HowTo: Installation of an Ubuntu Cloud Image at Home (on a Xenial – 16.04)

This HowTo describes an installation of an Ubuntu Cloud Image on a home-server running Ubuntu Xenial (16.04 LTS) with qemu-kvm. This will be done without the help of libvirt, which comes with an additional abstraction layer I don’t really need. This blog post is more about basic understanding of virtualization and how it is set up in a more or less simple way – unfortunately it’ll be more complex than I initially thought. But with this HowTo this shouldn’t be a problem anymore.

Continue reading “HowTo: Installation of an Ubuntu Cloud Image at Home (on a Xenial – 16.04)”

DVBSky S952 Installation on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) HOWTO

DVBSky-S952The DVBSky S952 is a very popular Twin-DVB-S2 card on a budget which is often used in HTPCs or in Linux boxes with Kodi and/or VDR. Even Technotrend seams to produce this card as a de facto OEM version (TT S2-4200) now, which will be supported in kernel 4.7. Since Linux kernel 3.19 (e.g. used by Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet)) the DVBSky S952 is also supported by the mainline v4l tree, so it should work right away after installation. This sounds good, but it has not to be like that. I’m using kernel 4.4.0 (16.04 (LTS); Xenial Xerus) and this card didn’t work for me out of the box. So what are the options to make this card work for You? Continue reading “DVBSky S952 Installation on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) HOWTO”

iGo Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard on Android

HID support on Cyanogenmod makes Stowaway connects to your deviceFew years ago I’ve bought a really nice Bluetooth keyboard for a Windows Mobile 2003SE device. It’s really a little masterpiece and I still love this nifty gadget very much. The same day I’ve bought an Android device last year, I’ve paired this keyboard with my brand new HTC Desire, but it didn’t work.
After rooting became almost a piece of cake [1], I took all my courage and finally rooted my HTC Desire. The best about the Cyanogenmod 6 was, it has HID support built in. That means you can use things like standard Bluetooth mice and keyboards. But it turned out most of very basic keys weren’t mapped properly – especially the German umlauts. But what I’ve really missed was the Escape key for vi (best editor in world 😉 ).
Continue reading “iGo Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard on Android”

3D Vision with window mode – Nvidia 266.58 – Thanks!

Goole Earth in 3D - with Nvidia 3D VisionOn the forth of January 2011 Nvidia revealed a new Beta driver, which was quite a surprise for me. I’ve been looking for this driver since it was first announced in November 2009. It should bring the capability to support 3D Vision in a windowed mode. So e.g. Google Earth and other windowed application could be used. Periodically I was seeking the web for new rumors or news, but gave up in some point in time last year. But now: Bam! Here it is. And it gets even better. The new driver comes with a new 3D Portal (3dvisionlive.com), which offers a 3D picture and Video gallery – all in a browser windows – just great. Continue reading “3D Vision with window mode – Nvidia 266.58 – Thanks!”

Linux: Getting Information About Your Video Device

I was about to teach Skype about how to use HQ video transmission, means a transmission where your video resolution is more than 176×144 or 352×288 (PAL). I’ve read, that adding these lines into your $HOME/.Skype/<your skype user name here>/.config.xml

<Video>
<CaptureHeight>480</CaptureHeight>
<CaptureWidth>640</CaptureWidth>
</Video>

into the <Lib> section, would Skype make HQ Video transmission. But it didn’t for some reasons. Some mentioned to use also the <Fps> tag, but also gave the advice to check if the hardware even supports such frame-rates and resolutions. Continue reading “Linux: Getting Information About Your Video Device”

Linux Administration: The Top of the Tops

top 5 Linux top commandsIf you are a Linux beginner and want to look like a pro instantly, this is the right article for you!
Joke aside – it’s actually not for beginner only, these are my tools I’m using on a every-day basis. And I can’t imagine to live without them anymore. I’m going to show You my top 5 Linux command line top tools. This is actually a word pun, or a recursion, because the tools I’m talking about, do have the word ‘top’ in them. Here goes my extremely helpful collection: Continue reading “Linux Administration: The Top of the Tops”

[HOWTO] Workaround for a broken AVCHD playback with VDPAU on Karmic

The release of Karmic Koala inspired me to upgrade to this new Ubuntu 9.10 version and also to install the latest My Media System (a light Media Center for Linux), wich is version 1.1.2 actually. All was fine, beside the playback of AVCHD footage from my Canon HF100 FullHD camcorder. I’ve noticed already some time ago, AVCHD footage doesn’t work with the ‘-fps 50‘ switch anymore. The solution for the problem, so I wrote, was to use ‘-correct-pts‘ instead. Continue reading “[HOWTO] Workaround for a broken AVCHD playback with VDPAU on Karmic”

[HOWTO] HDTV with Karmic Koala (Ubuntu 9.10) using VDR, Xine or Xineliboutput

VDPAU was one of the big topics here on this blog for quite a while. Mplayer was well known to work together with VDPAU and Nvidia’s graphics cards >= 8xxx from almost the very beginning. But not Xine. The developers of Xine didn’t run mplayer’s approach, which was almost nothing else, but the code reuse of the code Nvidia itself published for their VDPAU driver.

Continue reading “[HOWTO] HDTV with Karmic Koala (Ubuntu 9.10) using VDR, Xine or Xineliboutput”

Face Recognition for Linux with Picasa 3.5 and Wine

Picasa 3.5 with Face RegocnitionFace Recognition for Linux haven’t been available on Linux yet. Sure – there are some ready-to-use libs, but that’s interesting for developers only. When it came to ready-to-use applications, you only could choose between MacOS or Windows. (Excuse me, but face recognition at Google’s PicasaWeb Album is a bit too spooky for me and I won’t upload 100GB of photographs)
That’s why I was quiet pleased, when I read Picasa 3.5 do face recognition now. Going to the download section, I’ve found only version 3.0beta for Linux – no 3.5! And then I’ve read here: Continue reading “Face Recognition for Linux with Picasa 3.5 and Wine”

New Mplayer slows down AVCHD footage

I’ve built the latest mplayer trunk (r29664) in order being able to play back 3gp videos with sound. All was fine and my 3gp videos had sound after I’ve installed the appropriate libraries, built and compiled the current mplayer version.
But after a while I’ve noticed, that mplayer, no matter how I’ve invoked it (with or without my mplayer-vdpau wrapper script for My Media System), played back my AVCHD footage from my Canon HF100 in slow motion (e.g. half speed), and the sound of course wasn’t in sync either. Continue reading “New Mplayer slows down AVCHD footage”