Fedora

I use ssmtp for my MTA (mail transfer agent) under Fedora. Up till now I’ve always just moved /usr/sbin/sendmail out of the way and symlinked it to where I have ssmtp installed. Today, after upgrading a work machine to F14, I finally bit the bullet and figured out how to […]

ssmtp: making it the alternative to sendmail under Fedora

Wed November 10, 2010 in CEI / Fedora / Linux / x86-64 tagged Fedora / mail transfer agent / sendmail / sendmail mta / ssmtp (updated 4892 days ago)

One of the drawbacks to dropping cable TV was losing summer broadcasts of pro tennis. Recently my wife and daughter pointed out that you could watch some matches online via ESPN3. So I tried to get it on the media box hooked to the big screen TV. I’ve got F12 […]

64 vs 32 bit flash: getting full screen flash ...

Sun August 01, 2010 in General tagged adobe / cable / cable tv / espn3 / Fedora / Flash / hardware acceleration / libflashplayer / Linux / miranda / Southpark / tennis / tv screen / Video (updated 5022 days ago)

I've spent the past month preparing for and implementing a migration from Comcast cable TV to relying on both off-air HDTV and Internet video. The easy part was dumping Comcast, though they magically managed to NOT turn off billing because they had to send out a service tech (for no […]

From Cable TV to Internet TV – A Nerd’s Journey

Sat May 29, 2010 in Fedora / General / Hardware / Linux / NVidia / TV tagged big bang theory / Bravia / cable modem / Comcast / comcast cable tv / digital converter / Fedora / gnome / GTK+ / hdtv / nvidia / Sony / Video / wireless bridge / wrt54g (updated 5090 days ago)

I'm in the process of creating a set of slides at work to describe a software product we're working on. Making slides is easy. I just use OpenOffice. Publicizing the slides is just as easy. I use Slideshare.net. An interesting feature of this site is the ability to add audio […]

Creating slides with audio on Linux for SlideShare

Mon January 18, 2010 in General tagged Fedora / gnome / Linux / Video (updated 5222 days ago)

There is a discussion ongoing in the GIMP Developer mailing list about rumors of the Ubuntu distribution removing GIMP from the base installation in an upcoming release. The reasoning is that GIMP is a professional application and should only be included as add-on software similar to how Photoshop is not […]

What Linux Users Need. Or Not.

Fri November 20, 2009 in General tagged Fedora / GIMP / Linux / Open Source / ubuntu (updated 5281 days ago)

Another kernel upgrade, another VMware failure. This gets old. It used to be you patched using the vmware-any-to-any patches but these appear to have dried up. Now we have a new patching mechanism: google till you find someone who fixed the problem. Fortunately, someone fixed the problem for VMware Workstation […]

VMware Server 2.0.1 on linux 2.6.29

Tue August 04, 2009 in Linux tagged Fedora / kernel / vmware

My previous posts on doing Fedora upgrades cover most of the topic but I realized there were a few things I left out. Installing additional applications The first thing has to do with some useful applications that Mauriat Miranda doesn’t cover on his excellent Fedora installation guidelines. xpdf – a […]

Upgrade addendum: other packages of interest, configuring a Wacom ...

Tue July 14, 2009 in Fedora / Linux tagged evolution / Fedora / gdm / GIMP / gnome / GTK+ / kde / keycodes / Linux / logitech internet navigator / Wacom / Writing / xmodmap / xorg

The terms of service apparently changed for imdb.com and the original imdb.pl script in MythTV that is used to retrieve data about movies (via the Video Manager) is no longer working properly. The results vary but in my case the director information was not be pulled properly. There is a […]

Update to MythVideo imdb.pl – getting the right metadata for ...

Sun July 05, 2009 in Linux / MythTV tagged Fedora / MythTV / tmdb / Video

Fedora 11 was released this past week and I’ve already downloaded the various netinst and DVD ISO images for both 32bit and 64bit systems at home. I’ve got 5 computers to upgrade: 1 development server, 1 MythTV server, my desktop, 1 Myth client and my laptop. Since I’ve now […]

Preparing for Fedora 11: Installation on the Acer laptop

Sat June 13, 2009 in Fedora / Linux tagged acer / anaconda / dual monitors / Fedora / gnome / intel / intel driver / java / java native interface / jni / mingw / MythTV / nvidia / nvidia geforce / PulseAudio / Wordpress / xorg (updated 5434 days ago)

Someone asked on the Boulder Linux User Group mailing list today for recommendations for video cards. He wanted to avoid NVidia. One of the responses pointed out this very handy web site: 3D Graphics hardware performance using Free Software drivers (X.Org DRI). I noticed just recently that my NVidia GeForce […]

3D graphics hardware for Linux

Wed April 29, 2009 in GIMP / Linux / NVidia / Wacom / X11 tagged Fedora / GIMP / nvidia / nvidia geforce / Wacom / X11

I’ve been having problems playing flash video on my new system at home. The system is a 64bit AMD running F10. Flash video plays but the audio skips a lot. I had similar problems with other applications but was able to get around it by using the right audio setup, […]

Quickies: Flash 64, fixing skipping audio, mapping keys to applications

Thu March 26, 2009 in Audio / Fedora / Linux / PulseAudio / x86-64 tagged 64bit amd / f10 / Fedora / flash player plugin / gnome / keyboard shortcuts / keycodes / logitech internet navigator / MythTV / X11 / xine / xmodmap

Prior to F10 I always created a second user that I allowed to display applications on my desktop that I use to launch a second instance of Firefox. There are lots of reasons to want to do this. The most obvious is that the second user is completely isolated from […]

Multiple Firefox instances with different network settings

Mon March 09, 2009 in Audio / Fedora / Firefox / Linux / PulseAudio tagged f10 / Fedora / firefox / gnome / MythTV / MythWeb / proxy / PulseAudio / sound drivers

Michael J. Hammel

Building a better today…because tomorrow is in question…