GNU/Linux for a better home (archived)
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This document provides an overview of using multimedia applications on GNU/Linux, including popular desktop environments, playing digital audio files, ripping and burning CDs/DVDs, playing video files, managing photos and collections, and future possibilities for multimedia. It discusses desktop environments like KDE, GNOME, Fluxbox and XFCE, audio file formats like MP3, Ogg and FLAC, audio and video players like XMMS, Amarok, Xine and Mplayer, ripping and burning tools like KaudioCreator and K3B, and collection managers like Tellico and Digikam.
GNU/Linux for a better home (archived)
- 1. By Buddhika Siddhisena bud@babytux.org GNU/Linux for a better Home
- 2. 2 Agenda Desktop environments Playing digital audio files Ripping audio CDs and DVDs Burning CD/DVD Playing VCD/DVD discs Managing your Digital photos Future or multimedia
- 3. 3 Desktop environments GNU/Linux provides a variety of desktop environments that are highly customizable KDE and GNOME are two of the most popular desktop environments that mimic somewhat of a MS windows type of desktop. Fluxbox is a very light weight window manager/desktop suitable for low- end machines or for running resource hungry apps. XFCE is also a light weight desktop environment that is very fast. Other enhancements such as skins, splash screens, icons, desktop components act as good eye candy to enhance look and feel. Other technologies such as translucency, text-to-speech (TTS), voice recognition and 3d environments are evolving enhancements.
- 5. 5 Playing digital audio files Digital Audio formatsDigital Audio formats Mp3 Ogg FLAC wav Mp3 Popular format Proprietary/Patented Quality is lost when converting but can be encoded so that its difficult to distinguish Ogg Stands for Ogg Vorbis Free file format Quality loss occurs but has better quality when compared to mp3 FLAC Stands for free lossless audio codec Free file format Audio quality is not lost when converting. Provides better compression than WAV
- 6. 6 Digital Audio players XMMS is a winAMP like audio player XMMS can handle mp3/ogg/wav/audio CDs XMMS supports skins and visualization plugins Mp3 for XMMS is crippled on Redhat/Fedora due to patent issues. Check out http://www.fedorafaq.org/ Amarok is a newer player with more features like managing albums and getting stats
- 7. 7 Ripping Audio CDs KaudioCreator can RIP audio CDs into ogg, mp3, wav or flac formats It can also retrieve track titles if your connect to the Internet using freedb (www.freedb.org) Encoding is done using helper command line tools such as oggenc, lame and flac so make sure you have them installed
- 8. 8 Burning CD/DVD discs K3B has a very user-friendly interface Can darg-n-drop mp3/ogg/wav etc. to create a custom audio CD Can be used to create data CD/DVD With additional software/plugins can even create VCD/DVD movies by drag-n-drop avi files. Features such as Multi session, Burnfree are supported
- 9. 9 Playing VCD/DVD discs Xine is a media player that can handle VCD/DVD (with menu) as well as audio files Mplayer can also play VCD/DVD but doesn't currently have menu support. Mplayer supports the most number of movie file formats (over 200 audio/video codecs). Check out http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/codecs-status.html Playing encrypted DVDs require downloading and installing the libdvdcss. Check out http://developers.videolan.org/libdvdcss/
- 10. 10 Managing your CD & DVD Collection Tellico can manage collections such as DVD, Books, Audio CDs, etc. Amarok can manage ripped audio collections
- 11. 11 Taking & Managing Digital Photos Digikam can import photos directly from a camera or an existing directory
- 12. 12 Future or multimedia Pause/FF/Rewind Live TV As a digital VCR with scheduling capabilities Easy navigation using a remote control Automatically skip commercials. Watch DVDs, listen to Music, browse digital photos, get weather reports/news feeds etc. Can automatically get TV program listings from the net using xmltv Customizable using themes and plugins
- 13. 13 Resources & Links KDE desktop - http://www.kde.org GNOME desktop - http://www.gnome.org Fluxbox desktop - http://www.fluxbox.org XMMS player - http://www.xmms.org Amarok player - http://amarok.kde.org/ k3b - http://www.k3b.org/ xine video player - http://xine.sourceforge.net/ mplayer video player - http://www.mplayerhq.hu/ Tellico collection maneger - http://www.periapsis.org/tellico Digikam - http://digikam.sourceforge.net/ MythTV - http://www.mythtv.org
- 14. 14 Thank You!