As I continue to re-build my system after a fresh install of Ubinutu 8.10 yesterday, I’ll also continue to document it here. I don’t plan on doing this again in six months, but least I have a record to help myself out (or others) if I do… and will also help in setting up other machines I’m working on I suppose.

The next couple programs I added all can be pulled from the Add/Remove Applications set up. Just click Applications, then click Add/Remove… I changed the Show option to All Open Source applications right off the bat.

First up, FileZilla. Hands down the best all around FTP Client for the money. If you don’t believe me, it was picked at the High Five Winner by Lifehacker readers. It’s multi-flavored as well, and also has a portable version which, like KeePass, I keep in a Dropbox folder so I don’t have to install it on both my laptop and work computers. I just need to find a way for my desktop here to read the same file that keeps track of my server list. For now, I just manually copy the data file once in awhile so I have the same list no mater what computer I’m on.

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So I picked up a couple of DVDs the other week, Airplane and Jackie Chan’s Police Story. I wanted to watch Police Story while surfing, so I popped the DVD in the drive and…. nothing.

I couldn’t get it to work with Mplayer, not with Totem. I futzed around with a couple things and it was probably a good 15-20 minutes before I realized… hey dummy… you never installed the codec’s after you installed 8.04 on this box. duh!

Ubuntu really does word “right out of the box” for.. well.. 99% of what you’d need it to do I suppose. That last 1% they can’t do because of licensing issues - least not without charging fees and crud. But they do make it easy as heck to add the codecs you need. (For those that don’t know what a codec is, think of it like the driver software you need to get your computer and printer to talk to each other, but this allows your media player to read what’s on commercial DVDs.)

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Ok, I’ve slowly been working on getting more stuff working with Ubuntu on my main system. Tonight, it’s the LG lightscribe DVD burner.

Just before dumping WinXP, I found the LightScribe official site, and had noticed they had Linux versions of a few things. So tonight I got back and end up on the Linux download page and find they have a Debian version of the system software package. I click to download… open it… and the package just kicks in.

When it’s done, I go back and grab the Simple Labeler, The -deb file again. I used the template labeler on WinXP, so we’ll see how different this is. Nothing was installed to my Applications menu. I browse to the opt folder, there’s a new lightscribeApplications folder, and in there SimpleLabeler. Start it up, and grab a CD to test it out with.

Simple Labeler does.. simple labels. A graphical ring around the hub area with a top and/or bottom area of text. After typing some jibberish in, selecting the paw prints graphic, it does a preview and I click the print button. Then after a couple minutes of media detecting… the tray pops out and it asks me to insert a compatible disk, label side down. Hmmm? ok. I pull the disk out, put it back in, close the tray and click OK. It starts chugging along… two minutes later it pops it out again… and whoa, it worked!

Next step, a quick Google search finds this page on the Ubuntu Forums - it explains a lot of what I just did, but has the added bonus of a link to a program called LaCiE LightScribe Labeler for Linux, or 4L - someone made a Deb package you can grab. It installed to my /usr folder. I haven’t tested it yet, but the look is very similar to the Template Labeler off the LightScribe site… except after looking at it for a few minutes, you can not add text to the label.

Basically, 4L seems to take an image and print that image only, as either a title band (narrow, a bit inside from the center hub), a content band (from hub out to the same layer as the title band), or full disk. If you want text, you have to put it in your image first. So… the search for something else will continue, but this will do for now.

Actually, the LightScribe site has some great graphics you can download (here and here), and I had already figured I could use them as templates for my own images if needed. So maybe for what little work I actually do with the labeling, this could work for now.

Ok, I have been looking and looking for a movie database program to help me keep track of my DVD collection. I have.. 250 or so. I know, a bit on the small side. Ideally, I have wanted one that is web based, but haven’t found one I really like yet. Originally I used a spreadsheet, then started using a windows based program that was ok - imported from IMDB and moodb.com - it has some quirks I don’t care for.

With the switch to Ubuntu, I looked at a few of the available options and decided to give Griffith a shot. So far… well, back up. First impression was good. You click the Add button, enter a title, search online if you want (default is IMDB, but there seems to be a couple dozen others to try), it brings up possible matches, you pick one and it fills in the blanks including downloading cover art. You can still tweek it from there checking a “seen it” box for example, choose medium, condition, and probably lots of other stuff I will probably never use.

It was going great for the first 40 or so entries.. then suddenly the add button stopped working.

Checked the forums and it seems to be a known - the application repository has 0.9.4 - the latest version is 0.9.5 - installed that and I’m back in business.

It also has a feature where you can enter in friends and such to keep track of who you borrow movies too… (and email them reminders when they forget to bring it back). You can view your movies by all, those lent out, those you haven’t seen, ask the program to suggest a movie you haven’t seen, and the standard backup and restore your data.

One thing I may check in to eventually is switching form SQLite it mySQL, maybe putting the DB online, and if I get around to learning enough create a simple list of my movies online. (This is so when I’m out shopping I can check to make sure I’m not buying a movie I already have a copy of… of course.)

So…. for now, this one does get a good recommendation. I’ll post again if I run in to any issues.

Griffith - A Film Collection Manager [berliOS.de]