The wifi-wiz interface is easy to use and can save your networks so that reconnecting is simple. This is a boon for anyone who has had issues getting wifi working on a Debian-based laptop.

Getting and Installing

Installing wifi-wiz is simple. Download the compressed .deb file from the creators’ site. Once the file is on your machine open up a terminal window, change into the directory where the file was saved, issue the command:

tar xvf wifi-wiz.tar

and then issue the command (as root):

dpkg -i wifi-wiz.deb

which will install the package.

Running wifi-wiz

Once Wifi-wiz is installed you wan start the application with the command wifi-wiz. NOTE: You will have to have root privileges in order run the software.

Wifi-wiz Main Window

When wifi-wiz starts you will see a very simple, easy to navigate window where all of the action takes place.

The first thing you should do is click on the Scan button which will scan the area for wireless networks. When the scan is finished all you have to do is select the network you want to connect to, configure that network (with which protocol you will connect, what wireless security type, the security key for the network, and if you want to set the DNS servers. Once you have the settings for your network done all you have to do is click Connect and your laptop will quickly connect to the configured access point.

Saved Networks

Once you have a network saved in Wifi-wiz you can click on the manage tab to change any configurations necessary. From this tab you can also delete a network and disconnect from a network.

Settings

From the settings tab there is an important setting you can take care of. If you want to run the wifi-wiz daemon at boot you can set this option here. You can also set the interval between connection checks for the daemon. Once you make any changes to your connection properties make sure you click the Save Network button.

Final Thoughts

I have used many wireless device managers on Linux. I have also tried a number of wireless device managers on this particular laptop. The one manager for debian systems that works with the most consistency is Wifi-wiz. It’s simple to use, reliable, and (in some cases – such as Elive) is the only option that works.

If you are looking for a good wireless manager for Debian download Wifi-wiz and give it a go. And, if you’re up to the task, create an rpm from the deb so this application can be used on more distributions.

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Acidrip works with mp3lame and Mencoder for the ripping process and uses lsdvd to be able to which reads and prints the contents of the dvd to the terminal. The process is very simple:

• Insert DVD
• Open up Acidrip
• Press the Load button
• Press the Start button
• Wait

Of course the process of ripping a DVD isn’t quick. And you’re going to need some space on your machine to hold the temporary file (which can get large). Depending upon your system, you might notice a slowdown as the application does it’s thing. On an AMD Sempron with 1 Gig of RAM I noticed a moderate hit on my system (though not to the point the system was unusable.)

Although the process is not quick the quality of video that is ripped is quite good. In fact I have yet to notice any drop in quality from the original to the copy. Acidrip is that good.

Once feature of the tool that I especially like is the preview window. The preview window shows an embedded preview of the DVD contents before the ripping process begins.

Acidrip Main Window

When you start Acidrip the the main (and only) window opens allowing you to set up the process of ripping. As you can see (in the image to the left) I am ripping the Rush Snakes and Arrows Live DVD. The only information I had to enter was in the Info dropdown list. You can select various bits of information to add to the file. Other than that it’s just a matter of clicking the Load button and then clicking the Start button.

During the ripping process you can switch to the Compact view by clicking the Compact button.

Final Thoughts

If you have ever had any doubts that Linux was primed and ready for the desktop, doubt no more. Applications like Acidrip make tasks that were once considered “expert-only” on Linux so user-friendly your grandparents and your four year old sister could handle. If you have any DVD ripping needs turn to Acidrip, you will find it one of the most user-friendly DVD rippers around.

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There was once a plugin for Beryl that worked with this. But since Beryl became Compiz, the developer of the screencast plugin found migrating to Compiz too difficult. Work ceased on that plugin. So I tried a bevy  of applications until I managed to get gtk-recordMyDesktop to work.

Installing the app

Installing the app was simple. Since Elive Compiz is a Debian based operating system it was just a matter of issuing the command (as root):

apt-get install gtk-recordmydesktop

Once the application was installed I found it in the Video menu of the E17 Applications menu.

You can also install gtk-recordmydesktop by doing a search for it in your Add/Remove Software utility.

Running the app

Main Window

When you open up gtk-recordmydesktop the main window will open. As you can see (in the image to the left) the window immediately begins grabbing your root desktop window.

What you do from here is select the window you want to grab. When you click the “Select Window” button your cursor will turn into a fat “+” symbol when your cursor hovers over the window displaying the screen. What you want to do is click and drag that cursor over the section of the desktop you want to record. If you want to record the entire desktop you select the entire desktop.

Once you’ve done that you click “Record” and the gtk-recordmydesktop window will minimize. In the case of Elive Compiz it will minimize to a small red dot at the bottom left of your screen. This small red dot is what you click when you are finished recording.

Problems

When I created a video of Elive Compiz, with the default settings, the playback was so bad it

Advanced Settings

wasn’t viewable. The defaults settings could grab all of the 3D effects. In order to get this to work I had to configure two options. To get to this options click the Advanced button from the main window. A new window will open (as shown in the image to the right) where you configure all advanced settings. Click on the Performance tab. There are two settings to change. The first setting is the Frames Per Second. The highest you can set this is 50, so max that baby out.

The next setting is the “Full shots at every frame”. You need to enable this in order to capture any 3D effects. It should be auto-enabled when any compositing is use. In my case this did not happen.

Once you have made these changes, click the Advanced button again to get rid of the settings window. Now when you record your Compiz-enabled desktop you should have decent output.

Output

The output of gtk-recordmydesktop is Ogg Vorbis Video (ogv). If you need to convert that format you can use a command-line tool like ffmpeg to covert to mpg like so:

ffmpeg -i input_filename.ogv ouput_filename.mpg

The quality of the ogv format is going to be much better than the mpg format when converted. There are ffmpeg settings you can tweak to try to raise the quality of your output. Play around with that to see how you can eek out the best quality. To get a peek at what both gtk-recordmydesktop and Elive Compiz can do, check out the sample video link I created below.

elive_compiz_small1

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What exactly is a Live CD? A Live CD is a CD (or flash drive) that contains a complete and bootable operating system that is run directly from the CD and not the hard drive. There are many types of Live CDs that serve different purposes. There are live distributions for repairing Windows or Linux systems (such as SystemRescueCD). There are live cds for nearly every Linux distribution that allow you to test and/or install the distribution (Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSuSE, Mandriva, ELive). You can even do stress testing and benchmarking with Live CDs like Inquisitor. Or what about a complete, embedded firewall distribution m0n0wall.

Why Use a Live CD?

The main purpose of a Live CD is to test drive Linux. A Live CD runs directly from the CD and the PCs RAM and does not even need a hard disk to run. Because of this, you can rest assure that a Live CD is not going to alter your hard disk unless you actually choose to install the Live CD onto your drive.

There are many reasons why a Live CD would be preferred. For instance, hardware diagnostics. I have employed Puppy Linux on numerous occassions in order to get information on a piece of hardware or test to see if a piece of hardware is working. I have also used that same Live distribution to run older machines where only certain functions are necessary. Live CDs are also great choices for cafes where you want to start with a clean slate every day. Another great use for a Live CD is when a machine has no mutable storage (a hard drive) and you want to run the computer as a pseudo “dumb terminal” or “thin client”. This would allow users to execute certain tasks so long as they didn’t need to save any work.

But what if you want to save information? For that you can use the flash drive-based Live distributions. With a large enough flash drive the user can also save data as well as run the operating system. If you’re looking for a pre-installed solution Mandriva has the Mandriva Flash Drive which has 6 gigs of free space for data.

One of the best reasons for using a Live distribution, in my opinion, is testing to see if that distribution works well with the hardware you have. I have one particular laptop that, when it comes time to upgrade operating systems, I wind up burning numerous distributions onto CD and running each one of them until one of them can work with the finicky hardware on that machine.

Drawbacks

One of the biggest drawbacks of using a Live CD is the speed. Remember, you are running this from RAM so the amount of RAM the machine has (as well as the speed of the CD drive) will determine how fast your Live CD distribution will run. So a machine with low RAM will run poorly. This isn’t such an issue if you are planning on installing immediately. But using the Live CD on a low-RAM machine will be painfully slow.

The other drawback was already mentioned, unless you are using a flash drive-based Live distribution, you can not save data. If you are only testing the distribution out to see if you like it, that’s not a problem.

Final Thoughts

Live CDs are here to stay. They have many uses and few drawbacks. If you are hesitant to use a Live CD because you don’t want to lose data, you shouldn’t worry about that (unless you accidentally click the installation button and accidentally click through all of the steps to install the operating system.)

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