Friday, January 11, 2013

What commands should i type in the terminal to display my system information in Linux?

Q. Thanks to the Yahoo Linux Community, i took my first step and installed Linux Mint Helina into my system. I play around with it a little and really like it but I do not have any knowledge on how to install any drivers.

I tried to install pcwizard so that i could see my system information but unfortunately the software is not compatible with Linux. I not sure what i need to do, its totally a new environment for me.

A. A couple of things you need to know about Linux and *nix environments.

First, Linux is not Windows, so nothing that runs on Windows runs on Linux. There are exceptions. Some popular Windows apps have Linux versions (Firefox, Thunderbird for mail, Adobe Acrobat Reader). There's also a tool called Wine that allow you to run Windows programs from inside Linux. But stick with just Linux for now.

One doesn't install drivers for Linux the way you do in Windows. Most hardware is automatically detected and configured in the installation process. Anything exotic might need to have a module or library installed, but you can nearly always do that through the software manager. Check at the Mint or Ubuntu forms for any assistance on this.

Also. look on the system menus. There are lots of tools that will provide all the information you need about your system.

Also, from the console, there is no one tool that tells you everything. Linux and similar systems include a wide variety fo smaller tools and programs, each of which handles a specific task. For example:

ps -ef (this will give you a list of all the currently running processes).

lspci (gives a list of all the hardware on various system interfaces)

mount (gives you a list of all currently mounted drives and storage devices.

When a list of things goes beyond a screen page, you can "page' the output by piping it through a pager tool like "less":

ps -ef | less

This presents the information a page at a time, and you press the space bar to read the next page.

What is good recording software for linux?
Q. Ive recently started useing ubuntu linux, because it runs better on my computer than windows. Any suggestions for good music recording software? I have An electric keyboard, electric guitar, electric, bass, electric drums, and a sampler (turn tables). Id like something flexible so i can use them all on the same software.

A. Audacity is a the easiest to get jump started and most likely to have drivers for your break out box.

There are several others. If you do a lot of Midi work I suggest Rosegarden. Keyboardists especially tend to favor Rosegarden. I love the interface, full featured but can be picky about which break out boxes it talks too.

Aurdor is another full featured recording software but it's interface is more like Pro Tools while Rosegarden more closely resembles Cakewalk.

Those are the 3 I'd start with. The best way to get them is through your favorite package manager. Synaptic is one of the better ones. Just do a search in synaptic for these packages. They take care of the dependencies for you. Makes installing software on Linux the easiest platform in the world to install software for. Audacity, Rosegarden and Aurdor are all listed in the Multimedia(universe) section in Synaptic. Just check them say yes you want ot install and it's dependencies. Then click on apply when you have selected all the packages you want to install.

You'll also want a good tagger. Easy Tag is solid, I personally prefer Kid3, but there are dozen good ones and Ubuntu comes with Gtag I think it is by default. You should be able to edit ID3 tags through your file browser thought that is a bit tedious.

Installing Lame is a must. If your terrified of a command line you'll also want a Lame front end but to be honest using lame on command line is a no brainer. Open a term window, lame -vbr (name of wave file you want to convert to a mp3) (name you want the MP3 to be)

lame -vbr something.wav something.mp3

This mp3's it using variable bit rate which gives you the best compromise between sound quality and compactness of the output. Most mp3s you download today use lame and it's vbr setting. You get 256k quality where it counts but where there's lots of quiet you get higher compression ratios usually saving a couple megs on the final output without reducing the quality any.

There are dozens of Lame front ends to let you do that without using a command line. Just search synaptic for lame and you'll find them. Audacity, Rosegarden and Audor will plug into Lame and allow you to output MP3s directly as well once you have lame installed. Personally I like to hand rip my stuff, then tag it w/mix & version. Then rename & retag anything I'm sending out to people or the public. Saves listening to 10 copies of the same tune to find that ONE mix you were looking for.

As for sampler software, again there are programs similar to Acid and you can use Rosegarden and Audor though they are not designed for it to do some of it. I don't sample so I can't recommend which are best of breed in that area.

What break out box you have is the trickiest part. I suggest using Maudio or going direct through USB if that's an option. Maudio is decently supported in Linux. Avoid Tascam, nearly impossible to get Linux to talk to a Tascam device.

How do I use the command line email function?
Q. I use a macbook pro, is there any software I need to download?

How do I use the command line to email me?

Lastly I ask because I would like to use a program that I can have e-mail me when my renders are finished on Maya. Thanks.

A. This is possible on Linux. On a Mac you might have to program. Java 1.6 has Desktop.browser() and that gets the system's default browser. python also can command the system browser. Before you try either of those options -- Apple is currently at version 1.5 java -- research to see if AppleScript will do what you want. I include the link below because I know MacOS is part Linux. I don't know how much Linux is exposed.




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