Open Warrior

Ubuntu Global Jam

The Ubuntu Global Jam took place around the world this weekend. The Ubuntu Global Jam is an international event in which volunteers from LoCos (Ubuntu Local Committees) all around the world get together to work on improving Ubuntu. The purpose of the event is to encourage people to get involved with Ubuntu on a large scale and learn about ways in which the can contribute to Ubuntu. For instance, people can learn about and work on bug fixing, translation, documentation, testing, packaging or anything else that interests them.

The Ubuntu-ZA South African LoCo team hosted a bug fixing event at the Yola offices in Cape Town as part of the Ubuntu Global Jam, with a focus on fixing broken packages in the upcoming Ubuntu Oneiric, set to be released in October this year.

Since many of us were from a scientific background we decided to focus on fixing broken scientific packages, though that didn’t really happen and we just ended up fixing things that sounded cool or that we were specifically interested. For instance, given that I am a huge KDE fan, I tried to focus on fixing KDE packages, though I did fix a few others.

Fixing Bugs

We ended up being quite a small group with Stefano Rivera (tumbleweed), a Debian Developer and Ubuntu Master of the Universe (MOTU) leading the group, Michiel Baird who (I think) had a bit of experience fixing Ubuntu Bugs and Marco Gallotta and I who had no experience fixing Ubuntu bugs. Stefano was great in walking us through fixing broken packages – from identifying them, to figuring out what was wrong with them, fixing them and then contributing the fixes back to Ubuntu and in some cases Debian and upstream.

The great thing about the Global Jam is that it encourages everyone to get involved, regardless of their skill level. So even if you’ve never touched source code in your life, you can still help out by testing, writing documentation or translating the software. It was a great experience for me – I’ve always wanted to put my skills to use and get involved in helping to improve Ubuntu, but have never known where to start. The Cape Town Global Jam, under the lead of Stefano, was a great way to get stuck into it and has set the ball in motion for a lot more work to come!

Get Involved!

On a similar note, remember that Software Freedom Day 2011 is less than two weeks away so be sure to get involved! The Cape Linux Users Group and the UCT Linux Enthusiasts Group will be hosting an event on Software Freedom Day at UCT, so check out the Facebook Event if you’re interested in being part of it, even if it’s just to pop in and say hi

I’ve spent most of the afternoon trying to figure out how I could use MEncoder to record video and audio from my webcam and kept running into a “floating point exception” problem. In scouring the internet I realised that many people seem to be having the exact same problem. It turns out that the problem is due to a bug in MEncoder and is simply fixed by installing the latest version.

I use Kubuntu Jaunty so the problem for me lay in the version of Mencoder that comes packaged with it. To fix the problem all I did was follow these instruction for adding a thrid party repository for newer builds of MPlayer/MEncoder and then installed the latest MEncoder using apt-get.

sudo apt-get install mplayer mencoder

Thereafter I was able to capture video and audio from my webcam using the following command:

mencoder tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:width=320:height=240:device=/dev/video0:forceaudio:adevice=/dev/dsp -ovc lavc -oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=64:mode=3 -o webcam.avi

I recently got a Lenovo SL300 Laptop, with a built in camera and was pretty keen to get onto using the camera with Skype, but it wouldn’t work – I couldn’t get a video feed from the camera. To cut a long story short, after two days of Googling and playing around I found a solution (though I can’t remember where I found it) – here’s how!

Tested on (K)Ubuntu Hardy & Intrepid (See bottom for Jaunty fix)

By default the webcam works on all Linux kernels 2.6.25+. However, the problem is that when the kernel loads the uvcvideo module, it loads it with the wrong parameters.

To correct this first unload the uvcvideo module:

~# sudo modprobe -r uvcvideo

Then reload the module with the correct parameter:

~# sudo modprobe uvcvideo quirks=16

Exactly what quirks are, I’m not sure – all I know is that various values for the quirks parameter work (I tried up to 50) without any noticeable performance difference.

Automating the Process

Now one would expect that you would want to automate this process and that’s also really simple – all you need to do is add an option to pass the quirks parameter to your kernel when the module is loaded. Exactly how you do this might vary depending on your linux distribution.

On Ubuntu do the following:

~# cd /etc/modprobe.d
~# nano options

At the bottom add the following line:

options uvcvideo quirks=16

And that’s it! Either reload the module with modprobe -r uvcvideo or restart your computer, and you won’t have to worry about it again!

I’ve only tested this solution on the Lenovo SL300 running Kubuntu Hardy and Intrepid, but I’m pretty sure it will work with all UVC webcams which aren’t displaying a picture.

Update: Upgrading to Jaunty breaks this fix. I think the reason is that modprobe no longer makes use of the options file, but instead replaces it with a series of conf files. To get the camera working again do the following:

~# cd /etc/modprobe.d
~# sudo nano uvcvideo.conf

Once again add the following line:
options uvcvideo quirks=16

And then reload the uvcvideo module with “sudo modprobe -r uvcvideo” and then “sudo modprobe uvcvideo”

Edit: If anyone successfully used this solution on a SL400 or SL500, please let me know.

The latest version of Ubuntu, called Gutsy Gibbon will be available on the 18th of this month. Never heard of Ubuntu? Here’s a shirt description (taken from the Ubuntu site)

“Ubuntu is a community developed, linux-based operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers. It contains all the applications you need – a web browser, presentation, document and spreadsheet software, instant messaging and much more. Ubuntu is free software.”

In even simpler terms, Ubuntu is a free alternative to Microsoft Windows software. With a little configuration it can do anything that Windows can do, from transferring music to your ipod, to playing the latest dvds, and it comes bundled with loads of great software. And best of all its free, and you’re allowed, in fact encouraged to copy it and give it to people so that they can use it as well.

So, if you’re interested you can either head over to the Ubuntu website where you can download it, or you can head over to http://www.shipit.ubuntu.com and request that they send you some cds – and yes, they will send you cds for absolutely nothing, free, gratis!

The first time I started Ubuntu I was shocked to see that the artwork team had chosen such a terrible colour scheme…i mean come on, how could brown ever be appealing?

Then a week ago I needed to use GParted to sort out a hard drive issue I was having and couldn’t find my Kubuntu live cds or my GParted live cd. So, I pulled out one of the Ubuntu Feisty cds sent to me via shipit so that I could use the GParted included on the live CD.

I booted into Ubuntu Feisty and was amazed at how much more beautiful the brown “Human” theme looked compared to when I first saw it in Ubuntu Hoary Hedgehog. So for the last week the Ubuntu Human theme has been on my mind – there’s something subtle in the brown that gets to me, I just can’t place my finger on it.

Anyway, if you’re like me and absolutely love KDE, but are also spellbound by the Ubuntu Human theme then here’s how to get the Ubuntu theme in KDE.

The first step is to download the KDE Human colour scheme created by Mihai Şucan available at http://www.robodesign.ro/files/linux/kde-ubuntu-human.kcsrc.

Once the download has completed open KControl. Go to “Appearance & Themes” -> “Colors,” click “Import Scheme,” find the downloaded file, and click “Open.” That’s it, click Apply and enjoy the Human colours.

Here’s a screenshot of the Human theme on KDE 3.5.7

And here’s a screenshot of the Kalahari2 wallpaper I’m using by robertn

Here’s the link to the wallpaper.

South African Ubuntu users should consider joining the Ubuntu South Africa Community.

“This Wiki is dedicated to all Ubuntu users, developers and enthusiasts in South Africa. If you use Ubuntu or have an interest in the operating system you are automatically part of the community. We want you to feel valued and at home. We call ourselves the Ubuntu-ZA LoCo Team. Ubuntu-ZA is an official Ubuntu LoCo (Local Community) Team. From https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoFAQ:”

http://www.ubuntu-za.org/