Linux

Hi, I’ve just discovered Dmix, a plugin supplied with ALSA which allows for direct mixing of multiple streams of audio (for example, you can have amaroK playing your favourite MP3 and still hear KDE notifications when new friends join in IM)

As from alsa-lib 1.0.9, Dmix is activated by default so absolutely no (manual) configuration required. I can confirm that Dmix is working out of the box for me with my somewhat high-end Terratec DMX 6fire 24/96 sound card (ICE1712 ALSA driver).

amaroK supports ALSA natively and getting it to use the Dmix plugin is simple:

As soon as plug:dmix is specified as the device to use, amaroK stops monopolising the sound card and other audio applications (if they support ALSA) can be used at the same time.

To be continued…

Yep! It’s true. I am now running OpenOffice.org 1.9.122 on my AMD64 Gentoo Linux box. The biggest problem with this setup is that OO needs a 32-bits version of Java and this is not available normally (as it is replaced (sensibly) by a 64-bits JVM). Here’s how I succeeded:

• Emerge glibc-2.3.5-r1 (which is still ~amd64) because of some compatibility issues

  (1) echo "=sys-libs/glibc/glibc-2.3.5-r1 ~amd64" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords
(2) emerge -av glibc

• Manual install of a 32-bits Java SDK or JRE

  Go to http://java.sun.com/ and download a 32-bits Java SDK or JRE and install it manually at a suitable place (e.g. /opt/nonportage/j2sdk1.4.2_06/). I personally use a relatively old SDK which I downloaded some months ago and everything seem to work well…

• Emerge the latest OpenOffice.Org 2.0 Beta

  The 2.0 Beta is ~amd64 and hard-masked. Looks like paranoia to me :-)

  echo "=app-office/openoffice-bin-1.9.122 ~amd64" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords
echo "app-office/openoffice-bin" >> /etc/portage/package.unmask
emerge -av =openoffice-bin-1.9.122

• Modify some environment variables and run OpenOffice once

  export JDK_HOME=/opt/nonportage/j2sdk1.4.2_06
export JAVA_HOME=${JDK_HOME}
export JAVAC=${JDK_HOME}/bin/javac
export PATH=${JDK_HOME}/bin:${JDK_HOME}/jre/bin:${PATH}
export MANPATH=${MANPATH}:${JDK_HOME}/man
/opt/OpenOffice.org/program/soffice

  Of course, replace /opt/nonportage/j2sdk1.4.2_06 by the path you used when installing the 32-bits JDK or JRE.

  Enjoy! OpenOffice will remember the location of the 32-bits Java SDK or JRE and you won’t need to modify any environment variables afterwards…

“Il n’y a que les imbeciles qui ne changent jamais d’avis…”

As you can guess by looking at this screenshot, I’m using KDE now (and I’m pleased to tell you that it works perfectly on my Athlon 64 running 64-bits Gentoo Linux). I’ve rediscovered KDE by accident… which I will relate now :

• It all started when I downloaded (out of curiosity) iTunes for Windows which I used to convert my whole CD collection (about 100 CDs) to MP3 format. I was very impressed by iTunes.
• I looked for a similar program running under Linux and I quickly found out about AmaroK.
• AmaroK was a KDE application and, as I was running Gnome, I tried to find something like AmaroK in Gnomeland.
• And I did not succeed… :-)

I quickly realised that there was lots and lots of great KDE applications like AmaroK which I didn’t know about because of my fixation on Gnome and Gtk applications. And I was devastated… So, I decided to give KDE a second chance (as I was a previous KDE 2.0 user before switching to Gnome for some unknown reasons).

KDE has become a (nearly) perfect desktop environment. I run version 3.3.2 and everything is beautiful and snappy.

The standard KDE applications are OK but nothing to shout about. Fortunately, I quickly discovered KDE-Apps where I found some very promising KDE apps which I intend now to test :

• celestia – The free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions.
• filelight – graphically represent your filesystem as a set of concentric segmented-rings.
• kdissert – mindmapping-like tool to help [people] to produce complicated documents very quickly and efficiently.
• kdevelop – an easy to use Integrated Development Environment for KDE [which] supports many programming languages.
• kile – an integrated LaTeX environment.
• kmymoney2 – a full-featured replacement for Windows-based finance software.
• lyx – is an advanced open source document processor that encourages an approach to writing based on the structure of your documents, not their appearance.
• scribus – brings award-winning professional DTP to Linux and *nix desktops with a combination of “press-ready” output and new approaches to page layout.

I am also testing blender which is an open source software for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback. Blender is not a KDE application though.

Aha ! Interesting times ahead !

I’ll keep you posted.