How to set JAVA_HOME environment variable in Ubuntu
Ubuntu, Tips and TricksI am actually creating this blog entry as a bookmark for myself, but since I know that I never remember how to do it, others might benefit as well!
One way that you can set your JAVA_HOME variable and add to your PATH, is be doing the folowing. As 'sudo' open up /etc/bash.bashrc and add the following to the end of the file. NOTE: Set the java path to whatever the actual path is on your environment if it does not match /usr/lib/jvm/java
JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java export JAVA_HOME PATH=$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin export PATH
When you reboot, try running the following:
$ echo $JAVA_HOME /usr/lib/jvm/java echo $PATH [probably lots of paths]:/usr/lib/jvm/java/bin
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How to install KDE 4.1 on Ubuntu Hardy 8.01 and my impressions of it
Ubuntu, LinuxWith yesterday's announcement of the 4.1.0 release of KDE, my willpower did not allow me to go another day without giving KDE4 another shot. For a bit of history, I have been using Gnome for several years. In the past 3 months or so I began using KDE 3.5.9 long enough that I began to enjoy it and realize that it is a nice desktop environment as well. At this point I really have no favorite between the two and like different things about both of them.
When the first releases of KDE 4 started showing up several months ago, I gave it a shot but was extremely underwhelmed. While it came with all the warnings from the community that the 4.0 release was nothing more than the introduction of a new platform which developers would expand, some of the basic pieces of it just felt wrong. I can clearly say that after spending most of an afternoon using it, running my development environment, and doing basic daily functions, 4.1 is light years beyond the first peak I had of it. I am *really* enjoying it so far and I have a feeling it will be my desktop of choice for the immediate future.
One thing that seems to not be common knowledge to some people is that you can just install it and try it out without affecting your existing desktop environments, be it KDE 3.5.x or Gnome. For example, my current installation started out as Kubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. Shortly after installing I added Gnome by running:
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
If this type of setup sounds like something you want to try out, do the following. First, add the following repo into your /etc/apt/sources.list file:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-members-kde4/ubuntu hardy main
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install kubuntu-kde4-desktop kdeplasma-addons amarok-kde4 and kontact-kde4 kate-kde4 kmail-kde4
Firebug with Firefox 3 in Ubuntu Hardy Heron
Browsers, UbuntuThat all changed this morning! I was looking through packages and discovered that there is a Firebug package in the Ubuntu repos. I promptly uninstalled Firebug from the extensions settings in the Firefox and closed my browser. I went to terminal and typed:
$ sudo apt-get install firebug... I then opened up Firefox 3 and BAM! It works exactly like it should. I have no idea what the difference is in this version of Firebug, but for whatever reason, my problems are solved.
CF8 error after upgrading to Ubuntu 8.10 Hardy Heron - libstdc++.so.5
ColdFusion, Ubuntu, Linuxjikes: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Jikes! Well fortunately the fix is quite simple. Go to a terminal and install libstdc++5 like so:
$ sudo apt-get install libstdc++5Restart your application and carry on! I am not sure what changed between the distros, but apparently the libraries that ColdFusion uses for invoking webservices depend on this package.
Adding spell checking to Evolution mail client
Ubuntu, Tips and TricksI am not sure why I have never pusued this until today, but I for some reason have never spent the time to figure out why I didn't have spell checking in my Evolution mail client. I knew that Evolution used the packages aspell and gnome-spell, which I already had installed, so why wasn't it working?
When I went into my composer settings in the Evolution preferences, I saw a big empty box that was the list of dictionaries that Evolution was using. You would think there would be some method of adding them from there, but unfortunately it isn't quite that obvious. To add the English dictionary I had to install the package aspell-en. Once I added this I reopened Evolution and Bamn!
There it is. For the copy/paste inclined, try the following:
#sudo apt-get install aspell gnome-spell aspell-enPlaying with my new webcam under Linux - watch me work!
Ubuntu, Fun, LinuxI made an impulse buy this past week ordering a Tripp-Lite clip-on webcam for my laptop. My wife and I are leaving next weekend to go on a week-long cruise without our kids, and I thought it might be fun to post some video blog entries for them while we are gone so they (and ultimately you as well) can see what we are up to.
I chose the Tripp-Lite camera due to pretty consistently positive cost/value reviews, although I was a bit worried that I couldn't find a single instance of anyone on the internet actually using one under Linux. Why should that stop me, huh? When it arrived I plugged it in and... nada... nothing! Although my laptop could see the device, I couldn't seem to get the drivers to work. After doing some digging around I found that it uses the Z-Star Microelectronics Corp. ZC0301 WebCam chipset, which seems to be very common in the cheapo-Chinese-made webcam space. There is an unbelievably awesome project out there where a guy named Michel Xhaard has written drivers for tons of webcam chipsets, and although mine was included I just couldn't seem to get it to work, no matter what I did.
Eventually it hit me that since I am using an Alpha version of Ubuntu (Hardy Heron), perhaps I should roll to a release version and see what happens. Given how easy it is to swap distros in Linux, I decided to roll back to a 7.04 (Feisty) remaster disc that was laying around. Upon plugging in my camera on the new distro it just worked natively! YAY.
So, now I am playing with the apps a bit. I found Camorama which does video captures and can FTP them to a server at regular intervals. I thought it might be fun to create a custom pod on my blog that shows a current picture of me working - or zoning out... picking my nose... whatever. So, the pic of me you see on the left is the most recent of those. The timestamp text is a little small when I resize the pic, but if you view it in full size (or pull out your magnifying glass), you can see the date.
As for recording video in Linux, I created a launcher that allows me to record AVI files with audio using mencoder. For those interested in doing that, you will first need to install mencoder:
$ sudo apt-get install mencoderI then created a shortcut icon that starts the recording:
mencoder tv:// -tv driver=v4l:width=320:height=240:device=/dev/video0:forceaudio:adevice=/dev/dsp -ovc lavc -oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=64:mode=3 -o /home/dshuck/Desktop/webcam.aviThen I have another shortcut icon to stop the video:
killall mencoderLook for pointless videos in the near future...
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