I just wanted to share a couple of Ubuntu success stories, and just a couple more things to add to the list of why I love using linux.
The other day I was getting ready to burn several podcasts to cd-r to listen to in the car. Some of the podcasts I listen to (namely This Week in Tech) take up the whole CD. I thought it would be great to be able to arbitrarily slice them into tracks of equal lengths before burning them to CD so I wouldn't have to spend a long time seeking back to where I left off if I changed discs or something. Unfortunately K3B (my preferred cd burning app) can't do that, although it can split a track into two parts at an arbitrary point. Serpentine can't do it either. As a last resort, I decided to see if there was any other tool that could. I fired up synaptic, and with universe and multiverse enabled, I searched for the terms 'mp3 split.' There were about four hits, one of them being the package 'mp3splt.' After reading the description I discovered this was a command line tool (nice for scripting :-) that had various mp3 and Ogg/Vorbis cutting capabilities. I installed mp3splt with synaptic, then checked out 'man mp3plt.' The man page revealed that the -t option would do just what I wanted, which was to split the mp3 arbitrarily into slices of t length and put them into the -d <dir> directory. After playing with it for a few minutes I had the hang of it and had all of my podcasts carved up into 5-minute tracks which I cold then burn to cd-r using k3b or Serpentine. Awesome. The other success to happen this week was with my flatbed scanner. One of the problems with scanners (and other hardware in general) in linux is that the driver support lags behind the products' availability in retail channels because drivers have to be developed by the community. Consumer product cycles are so short that often manufacturers will introduce new models within 12 or even 9 months of introducing the previous model, so by the time a particular product has a working driver in linux, or xsane, or whatever, that model is no longer available in retail channels. A few weeks ago I was asking the list what types of flatbed scanner folks were having success with, since my Epson isn't well supported. Many people responded that the Canon LIDE 30 works well with xsane. Of course the LIDE 30 is no longer available in retail stores, and there isn't much information for models that are available, so I left it alone for a while. However I really can't get by without my scanner so I decided to check out ebay. I found several LIDE 30 scanners on ebay, and I placed a bid on one. The auction closed with me having the high bid of just over US$18. Add to that about US$10 shipping and I had myself a scanner for under US$30. The scanner was used, and the seller had bought it used himself, but I figured for this amount of money, if it doesn't work, I'd be disappointed but not broke. I've spent more than this on dinner from time to time (but not often). The scanner came in yesterday. It is very obviously used, but not in terrible shape. There are a few cosmetic dents on the metal lid, and it just feels less than brand new. The seller included a usb cable, which I didn't expect. He also was thoughtful enough to burn Windows and OS X drivers to cd-r, though I won't likely make use of those. One of the neat features of the Canon LIDE scanners is that they actually take advantage of USB's ability to power the device, rather than relying on an external power adapter. My ubuntu laptop, a Vaio PCG-V505, was already on the kitchen table and up and running, so I took the thin and light scanner and it's accompanying USB cable, layed it next to the laptop and plugged the cable into both devices. Nothing visual happened on the screen or the scanner, but I wasn't worried. I started up the xsane program which scanned for devices, and detected my scanner. The scanner then powered up and acquired a preview. This was very cool--no software installation or mussing or fussing. I closed xsane and fired up the Gimp. I clicked acquire and xsane started again. I placed a document on the scanner and picked some settings for black and white, etc. then clicked preview, and a preview appeared. Then I clicked scan (or acquire, can't remember) and a full size scan was performed and sent to the Gimp. Although I haven't tried photos yet, I can say that the scanner appears to work as expected. And the really cool part was that it Just Worked(tm). No installing of drivers or additional software (which I would have had to do with Windows). Well I just wanted to share these success stories as evidence of the high quality of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. Thanks to the developers of Ubuntu and all of it's included projects for great software. Zach C -- If you reply to a message I posted to a mailing list, and you want me to see your reply, be sure to put my address in the 'To:', or I might not see the message. -- ubuntu-marketing mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-marketing
