This will be the new root mysql password. Keep it in a safe place away from prying eyes

Installing MythTV

Now that we’ve got the mysql server running and all the prepatory packages installed, it’s time to get MythTV installed. If synaptic is not open, open synaptic and do a search for ‘MythTV’. You should see quite a good number of packages available for install. There are only 4 packages that we need to get MythTV running…so install the following:

• mythtv
• mythtv-setup
• mythtv-backend
• mythtv-frontend

Allow those installations to also select any dependencies they might need. Don’t worry, we can install other add-ons later. After installation of these packages, we’ll need to configure the backend of MythTV first so it can scrape program data from the web and store it in our MySQL database.

Configuration

To setup mythtv’s backend, we’re going to run myth-setup (that’s the command you can run from a konsole as well). This will ’setup’ our configuration for when we fire up the mythbackend. However, we need to give the MySQL database structure so that the data can be stored inside of it. To do this, MythTV gives you a .sql file that can be used to form the database structure.

[root@localhost~]# su

[root@localhost~]# mysql --user=root --password=passwordSETearlier < /usr/share/doc/mythtv-0.20/database/mc.sql

Now the structure is complete. It’s time to run the setup utility. Go to the PC Menu >> Multimedia >> Video >> MythTV Setup.

Step through the setup tasks. It’s ok to leave stuff you don’t know about…you can always tweak things later. Some items you must change are your IP (from 127.0.0.1 to whatever your IP is) if you plan on connecting a remote front end to it (say, one in your bedroom to the server backend in the living room). Since I run my server as a standalone one (both frontend and backend) I will leave this to 127.0.0.1.

I won’t cover all of the screens in the setup here. There is good documenation available at the mythtv website: http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-9.html#ss9.1

Only step through 9.1 on that link as we’ll need to do some more with PCLinuxOS before moving onto the next step.

Make sure that you’ve previously setup the correct lineup with zap2it…and remember that this month they’ll stop allowing free service so you’ll have to pay per month for their service. The reason you need to have an account with zap2it is so that during the next few steps, we’ll be downloading channel data for the MythTV install.

Finish out the setup configuration. Now we need to start the backend which will read the configuration we just did so that when we download channel data, it connects through the backend daemon and uses it for access to MySQL (remember the IP address and user/password in the screens?). To start the backend, open a konsole and su to root.

[root@localhost~]# su

enter your root password when prompted.

[root@localhost~]# service mythbackend start

The backend starts up and reports back that it was successful. Now it’s time to fill the database with channel data by running mythfilldatabase.
After it starts, execute:

[root@localhost~]# mythfilldatabase

This fills your database with channel data from your zap2it lineup. You now have MythTV ready to go with full configuration. There are numerous tweaks such as filters and encoders/decoders that I won’t go into here…mainly because I don’t know much about them. Experiment around and see what suits your cable signal and your install.

Problems I encountered with mythfilldatabase
My backend wasn’t running when I first executed the mythfilldatabase command and no amount of executing the command “service mthbackend start” could get it to work. So my mythfilldatabase kept timing out when trying to connect to the backend and fill the mysql database with channel info.

I isolated my problem to my /home/mythtv/video directory. Inside of this directory there is a file used by mythtv named nfslockfile.lock. This file had the wrong permissions set for it when I looked at it and mythtv couldn’t access it. So, I opened up a konsole, and ran

[root@localhost~]# chmod a+rwx nfslockfile.lock

[root@localhost~]# chown mythtv:mythtv nfslockfile.lock

Then, fired up the backend again with:

[root@localhost~]# service mythbackend start

and once that was accomplished, I reran mythfilldatabase and things were like greased lightening.

Continuing the Installation and Finalizing
After you channel data is finished downloading and reports it successfully saved in the database, you can start the front end. Before doing that though it is wise to check to make sure your capture cards are working (most happauge cards work quite well out of the box)

To do so, open up a konsole and type the following:

[root@localhost~]# mplayer /dev/video0

This should play channel video using mplayer. If it works, you know you capture card is functional. If you have a second card like me, test it out with:

[root@localhost~]# mplayer /dev/video1

You should have picture and sound from the default TV channel done during the lineup import (mythfilldatabase). If this doesn’t work for you, you’ll have to do some searching on mythtv and your model of capture card. This how-to won’t cover that but I’ll try to answer questions in the comments section.

So, we’ll assume that video is good for you and that the mythfilldatabase went fine and that you’re ready to watch TV. Open up the PC Menu >> Multimedia >> MythTV.

I also copied this MythTV shortcut to my desktop by click dragging it out of the PC menu to the desktop (choose copy here). Then you don’t have to access the menu each time, you can simply double click the shortcut.

Once the front end is up and running, you can immediately go to ‘watch tv’ though it may not look very good due to aspect ratio and filters not being set as well as quality not being set. You change these values by configuring the front end.

Configure the front end with the instructions here: http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-10.html

Now that you’ve got stuff setup the way you like it and you’re watching TV on your new MythTV box, you can add a few ‘plugins’ to supplement your experience.

I chose to install the following add ons:

• mythmusic
• mythnews
• mythdvd
• myththemes
• mythweather

You can choose others but please be advised that mytharchive currently doesn’t work as it is missing a dependency….I’ve reported the problem to the devs and it should be solved soon.

That’s about it! Pretty straight forward as long as you do things in order. I messed up 3-4 times and had to start over when creating this how-to…I installed mythtv before I installed mysql one time…I even messed up and forgot to connect the box to the internet once and banged my head at why it wouldn’t download channel data (it was the end of a long weekend and it was VERY early in the morning).

In all, don’t give up! Keep on trying and if you have questions, please ask via the comments and I’ll try to point you in the right direction.

For those of you already running MythTV…
I’m specifically interested in what combination of filters people have used for their cable TV…it seems I can’t get as good of quality with my us-cable signal that others report (I have a Sharp Aquos 37” LCD TV to display my TV on). So, if you find a good combination, please share it in the comments!

How-To: PCLinuxOS 2007 and MythTV originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on August 30, 2007.

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