Raspberry Pi: Virtualise RPi Debian Squeeze image

The Raspberry Pi is an ultra-low-cost credit-card sized Linux computer which was conceived with the primary goal of teaching computer programming to children. It was developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, which is a UK registered charity. The foundation exists to promote the study of computer science and related topics, especially at school level, and to put the fun back into learning computing. Demand for the Raspberry Pi has been incredible due to the huge interest there's a freeze and backlog of orders. In the mean time here's how you can play and get up to speed with the Raspberry Pi Debian distro virtually whilst you wait for your Raspberry Pi to arrive.

Ubuntu + Solid State Drive (SSD): managing or disabling the swap space / page file

There are mixed views on using SSDs for page files / swap space. A frequent view encountered is to avoid having a page file or swap space on an SSD to minimise R/W activity, since FLASH chips have a limited lifespan. Wear levelling helps manage the SSD life but eventually the SSD will degrade and to prolong life paging operations should be avoided. 

An increasingly popular contrasting view is that most modern SSDs will become outdated before they die, therefore worrying about paging to an SSD shouldn't be a priority since the SSD will likely be outdated with cheaper and larger alternatives available before the SSD dies.

Read on for a couple of options for managing an SSD within Ubuntu...

Ubuntu: XBMC with AirPlay enabled

As of XBMC v11 (Eden), XBMC supports being an AirPlay target, allowing any device/platform that can run XBMC to receive AirPlay content from an iOS or iTunes source (as well as other 3rd party AirPlay sources for desktops and even Android).

Here's how...

Linux (Ubuntu): Adobe Flash 11.2 problem experiencing blue tint / hue

Issue: Flash player video has a blue tint / hue under flash v11.2. This is caused by a bug in the new Flash version that Adobe refuses to fix. There also is a bug report on Launchpad that discusses this (LP: #967091). The bug only appears when you use the NVidia binary drivers and have libvdpau installed. A quick fix is adding some extra settings to the Flash configuration...

Ubuntu: Record 'What you hear' on Ubuntu with Audacity

How do I record what I hear in Ubuntu? here's how...
Audacity is a free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to:

• Record live audio.
• Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
• Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files.
• Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.
• Change the speed or pitch of a recording.

PulseAudio Volume Control (pavucontrol) is a simple mixer for the PulseAudio sound server. In contrast to classic mixer tools this one allows you to control both the volume of hardware devices and of each playback stream separately. 


Here's how to use both to record what you hear from your PC...

Gnome GUI context menu hash checker (md5, sha)

A Hash Checker for Linux/Unix is small and useful tool for checking your downloads and other files with MD5, SHA1 and/or SHA256 hash. This script adds the ability to check the hash of files simply from the context menu in Gnome shell. This script makes use of Zenity, a tool that allows you to display Gtk+ dialog boxes from the command line and through shell scripts.

Source: http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php?action=content&content=129309