Debian Package of the Day (static archived copy)

Entry submitted by Igor Stirbu. DPOTD needs your help, please contribute !

Music Player Daemon is a server that plays sound files and streams and can be controlled through remote clients. MPD supports Ogg-Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, Wave and AIFF for sound files and Ogg-Vorbis and MP3 for streams. Also has support for cross-fade.

MPD is a very flexible media player due to it’s client/server nature. MPD can be configured to use your sound card or interact with an icecast server and send the stream over the network. It can be controlled with clients that may reside on the same machine or all over the network.

When MPD starts, it reads first ~/.mpd.conf and then /etc/mpd.conf, if the former can’t be read. So it may be configured to run at startup or be started by any user. Here is the content of my .mpd.conf file:

# ~/.mpdconf
music_directory     "/home/igor/media/mp3"
playlist_directory  "/home/igor/.mpd"

state_file      "/home/igor/.mpd/state_file"
db_file         "/home/igor/.mpd/tag_cache"
error_file      "/home/igor/.mpd/error_file"
log_file        "/home/igor/.mpd/log_file"
pid_file        "/home/igor/.mpd/pid_file"

mixer_type      "alsa"
mixer_device    "default"
mixer_control   "PCM" 

filesystem_charset  "UTF-8"

audio_output {
    type        "alsa"
    name        "Local sound card"
}

audio_output {
    type        "shout"
    name        "Icecast2 stream ( http://keo:8000/stream.ogg)"
    host        "keo"
    port        "8000"
    mount       "/stream.ogg"
    password    "hackme"
    # quality     "7.0"
    bitrate     "128"
    format      "44100:16:1"
    # Optional Paramters
    user        "source"
    description "All your music are belong to us"
    genre       "rock"
}

This setup allows me to directly use my sound card when working on the computer where MPD runs or enable the icecast stream and listen over the network when using the laptop.

The modifications to icecast.xml are these:

    <hostname>keo</hostname>
    <mount>/stream.ogg</mount>

Nice features for MPD are available due to it’s configuration files. If you specify a pid_file you can use mpd --kill to stop the daemon. The state_file saves the state of the player (i.e. the playlist, the time and the name of the current song, the enabled outputs, etc.) If stopped gracefully, it writes the state_file and when started, resumes playback and restores the playlist.

Visit MPD’s home page for more information regarding releases, clients, FAQ. Packages for MPD are available in Debian since Sarge, and in Ubuntu since Hoary.

Clients

In Debian a few clients are available for MPD and more of them listed on the MPD web page. The one I use is Gmpc. It supports notification area integration, pop-up notification, playlist manager, server settings panel. There are ncurses, command line, web and other types of clients.

In the following screenshot, you can see a bunch of clients connected to the same mpd daemon: gmpc, pympd, ncmpc (ncurses), and phpMp2 (web).

Entry submitted by Frederik Schwarzer. DPOTD needs your help, please contribute !

RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury, ask Wikipedia for details) is an illness which can occur as a result of working with a mouse and keyboard.

RSIBreak forces you to suspend your working process for short periods of time, so that your muscles and nerves can relax every once in a while.
Once you have started RSIBreak, it settles down in the system tray and immediately starts its timers. Per default there are tiny breaks of 20 seconds after every 10 minutes and big breaks of one minute every hour. I configured the tiny breaks to be 3 minutes every 20 minutes and the big breaks to be 10 minutes every hour, so it better meets my laziness. :o)

RSIBreak is configurable over a context menu from the system tray icon to start automatically at KDE startup. You can also adjust how to handle short breaks (no keyboard or mouse activity) within the work cycle and what to do within the scheduled breaks. For instance RSIBreak can show a slideshow of pictures found in a given directory, darken the screen and disable normal keyboard and mouse functions or only show a notification popup besides the system tray icon. Anyway, if RSIBreak asks you for a break at a bad time, you can postpone the break by simply hitting the Escape key or pressing the Skip button. This can be disabled in the configuration dialog, so if you find youself cancelling four out of five breaks, this would probably be good for you. :)

The screenshot shows the statistics page reachable over the context menu, which holds a permanently updated summary of overall usage.

Statistics (click in the image to get a larger image)

For Gnome there is a similar application called Workrave that offers some additional features like showing excercises which you can make during the breaks (someone should definitely review workrave for DPOTD).

RSIBreak is not available for the current stable release (named Sarge), but for testing (currently Etch) and Sid. Also you can find the latest version in ubuntu feisty. You can also download the source code and get links to several packages from the RSIBreak Homepage.

Entry submitted by Yann Benigot. DPOTD needs your help, please contribute by sending us original, high quality entries !

Look at your GNOME application menu. It’s simple, but has got one big problem: it doesn’t really allow you quick access to your favorite applications. Of course, you can make little icons on the panel to get a fast way to launch your programs, but this only scales so far. Finding an icon on a long bar with really small icons can be really annoying.

Gnome-main-menu is an easy and beautiful solution to that problem. It’s an applet to add to the desktop bar which offers you two-click access to your favorites applications, and also to your last documents and places. Additionaly, it allows easy access to disk usage levels, network connection information and the ability to add new applications to the base menu.

Not simply a new menu, it also offers an application browser with search. This enables you to quickly drill down to your selected application with a short description of the app, something of particular use to long time debaday addicts.

You might also be pining for the new 2.18 version of GNOME and the all in one control panel. Well, pine no more as all control applets also have their own search in GMM!

Gnome Main Menu is available in Debian testing/unstable and in Ubuntu Edgy/Feisty in the package gnome-main-menu.

Entry submitted by Sam Mirshafie. DPOTD needs your help, please contribute !

Maybe, you are a novice Linux user that do not yet understand the convenience of the command terminal, or you are an experienced user that always have some console windows sitting idly in the task bar. In order to do many tasks really efficiently, you should use the console, and in order to use the console effectively, you should use a terminal application such as Yakuake.

Whenever you need to use the terminal, just hit F12 (or any key that you’ve assigned) and Yakuake will slide down from the top of your screen. Since it is based on Konsole, it has got tabs and background transparency.

Interface

Yakuake’s design is quite different from other KDE applications. The tab bar is designed for transparency, and if you click on an active tab, you get a rename field. However, right-clicking on a tab has no effect. Yakuake relies much more on keyboard shortcuts (which I like but others might find disturbing).

Under the tab bar, there’s a special title bar. In the right corner, there are three buttons. Yakuake can be configured to go away whenever it loses focus, which many users find clever (not me!). So, the first button, the one with the + sign, controls the retract behavior. If the + button is pressed, Yakuake will stay on top until you hit the activation key (F12). The middle button has a downward pointing arrow, which gives you a quick configuration menu, and next to it, there’s the X button, which quits Yakuake.

Yakuake in action (click in the image to get a larger image)

Configuring Yakuake

One thing that users may find confusing is that Yakuake do not have a single configure dialog. The middle titlebar button gives you some of the options; such as terminal proportions, animation duration, and access and control keys. (Tip: make sure to check the control key dialog so you know all the keyboard shortcuts.). If you right click on the terminal body, you get a context menu with terminal-related options, such as appearence, history and character encoding.

Get it now

Yakuake is in the Ubuntu Edgy/Dapper and Debian repositories.
Yakuake is inspired by Kuake, and there is a similar Gnome application called Tilda, both are in the repositories as well.

Entry submitted by Amanda Angell. We are in a big need for new editors, able to dedicate time on a regular basis to debaday. See the contribute page for details, and contact us !

digiKam’s website states that it is an “advanced digital photo management application for Linux” which understates the programs abilities. It does everything from auto-detecting your camera, importing the photos, sorting your collection in useful ways, and does some basic - or even creative - photo editing. It is only available for KDE, so Gnome users miss out. It is Integrated into KDE applications using KIPI (KDE Image Plugin Interface), and can drag-and-drop into other KDE programs.

DigikamImagePlugins is an add-on that enhances the basic digiKam Image Editor into a much more powerful tool for playing with pictures. My favorites are the distortion effects, oil paint, and the adjust levels plug-ins. There is a Create Calendar section in digiKam’s Tools menu, which is a lot of fun and the end result can be printed or saved as a PDF.

digiKam uses dcraw 8.41 to decode “more than 200 proprietary camera file formats”, and the Gphoto2 project supports “over 700 digital camera devices”. Cameras using USB, serial connection, and USB/IEEE Mass storage connections are supported.

The camera interface is fast and smooth, with thumbnails to preview the pictures before downloading and, at least with Canon cameras, you have the option to only select new pictures for download.

Photos can be organized by albums, date, saved searches, and a completely customizable tagging system. This makes a big difference when trying to find and organise your photos as opposed to the simple date order of some programs.

Once in the main window, a left click opens the photo in the digiKam Image Editor. Right click for more options, including opening the photo in other editing programs (such as the Gimp). Movie files are opened in your favorite multimedia software.

In comparison, I have been using Gnome’s camera import using gthumb image viewer for 6 months and there are noticeably less camera interface options. It feels a little disjointed and doesn’t have the options of sorting your photos into albums, tags or ratings. In-fact, I feel that digiKam handles my camera better than the original Windows XP software.

Version 0.9.0 is available in Debian (experimental) and Ubuntu.

digiKam won the 2005 TUX Readers’ Choice Award for “Favorite Digital Photo Management Tool”, and for good reason. It is powerful, easy to use, and intuitive.