Install Hotot Twitter client in Debian Squeeze / Mint Debian Edition

I've recently installed Mint Debian Edition on my Toshiba 6100 laptop which comes with Gwibber as it's Twitter/Facebook app. I prefer Hotot since it's lighter and I'm not bothered about Facebook usage.



























Hotot isn't in the MDE or Debian Squeeze repositories it uses but you can use the Ubuntu PPA instead.


Edit /etc/apt/sources.list as root with your favourite text editor and add these lines:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/hotot-team/ppa/ubuntu maverick main

deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/hotot-team/ppa/ubuntu maverick main




Then save and exit then enter this command as root (you can use sudo on Mint Debian Edition):

apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 41011AE2


Then do:

sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude install hotot


And enjoy :)

Mint Debian Edition

The root partition became corrupted yesterday on my Toshiba 6100 laptop, possibly due to a faulty hard drive, so I had to do a fresh install on a fresh drive. It was running Lubuntu 10.0.4, the lightweight desktop derivative of Ubuntu. It started out as Ubuntu but was too slow for this old beast. It has a 1.6Ghz Pentium 4 CPU (yes, it runs way too hot!), 512MB RAM and a 20GB hard drive. I then installed the Xubuntu (XFCE) desktop then settling on the Lubuntu (LXDE) desktop, but it still seemed sluggish, so I considered my options. Slackware would be very light but a lot of effort and I prefer Debian or Debian based distros as that's what I'm used to and know best. I like Debian but I find it's packages to be a little old, at least in Lenny and it's not quite as user friendly as Ubuntu. After a brief but failed install attempt with Saline OS (another Debian-based distro) I thought I'd try Mint Debian Edition which is a rolling release distro based on Debian Testing. The main advantage of being a rolling release means it never needs to be reinstalled but it means things may break occasionally.























Mint Debian Edition installs in a similar way to Ubuntu, using a live CD but with a different installer. It didn't take too long to install even on this old thing. It asks the usual questions, users, root password, partitioning etc. One interesting thing I noticed was it automatically chose a hostname based on the model of my laptop - "satallite6100-laptop" which was a nice touch. After the install finished, it prompted a reboot into the new OS. Boot time was nice and sprightly, taking around 35 seconds. A Notify message popped up informing me of wireless networks available, this uses onboard Intel wireless so it's probably why it works just fine 'out-the-box'. I then found I had 708MB / 646 packages to upgrade!






















The default desktop uses a single panel along the bottom, like Windows, with it's Mint Menu. I'm not too keen on it as although the search feature is nice it still takes far too much of my 1024x768 pixels for my liking!





















I've changed the layout to a more traditional Gnome arrangement by removing the Mint Menu and adding the Gnome 'Main Menu' from the 'add to panel' dialogue, to my new top panel. I also added the User Switcher to the top right of the top panel, it's not quite Ubuntu's MeMenu but it will do. Also for the chop is the colour scheme - black and green is just not my scene! I'm using Human-Blue icons (taken from the Ubuntu version of Mint) , Murrina-Blue controls and Bluman window border and some tasteful wallpaper.






















Just like Debian, you can only install Deb packages via the commandline until you install the Gdebi installer. I'm not sure why the Mint devs didn't include it. It is nice to see the nautilus-terminal extension already installed so that you can right click and select 'open terminal' in a folder. To manually install a downloaded Deb package on the CLI, do something like "sudo dpkg -i package-name.deb". The main user is in the sudoers list so you can use sudo to temporarily become root, just like in Ubuntu. Of course the best place to start with packages is by seeing if it's available in the repositories using either Synaptic or with it's 'Software Manager' which looks a bit like Ubuntu's Software Centre. MDE uses Debian Testing so packages are more upto date than in a standard Debian install. MDE includes the latest Firefox (once I installed updates) as well as Debian's Iceweasel.




















Standard packages include MPlayer, Gnome MPlayer and VLC, which is nice since I always install VLC anyway. MDE plays encrypted DVD movies straight off since libdvdcss is installed by default, as are all the useful codecs and Adobe flash player. It's also nice to see GIMP already installed too, since Ubuntu has removed it recently to save space. Two packages I immediately removed were F-Spot and Gwibber since I prefer Gthumb or Picasa (which is in the repositories) and Hotot, which is a much lighter Twitter client than Gwibber. By default Thunderbird and Evolution are installed.

Conclusion

Overall Mint Debian Edition offers a good compromise - it has the speed and lightness of Debian and some of the ease of use of Ubuntu and I'd recommend it for older desktops and laptops. It has up-to-date packages, has all the codecs for music and DVD playing so it's fairly easy to use out-the-box. According to their website "LMDE requires a deeper knowledge and experience with Linux, dpkg and APT" due to it being a rolling release and to "expect rough edges". The main thing I miss from Ubuntu is UbuntuOne for syncing my Tomboy notes.

Update 19/03/11

I've kind of gone off the various versions of Mint mainly due to it's use of a difficult to remove custom search for Firefox, I prefer to use Debian itself rather than LMDE. I have now installed Fedora 14 on the Toshiba 6100 to try out and I've kept it as it's pretty good distro, much more stable than when i tried Fedora 11. The only thing I don't like about Fedora is I can't seem to ssh or VNC into it on my network, I even tried disabling its firewall and SELinux to no avail.

Snackr: An RSS Ticker

I've been looking for an RSS feed 'ticker' for Ubuntu for a long time without much luck, until I found Snackr, which is also the first Adobe Air app i've found that I haven't immediately uninstalled! Being an Air app of course means it is cross-platform too. Amongst other features, you can set scroll speed, position, opacity, and set it to sync with Google Reader.


Screenshot on my main (dual monitor) desktop:











Screenshot of Snackr's horizontal arrangement my laptop:

Dropbox has Reached Version 1.0!

The excellent cross-platform folder syncing app Dropbox has just reached version 1.0 and has some great new features, chief among them being Selective Sync. This means that you can select which folders you want to sync on each machine, handy for devices that are limited on space or for folders you don't want to sync to your work or home computer. On Ubuntu I found out, thanks to Dropbox Support on Twitter, that Dropbox version is different to the nautilus-dropbox version. To get it to upgrade on Ubuntu, I needed to download a replacement files to replace the ".dropbox-dist" hidden folder (download the 32 bit or 64 bit version). I had to extract the package in a temporary folder then move it to /home/username/ replacing the files already there. According to Webupd8 You could also delete or move that folder and Dropbox should download the upgrade itself.

Rockbox On My Sansa Fuze

Recently I tested my Sansa Fuze to see if it is gapless using Dark Side of The Moon by Pink Floyd. It's not only a great album but also almost all the tracks follow on from each other without any gaps. I was disappointed to hear a small but noticeable gap between tracks, so I decided to install Rockbox on it. Rockbox is an alternative firmware for many different digital audio players.
























To install it you download and install the rockbox utility for Linux, OSX or Windows. Then plug in your player, fire it up and it should auto-detect which player you have as long as it's supported. Then click 'Complete Installation' or 'Minimal Installation' if you're short on space or don't want to install everything. I chose the complete option. Rockbox comes with lots of plugins and themes, I went for the Cabbie theme.





























For the Sansa Fuze you need the bin file from the original firmware for it to modify as it dual boots the original firmware and Rockbox. Once installed it should now boot up in Rockbox. I noticed though that you need to shut the player down before plugging into the computer, for when you need to add tracks, so that it boots into the original firmware. The computer doesn't 'see' the player while it's booted into Rockbox. Once you safely remove the player (right click and select 'safely remove' in Ubuntu) shut it down then start it up again and it should boot back into Rockbox. So my Sansa Fuze is now gapless and has extra apps and themes, and can play even more codecs. I'm rather pleased.

Update
I've also found one useful feature of Rockbox is I can now log all my played tracks with Last.fm using a choice of different scrobblers, at the moment I'm using dap-scrob.

Update 2 - Hidden tracks

I noticed every now and then some tracks I didn't recognise and discovered Sansa had already put some tracks preinstalled on the player. These have been added using MTP mode and you can see them in Rockbox in Files --> ##MUSIC#. I found the only way to delete them is to set the original firmware into MTP mode then open up Rhythmbox or similar player that can use MTP and order the tracks by date added. The tracks I dragged 'n' dropped had no time but the pre-installed ones do, hence easier to track down and delete.

Rhythmbox Annoyances

I've seen a lot of swish looking mock-ups and modified versions of Rhythmbox such as Rhythm-e and others but they all seem to concentrate on it's looks and layout. What I'd like to see is the annoying little bugs and improvements in performance and features which have been in Rhythmbox for years but still haven't been fixed. I only use Rhythmbox for adding music to my mp3 players and mainly use Gmusicbrowser for playing music. Here's a not-exhaustive list of Rhythmbox annoyances and feature requests:


Rhythmbox can only have one music folder.

I've recently discovered this since my 250GB hard drive I store music is nearly full so I have some music on another hard drive but there's no option to add another folder, unlike my preferred player, Gmusicbrowser. This means if I want to add music to my Mp3 player I have to find another option. I could use sym-links but that's inelegant and a new user shouldn't have to do that either. (Apologies for the blurryness of the images, click for a better view, having trouble with Bloggers uploader)














Compare that with Gmusicbrowser with multiple folders:














Erroneous import errors

When scanning or rescanning the music folder, rhythmbox shows "Import Errors" with a red 'no entry' symbol, which makes it hard to ignore, but when you look at them they are mostly album covers. Gmusicbrowser has an option in preferences: "Do not add songs that can't be played" as you can see in the above screenshot.














Visible Columns has no option to change the order they appear.

Pretty much every opther player has the option to move the columns either by dragging them or in preferences. I want Artist, Title, Album, Time, Quality in that order!














There are some things Rhythmbox does do well like handling devices, it works better with mp3 players than Gmusicbrowser (which seems to have no support) and Banshee which has trouble with the SD card in my Sansa Fuze. Also I have recently found out Rhythmbox actually transcodes FLAC and ogg on-the-fly to iPods and accessing DAAP shares works well. But Rhythmbox's school report would read: "Has been essentially coasting for several years, has improved in some areas but needs to buckle up and get this sorted! Must do better."

Unboxing My Newly Arrived (and early) Birthday Present - a 4GB Sansa Fuze

My main birthday present this year arrived early, it's a 4GB Sansa Fuze mp3 player. I requested a Fuze rather than the new Fuze+ for two reasons. For one you can pick up the 4GB version for around £35 through Amazon and I think it's a backward step removing the scroll-wheel for the Fuze+. My Fuze was nicely packaged in a plastic bubble-pack that arrived in a Jiffy bag that actually fitted through the letterbox, for once. I would have liked to have preserved the packaging a bit but I had to hack it about with scissors to free the little beauty. The back of the pack has the player's specs on and I noticed they don't even mention that it can play FLAC for some reason. It does actually play the usual mp3 and WMA, plus ogg and FLAC, which is another thing it has over an iPod. It's also a lot cheaper than a similar sized Nano and has a microSD card slot for expansion. I'm using my 8GB card that I had in my Sansa Clip+.


Package Contents:

• 4GB Sansa Fuze Player
• Proprietary USB lead
• Earphones
• 8cm driver disc
• Pretty little flip booklet for quick usage instructions
• Instruction booklet

The player feels nice to hold, it's rubberised backside preventing it from slipping out of my hand and the 'piano black' finish to the upper surface looks nice but as usual attracts finger prints very easily. The iPod-like click-wheel is also rubberised. There is a slight rough plastic edge at the base of the player but that's not much to grumble about and it does feel more durable than the Clip+ The power-on slider is on the right-hand side of the player and you slide it down for the Hold function to prevent the buttons being pressed while it sits in your pocket. This is a 'physical' hold function that's much preferable to the smaller Sansa Clip+'s software hold function. I'm not quite sure why the headphone socket is on the bottom edge of the player but it's not much bother, I'll just have it upside down in my jacket pocket.


















On turning on the player, I was greeted with a nice little graphic and it booted fast. I checked the firmware version in System -> Settings -> info and no surprises that it isn't the latest version. Upgrading firmware was easy, and much easier and quicker using the manual method rather than using the Windows only update tool. I followed the instructions on Sansa forum, just extract the two files into the root directory of the player, safely remove the player and wait while it updates, which took only a few seconds. The new firmware restricts the volume of the player (to comply with EU regulations) if you set it to English/EU region, so it's best to set the language to English but then set location to "rest of the world" so you can actually hear it properly in noisy areas!



















The user interface is rather nice looking, though it takes a little getting used to if you are switching from using an iPod as there are slight differences in navigation. Like the iPod, the Now Playing section shows the album cover and info and click the middle button to show just the album cover or info plus graphic etc. Another thing I like about the Fuze (and other Sansa players) is that you can delete tracks from the player interface and it can show you the info about the track - bitrate, filesize, format etc - which the iPod cannot. As with other Sansa players, the Fuze works best in MSC (mass storage device, like a USB stick) mode when using it with Linux, working well with Rhythmbox on Ubuntu. I find it's best to set the player to only use MSC mode rather than setting it to auto or MTP.

The sound quality is excellent, certainly as good as my iPod Mini, but like the iPod, you're best of ditching the little earbuds you get with it, to take advantage of it. It would be nice if it used a normal micro-USB connector rather than the proprietary connector, much like the iPods, but unlike my iPod's connector, this one stays in better thanks to release clips either side. Also I've seen them on Ebay for about £3 so it's handy to get a spare/replacement cable.

Conclusion

So far I'm very impressed with the Fuze, it's good value for money, particularly compared with an iPod Nano. I like it's interface, great sound quality, codec support, look and feel. As long as it's reliable and the battery life is usable (24hr while playing audio, according to the manual) I'll be happy.


Update

I've installed alternative firmware - Rockbox - on my Fuze to achieve perfect gapless playback - and I've detailed that in a new blogpost.