Linux Mint – Scott Mcintyre

Create new panel on second monitor

Scott Mcintyre — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 16:06:06 +0000

If you need to add a second panel/task window on your second (or more in my case) monitors using ubuntu/debian/mint linux here are two ways to achieve it.

First you should right click on the current panel and click “New panel” then all you have to do is move the panel to the other monitor of which there are a few ways, the easiest two are

– Hold ALT and drag the panel to the new window.
or
– Right click the panel and go to properties
– Uncheck “Expand”
– Now drag the smaller panel to the monitor you want it on
– Right click and re-check expand and also select where you want it (top/bottom/left/right)

Then simply add what items you want on the panel. In my case I added the Window List item.

Linux convert AIFF to mp3

Scott Mcintyre — Sun, 10 Jun 2012 11:42:56 +0000

You can convert AIFF files to MP3 using ffmpeg on linux. This works with many other inputs and not just AIFF but in the instance I was testing I needed to convert AIFF.

First you need ffmpeg and libmp3lame which on Ubuntu and Linux Mint can be done with

sudo apt-get install libavcodec-extra-53 ffmpeg

Then use ffmpeg to do the conversion replacing INPUT.aiff and OUTPUT.mp3

ffmpeg -i INPUT.aiff -f mp3 -acodec libmp3lame -ab 192000 -ar 44100 OUTPUT.mp3

Sample,

scott@scott:~/Music$ ffmpeg -i INPUT.mp3 -f mp3 -acodec libmp3lame -ab 192000 -ar 44100 OUTPUT.mp3
ffmpeg version 0.7.3-4:0.7.3-0ubuntu0.11.10.1, Copyright (c) 2000-2011 the Libav developers
built on Jan 4 2012 16:08:51 with gcc 4.6.1
configuration: –extra-version=’4:0.7.3-0ubuntu0.11.10.1′ –arch=amd64 –prefix=/usr –enable-vdpau –enable-bzlib –enable-libgsm –enable-libschroedinger –enable-libspeex –enable-libtheora –enable-libvorbis –enable-pthreads –enable-zlib –enable-libvpx –enable-runtime-cpudetect –enable-vaapi –enable-gpl –enable-postproc –enable-swscale –enable-x11grab –enable-libdc1394 –enable-shared –disable-static
WARNING: library configuration mismatch
avutil configuration: –extra-version=’4:0.7.3ubuntu0.11.10.1+medibuntu1′ –arch=amd64 –prefix=/usr –enable-vdpau –enable-bzlib –enable-libgsm –enable-libschroedinger –enable-libspeex –enable-libtheora –enable-libvorbis –enable-pthreads –enable-zlib –enable-libvpx –enable-runtime-cpudetect –enable-libopencore-amrnb –enable-libopencore-amrwb –enable-version3 –enable-vaapi –enable-libopenjpeg –enable-libfaac –enable-nonfree –enable-gpl –enable-postproc –enable-swscale –enable-x11grab –enable-libdirac –enable-libmp3lame –enable-librtmp –enable-libx264 –enable-libxvid –enable-libopencore-amrnb –enable-version3 –enable-libopencore-amrwb –enable-version3 –enable-libvo-aacenc –enable-version3 –enable-libvo-amrwbenc –enable-version3 –enable-libdc1394 –enable-shared –disable-static
avcodec configuration: –extra-version=’4:0.7.3ubuntu0.11.10.1+medibuntu1′ –arch=amd64 –prefix=/usr –enable-vdpau –enable-bzlib –enable-libgsm –enable-libschroedinger –enable-libspeex –enable-libtheora –enable-libvorbis –enable-pthreads –enable-zlib –enable-libvpx –enable-runtime-cpudetect –enable-libopencore-amrnb –enable-libopencore-amrwb –enable-version3 –enable-vaapi –enable-libopenjpeg –enable-libfaac –enable-nonfree –enable-gpl –enable-postproc –enable-swscale –enable-x11grab –enable-libdirac –enable-libmp3lame –enable-librtmp –enable-libx264 –enable-libxvid –enable-libopencore-amrnb –enable-version3 –enable-libopencore-amrwb –enable-version3 –enable-libvo-aacenc –enable-version3 –enable-libvo-amrwbenc –enable-version3 –enable-libdc1394 –enable-shared –disable-static
libavutil 51. 7. 0 / 51. 7. 0
libavcodec 53. 6. 0 / 53. 6. 0
libavformat 53. 3. 0 / 53. 3. 0
libavdevice 53. 0. 0 / 53. 0. 0
libavfilter 2. 4. 0 / 2. 4. 0
libswscale 2. 0. 0 / 2. 0. 0
libpostproc 52. 0. 0 / 52. 0. 0
[aiff @ 0x100d560] max_analyze_duration reached
Input #0, aiff, from ‘INPUT.aiff’:
Duration: 00:53:17.08, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1411 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Audio: pcm_s16be, 44100 Hz, 2 channels, s16, 1411 kb/s
Output #0, mp3, to ‘OUTPUT.mp3’:
Metadata:
TSSE : Lavf53.3.0
Stream #0.0: Audio: libmp3lame, 44100 Hz, 2 channels, s16, 192 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
Press ctrl-c to stop encoding
size= 74933kB time=3197.13 bitrate= 192.0kbits/s
video:0kB audio:74933kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 0.000042%

Skype Auto Popup with Cinnamon

Scott Mcintyre — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 08:52:22 +0000

** Update 2 July 2014 ** May be outdated, see comments

Since my migration to Linux Mint 12 I noticed a very annoying issue. When receiving a new message Skype pops up to the forefront over the current window. Needless to say it’s extremely annoying!

Luckily a quick google shows a active bug at github which contains a couple of suggestions. I tried simply disabling the auto focus feature bit this ended up making all my panels disappear. This fix by rat4 seems to solve the problem.

Here’s what I done

sudo wget -O /usr/share/cinnamon/js/ui/windowAttentionHandler.js https://raw.github.com/rat4/Cinnamon/21a08f6f9e13f7ba4e3bf633b7ba4b36fd22a291/js/ui/windowAttentionHandler.js
sudo wget -O /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/org.cinnamon.gschema.xml https://raw.github.com/rat4/Cinnamon/21a08f6f9e13f7ba4e3bf633b7ba4b36fd22a291/data/org.cinnamon.gschema.xml
sudo apt-get install dconf-tools

Went to System Tools->Dconf Editor and change the value of notification-style to 0

Possible values are,

0 – do nothing here, but other notificators (window list applet) still can take care
1 – bring window to front, like current cinnamon
2 – show banner “app is ready”, like gnome shell

The final step is just to restart Cinnamon.

Now when I get a new message it has the desired effect and simply flashes rather than pops up.

Migrating from Ubuntu 11.10 to Linux Mint

Scott Mcintyre — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:02:27 +0000

Last night I decided to apply the Ubuntu 11.10 upgrade because the update notification was getting annoying and boy it turned out to be a pain. The previous upgrade introduced Unity which if you just have a google search look at the top recommendations should explain it all.

“Unity Sucks” the top recommendation next to the term itself.

In the previous release I was happy because the gnome classic to get gnome 2 worked but as of 11.10 this isn’t possible. It’s either Unity or GNOME 3 (Classic is available). Unity lasted no more than 10 minutes in testing, it’s clearly designed for tablets and is horrendous to use. GNOME 3 I could get used to but would need to tweak more, I really dislike the overly large icons and large notifications.

After a bit of trial and messing around I even managed to make all my panels disappear and couldn’t figure out how to return them and decided to just take the plunge and switch to mint 12 with cinnamon. The migration was rather easy, I simply installed mint and restored my backup of /home to retain all my old settings. Reinstalled skype, thunderbird, chrome, firefox, nagstamon and xchat and that was everything back with the exception of being on Mint 12.

The standard mint brings the gnome 2 feel but I still couldn’t quite take to it so went ahead and installed cinnamon and I have to say I quite like it. With the exception of not having a taskbar on the other screens but there does seem to be a bug issue last updated a few days ago for this at https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues/130 so with any luck this will be introduced soon.

Overall everything seems quite snappy, the UI is what I want and it’s back to business as usual.