The Shuttle XPC and Linux Revolution: Part II Tarballs and Multimedia by Article Admin
In Part II of the series we will take you deeper into the use of Linux on a Shuttle XPC, showing you some more system skills to make life under Linux easier and then take a look at the use of the Shuttle as a multimedia player under Linux. We’ll talk about tarballs and kernel compilation, shell commands, accessing Windows disks under Linux, configuring s/pdif sound, playing CD audio, ripping CDs to different formats, using streaming audio and video and Macromedia Flash, and how to watch DVDs and other digital video formats. Finally, we’ll show you how to use your spare CPU cycles to contribute to the Sudhian Media folding@home team! By the end of this article you will hopefully be convinced that you don’t need Microsoft to enjoy surround-sound digital entertainment on your PC!
For new readers, I recommend that you first read Part I of this series in which we looked at how to make your Shuttle SB51G into a dual-boot WindowsXP and Red Hat Linux 8.0 machine. We discussed installing Linux and then how to configure the system for networking, for an NVidia graphics card and to enable proper support for the Shuttle’s Realtek ALC650 audio codec. We looked at subscribing to the Red Hat Network to get regular system updates, configuring the Ximian Evolution email client and configuring the GAIM Instant Messenging client.
I start this article with a look at how you deal with tarballs - those obscure software downloads with names ending in tar.gz, tgz, tar.bz2 or tbz2. Although advanced software management tools mean that you can now enjoy Linux without having to compile software yourself, you’ll still find dealing with tarballs and software compilation a useful skill to have if you want to take immediate advantage of the latest software on the Internet.
Having taken you back to the dark ages of compilation, I’ll then talk about a great utility called apt/Synaptic that makes tarballs all the more redundant by providing a single graphical environment that allows you to point-and-click to install and update the latest software applications from repositories around the web. This is a great tool and you’ll soon wonder how you lived without it.
Next, I’ll provide the second part of our guide to basic shell commands under Linux. Coming from a Windows enviroment, you may find the thought of typing commands in a window as at best quaintly historic and at worst downright abhorrent. However, in this section I’ll introduce you to many of the features of the Linux shell that should leave all comparisons with MSDOS far behind, and show you what an incredibly powerful and efficient means of using your computer the shell is. If I still can’t convince you, don’t worry. Red Hat Linux caters very well for the die-hard pointers-and-clickers amongst us.
In Part I of this series I showed you how to install a dual-boot WindowsXP/Linux system onto your Shuttle XPC. This article will take this one step further and show you how to mount your Windows disk under Linux, allowing you to access all your Windows data directly from Linux. Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn’t allow you to read Linux disks from under Windows...
Next, I’ll discuss kernel compilation. Kernel compilation - building your own operating system from lines of C - is enough to make many Windows users throw in the towel and go back to Microsoft. Although absolutely not necessary to use Linux, kernel compilation is the ultimate tweak, allowing you to fine tune your kernel to provide optimised support specifically for your hardware and CPU. This is one of the features that many people cite as an advantage over Windows as it allows you to run a much faster and memory efficient system than if you have a single bloated system supporting everything. This section will show you that kernel compilation is actually a very simple and mechanical process.
With all that detailed Linux adminstration stuff out of the way, we’ll get on to the fun part of the article - using your Shuttle XPC for multimedia applications under Linux. This will be the first of several articles discussing the use of the Shuttle and Linux for this purpose. In this guide we will first return to the thorny issue of enabling proper sound support on the ALC650 codec used by most Shuttle XPC systems. The latest release of the alsa drivers finally brings s/pdif support to the Shuttle, although apparently only in stereo in this release. We’ll also show you how to configure 5.1 sound with analog connectors.
Having set-up the sound, we’ll look at three different ways of playing CD digital audio under Linux, before exploring the ways of ripping CD’s and generating MP3 files and other other formats. Having discussed this, we’ll look at the excellent XMMS application that supports a massive variety of digital audio formats, offering similar functionality to the popular WinAmp under Windows.
Next, we look at enabling two of the most popular web-based multimedia applications - RealPlayer and Macromedia Flash - under Linux, and bring streaming audio and video to your Shuttle’s Linux desktop.
With the holiday season upon us, what better way to relax than in front of the latest digital movies? We look at three different Linux applications for this. The first is Ogle - a free equivalent of the popular WinDVD or PowerDVD applications available under Windows. We then look at two feature-packed multimedia players called MPlayer and Xine. Both products are excellent, and support more digital video and digital audio formats than you can shake the proverbial stick at. I mean, in addition to widescreen DTS support, they’ll even allow you to watch a movie on a terminal using ASCII art!
Finally, appealing to the charitable side of your nature, we look at how to configure the folding@home client under Linux, so that you can donate your spare CPU cycles to Sudhian’s folding team and help beat diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
RealPlayer - streaming audio and video
RealPlayer - streaming audio and video
If you like to listen streaming audio or to watch streaming video over the Internet, then you won't get too far without RealPlayer. Fortunately RealNetworks have provided a version of RealPlayer for the UNIX community, in what they term a "community supported" release. The software is not supported by RealNetworks, although they do provide a user support forum here. You can download RealPlayer 8 by registering here and then choosing the "Linux 2.x (libc6 i386) RPM" download. You will need to rename the file from rp8_linux20_libc6_i386_cs2_rpm to rp8.linux20.libc6.i386.cs2.rpm and then install using "rpm -ivh rp8.linux20.libc6.i386.cs2.rpm".
RealPlayer 8
You'll find that the installation assumes that you are using Netscape, and so the plugin is not available for the Mozilla browser supplied with Red Hat 8.0. This is simple to rectify. Type "ls /usr/lib/netscape/plugins" and confirm that the files raclass.zip and rpnp.so are present. If so, copy them to the equivalent Mozilla directory, as follows: "cp /usr/lib/netscape/plugins/* /usr/lib/mozilla-1.0.1/plugins/". You're done. If you go to Help, About Plugins in Mozilla you should now see the RealPlayer Plugin Metafile listed. If you want some free streaming audio to verify that the plug-in is working, go to the BBC Radio page and you'll find a selection of streaming live radio channels to cater for all tastes. You can find some free streaming video to test RealPlayer here (I hope you like British and Irish folk music!).
If you prefer, you can download the alpha release of the more recent RealONE player. This is a little harder to find. Register as described above for the RealPlayer download, and choose the "Linux 2.x (libc6 i386)" download (not the RPM download!) and at the bottom of the page you'll see a button for the RealONE alpha release. This will download a file called r1p1_linux22_libc6_i386_a1.bin. You need to make the installer executable by typing "chmod u+x r1p1_linux22_libc6_i386_a1.bin" and then run the installer by typing "./r1p1_linux22_libc6_i386_a1.bin". You'll then go through a very Windows-like installation experience.
RealONE Player
I chose to do a custom install and install the RealONE Player to /usr/local/bin where the installer created the directory RealPlayer9. The player is the run using "/usr/local/bin/RealPlayer9/realplay". As this is a bit long-winded to type, I created an alias to this as follows "alias realone=/usr/local/bin/RealPlayer9/realplay", which allows me to run RealPlayer8 by typing realplay and RealONE by typing realone. If you want an alias like this to always be available when you open a terminal you can put it in your "~/.bashrc" file, which is read by the shell whenever it starts.
The only serious problem with the RealONE Player at the present time is that no plugin for Mozilla is currently available, and so you cannot click on streaming audio or video links on web sites and expect RealONE to play them. Instead, you must run RealONE by hand and enter the URL of the link by hand. I assume that RealNetworks are working on this issue. You will also find a few minor bugs in the menus, but the basic audio and video playing capabilities seem solid.
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