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There are several open source multimedia player build for debian already and many of them are capable to play streaming video. I’m usually using VLC to play streaming video, but at the moment I’m testing SMPlayer as streaming video player. The performance of SMPlayer is quite impressive in my opinion. It can play several episodes of Stargate Series streamed simultaneously without lagging. When I was trying using VLC to play the same video source, it didn’t work VLC could only play the sound without showing the video. Therefore SMPlayer would be a great alternative for VLC player

You can find nice feature of SMPlayer as following :

• It remembers the settings of all files you play.
• Configurable subtitles.
• Audio track switching.
• Video equalizer, allows you to adjust the brightness, contrast, hue
• Multiple speed playback
• It runs on several Operating system. Binaries available for Windows and Linux

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I just got a more snappy performance improvement on my Ubuntu Feisty Fawn after tweaking my ext3 system configuration. The complete tutorial is from UbuntuGeek with the title how to get the most out of your ext3 and ReiserFS file system.

Since the tutorial is using VI as file editor, I suggest you to read a short introduction on Vi before tweaking the ext3 file system configuration following the tutorial, unless you are familiar with vi.

If you don’t want to use Vi and preferring to use GUI, you can use gedit respectively.


sudo gedit /etc/fstab


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When working on my Thinkpad T23 I’m prefer using TrackPoint instead of mouse. However, since my Ubuntu Feisty fawn was installed, I was using mouse more frequent than Trackpoint because I didn’t know how to change the trackpoint sensitivity. The trackpoint was too slow and my finger got pain when I push it harder just to make the cursor move faster.

Finally my finger pains is over when I found the way to customize my TrackPoint. Its apparently only need echoing a value between 0 and 255 into the appropriate file. Since the main problem was speed and sensitivity, I type the following into a root terminal: (please make sure the file location on your machine first)

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Sometimes when you need to install a software on Ubuntu, the installation package only comes in .sh files instead of standard .deb package for Debian. Well the .sh itself has to be executable, however when you got it from internet repository its attribute is set to non-executable. To change this file attribute you need to either Right Click the .sh file from your file explorer, select file property -> file permission and make it is executable.

You can also change it via the command line console in your Ubuntu.
Open a Terminal Window. If you downloaded the file to your Ubuntu desktop you probably need to

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My Ubuntu 7.04 CD has arrived today. I was ordering the CD a week after Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty released from https://shipit.ubuntu.com/. Since I have been waiting for several weeks, I couldn’t wait any longer to install and run Feisty on my notebook. I use my old IBM Thinkpad T23 for trying the performance of Feisty Fawn.

The Installation was quick without any problem and I can still use my windows xp by using dual boot installation features. In case I found trouble with ubuntu I could switch back to windows xp easily. The first trouble of my Ubuntu is on WLAN Card identification. I use ACER WLAN 11b PCMCIA card to connect to my router and unfortunately Feisty fawn doesn’t recognized it on the first run. So I have to fixed it manually.

First, I visited http://packages.ubuntu.com and downloaded ndiswrapper-common, ndiswrapper-utils, and ndisgtk .deb package. I also dowloading Realtek 8180 Driver for windows from http://www.station-drivers.com/page/realtek.htm because Acer WLAN 11b PCMCIA card is using the same chipset as Realtek 8180.

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