App of the week

[Patrick]

I found a distro that installs MythTV pretty painlessly:
http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html

The distro needs to install to a hard drive. It can't run off the CD(like
knoppix). The distro uses a customized version of knoppix for hardware
detection during the install. I'm going to try installing to my new hard
drive tonight. I'll let you know how it goes. Please note that the auto
install option will take the whole hard drive and wipe out all existing
data. This is nice way to setup a PVR system especially since hard drives
are fairly cheap these days.

Some useful links:
http://www.mythtv.org/
http://www.mythtvtalk.com/forum/index.php - mythtv forum
http://bit.blkbk.com/ - MythTV linux distro for the X-box
http://www-isl.mach.uni-karlsruhe.de/~h ... alkthrough
- debian install how-to (for reference)

[Patrick]

Duke Nukem 3D for linux:
http://icculus.org/duke3d/
http://www.linuxpackages.net/download.php?id=4247

[Patrick]

Doom3 for linux:
http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/do ... 58ad4524e4

Python CAD:
http://www.pythoncad.org/

Konkurrency (money converter):
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=16733

[Judland]

Active desktop elements for your KDE environment:

SuperKaramba: http://netdragon.sourceforge.net/

[Patrick]

I tried lxdvdrip with mixed results. The first dvd I tried to rip & burn
worked great until it got to the burning part. The default setting is
/dev/scd0. Well I don't have scsi emulation (like most recent distros). I
checked the readme file and made some modifications to the config file:
point to the correct device for my burner, turn on the option to delete
the temporary work datasets, set the default language for the audio track
rip, etc.. The second time everything worked smoothly. After ripping and
re-encoding the dvd lxdvdrip gives you the option to view the movie via
mplayer. After viewing your newly encoded movie the burning part kicks in
and then the temporary work files are deleted. lxdvdrip grabs the primary
title on the dvd and strips off your default language audio track. None of
the closed caption files or extras are copied. I tried another dvd and
lxdvdrip couldn't open it. I checked out the help forums on the developers
web site and he says that lxdvdrip doesn't rip encrypted dvds. Kinda
strange since I'm pretty sure the first dvd I backed up had encryption. No
big deal, I just ripped with dvdbackup and then ran lxdvdrip pointing to
the directory where the ripped dvd files were located.

Positives:
- One step ripping, encoding and burning (you can't do with dvdshrink via
wine)
- 100% linux native
- it works

Negatives:
- Ripping portion was noticeable slower than dvdbackup
- It does not have all the options that dvdshrink offers (ripping extras,
captions or alternate audio tracks)
- commandline only

Bottom line:
- Lxdvdrip is very useful even if it's not 100% equal in capability to
dvdshrink/nero(under windows)

If I had the time I would definitely be into coding up a gui frontend to
let you choose your ripper, encoder and burning software. I'll definitely
be using lxdvdrip & dvdbackup in the future. Another nail in the coffin
for the windows box.
Party on!

[Patrick]

Last week Citadel was talking about VOIP. I found this site which offers a free/downloadable distro which acts as a VOIP server:
http://www.xorcom.com/

[Patrick]

I recently found this air combat game:
http://www.heptargon.de/gl-117/gl-117.html

A fast machine and a video card with 3d acceleration is a must. It runs like a champ on my 2.4 ghz celeron.

[Judland]

Been playing around with StreamTuner to help manage the Internet "radio" streams I listen too.

Works pretty well. I wrote up a brief HowTo on my website if anyone's interested.

[brainless]

checkout http://sourceforge.net/potm/ for some of the best open source projects around