If you're a Scott Granneman addict, don't despair. Scott has not left us, but he has shifted sideways a bit, joining the team at Download Squad, our blog about software and online services. Scott joins a dynamic team covering the latest in many kinds of on-screen experience.

You can roll your own Download Squad experience in several ways:

BOOKMARKS:

Main blog:
http://www.downloadsquad.com

The Open Source category
http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/open-source/

All Scott, all the time:
http://www.downloadsquad.com/bloggers/scott-granneman/

RSS FEEDS

Main blog:
http://www.downloadsquad.com/rss.xml

The Open Source category feed:
http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/open-source/rss.xml

The Open Source Weblog will remain exactly where it is, with its tremendous archive of blog entries. Ues it as a reference point, and aim your browser/newsreader at Download Squad for the continuous Open Source updating you've come to expect. Thanks for reading!

As I recently pointed out, Sun finally changed its license so that distros like Debian can include the Sun JRE. Thanks, Sun! Here's the command you need to run:

apt-get install sun-java5-jre sun-java5-plugin sun-java5-fonts sun-java5-bin

That'll do it, fair readers.

(Check out all of our posts on Sun and Java.)

File this under "I should have known about this but didn't." Let's say you don't have a mouse, or your mouse is having problems, yet you still need to somehow move your pointer from A to B. It's easy in KDE: press Alt-F12. You can now move the pointer with your arrow keys. When you're finished, press Alt-F12 again, & you're back to the mouse. Easy peasy. How do you do this in GNOME? Let us know!

(Check out all of our posts on KDE and the mouse.)

Dapper Drake, the new version of K/Ubuntu is out, and it rocks. I've been using the beta for awhile, & I'm very very very happy. For an interesting review that's chock full of screenshots & useful info about software to install, check out Ubuntu Dapper Review. In particular, there's nice info about getting the nVidia drivers installed, and even the coolest eye candy in the world, XGL. I'll be posting more in coming days, so keep posted ... & if you haven't tried Dapper yet, go try it!

(Check out all of our posts on K/Ubuntu.)

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has a great little review of Paragon's NTFS for Linux driver, which can help you access & recover data stored on drives formatted with NTFS from Linux. This is important stuff guys, as it helps Linux users work with Windows in ways that help us get around MSFT's attempts to lock people into their own special formats. And while Paragon's software is proprietary, it's reasonably priced, with the Personal edition (which works on a bootable CD) at only $19.95. Not bad at all.

(Check out all of our posts on NTFS.)

Windows & Mac OS make it really, really simple to install software because there's really only one way to install: click on Setup.exe or Install.exe in the case of Windows, or a .dmg in the case of Mac OS. Linux is more difficult because there's such a variety of packaging formats. Now here comes the excellent How to install ANYTHING in Ubuntu!, which delivers exactly what it says. This puppy covers the package manager as a concept, the APT GUI Synaptic, using APT via the terminal (my preferred method), and how to install a package manually, no matter if that package is a .deb, .rpm, .tar.gz, .sh, .bin, or even a .exe. And while the title is for Ubuntu, this guide works for pretty much any Debian-based distro. Read & bookmark this one, guys - it's a keeper!

(Check out all of our posts on K/Ubuntu & software installation.)

Robert volunteers for a St. Louis organization called ByteWorks, which takes old PCs & refurbs them, then teaches kids how to use 'em. At that point, the kids get to keep the PCs. Pretty cool program. Robert is helping them move from old versions of Windows to Linux, which is great. Unfortunately, these machines are so old that "modern" Linux desktops like GNOME and KDE are too much. Here's what I suggested:

<begin my email to Robert>

If this was for "normal" users we were trying to wean away from Windows, I would push KDE, but that's impossible with this ancient, underpowered hardware. Ice [a window manager] is way too different & weird. Actually, so is KFCE, since it's based on GNOME's ideas about desktops (which are quite bizarre).

Have you looked at this?

http://www.simplekde.org

It's a stripped-down KDE.

Or this?

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8239

Another stripped-down KDE.

Interestingly, Auditor - one of the absolute best Live CDs for security - switched from ICEwm to a stripped down KDE.

http://www.remote-exploit.org/index.php/Auditor_changes

Have you looked at this distro, which is specifically for old hardware & uses KDE?

VectorLinux
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=vector

<end my email to Robert>

(Check out all of our posts on KDE, ICE, XFCE, & Auditor.)

I'm really proud to announce that my 3rd book is now out & available for purchase: Linux Phrasebook. My first book - Don't Click on the Blue E!: Switching to Firefox - was for general readers (really!) who wanted to learn how to move to and use the fantastic Firefox web browser. I included a lot of great information for more technical users as well, but the focus was your average Joe. My second book - Hacking Knoppix - was for the more advanced user who wanted to take advantage of Knoppix, a version of Linux that runs entirely off of a CD. You don't need to be super-technical to use and enjoy Hacking Knoppix, but the more technical you are, the more you'll enjoy the book. Linux Phrasebook is all about the Linux command line, and it's perfect for both Linux newbies and experienced users. In fact, when I was asked to write the book, I responded, "Write it? I can't wait to buy it!"

The idea behind Linux Phrasebook is to give practical examples of Linux commands and their myriad options, with examples for everything. Too often a Linux user will look up a command in order to discover how it works, and while the command and its many options will be detailed, something vitally important will be left out: examples. That's where Linux Phrasebook comes in. I cover a huge number of different commands and their options, and for every single one, I give an example of usage and results that makes it clear how to use it.

Here's the table of contents; in parentheses I've included some (just some) of the commands I cover in each chapter:

1. Things to Know About Your Command Line
2. The Basics (ls, cd, mkdir, cp, mv, rm)
3. Learning About Commands (man, info, whereis, apropos)
4. Building Blocks (;, &&, |, >, >>)
5. Viewing Files (cat, less, head, tail)
6. Printing and Managing Print Jobs (lpr, lpq, lprm)
7. Ownerships and Permissions (chgrp, chown, chmod)
8. Archiving and Compression (zip, gzip, bzip2, tar)
9. Finding Stuff: Easy (grep, locate)
10. The find command (find)
11. Your Shell (history, alias, set)
12. Monitoring System Resources (ps, lsof, free, df, du)
13. Installing software (rpm, dkpg, apt-get, yum)
14. Connectivity (ping, traceroute, route, ifconfig, iwconfig)
15. Working on the Network (ssh, sftp, scp, rsync, wget)
16. Windows Networking (nmblookup, smbclient, smbmount)

I'm really proud of the whole book, but the chapter on the super-powerful and useful find command is a standout, along with the material on ssh and its descendants sftp and scp. But really, the whole book is great, and I will definitely be keeping a copy on my desk as a reference. If you want to know more about the Linux command line and how to use it, then I know you'll enjoy and learn from Linux Phrasebook.

You can read about and buy the book at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0672328380/) for $10.19. If you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to contact me at scott at granneman dot com, or check out my web site for more info.

Assume you have a whole mess of WAV files that you want to convert. First let's turn them into MP3s.

lame --preset insane *wav

This basically creates the mp3 at 320, which is, uh, insane, but it's the highest quality level. If its not 320, I don't want it. You may choose 192 or above; unless it's speech, I would NEVER use anything less than 192.

Now let's convert your WAVs to FLAC files.

shntool conv -o flac *.wav

If you're using a Debian-based system, you'll probably need to do this first:

sudo apt-get install shntool

Is that not easy or what?

(Check out all of our posts on conversions, WAV, MP3, & FLAC.)

PowerPoint pretty much sucks, for a variety of reasons. And in that group I also include OpenOffice.org Impress (which I personally choose to suffer through) and Apple's Keynote. They all just suck in different ways. Being a Web dude, I've always looked for a web-based solution, and now there appears to be two contenders: Dave Raggett's Slidy (he's the guy who invented the awesome Tidy, so you know he's a smart cookie) and Eric Meyer's (we all must bow to him & his CSS godly knowledge) S5, which stands for Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System.

Both are good, & both work the same: they provide you with the CSS files (which you can customize ... & which you should customize, so your templates are unique) and JavaScript, & your job is put your entire presentation in an XHTML file. If you know HTML, this will be easy; if you don't ... well, there's always Impress! Based on my experimentation with both, I'm going to use S5. It supports font scaling a bit better, & it has some features that Slidy doesn't have, especially in the footer that's auto-generated on every slide. On top of that, Eric Meyer, showing his background as a writer, has better documentation that Dave Raggett, which is key. But in either case, both Slidy & S5 are worth exploring, & it's great news that we finally have an alternative to PowerPoint and the other presentation clients.

(Check out all of our posts on presentations, OpenOffice.org, S5, and Eric Meyer.)

K/Ubuntu has its own bug-tracking system, Launchpad. Go check out bug #1, available at https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+bug/1.

Awesome.

I heart Mark Shuttleworth.

(Check out all of our posts on K/Ubuntu.)

The new SUSE 10.1 is getting great reviews, & is undoubtedly the best SUSE yet. However, even something that is great can always be made better, & that's where Jem Matzan's "Hacking SUSE Linux 10.1" comes in. Want to know how to add support for Java, Flash, Acrobat, Windows Media, RealPlayer, ATI & nVidia graphics cards, XGL/Compiz (only the coolest eye candy EVER), & commercial DVD movies? Then go read that article & follow its advice!

(Check out all of our posts on SUSE.)

Several months ago my second book came out, Hacking Knoppix. Prior to that, O'Reilly released a (good) book on the same subject titled Knoppix Hacks. Yup, the two sure sound alike. On the CWE-LUG list, JT asked a good question: "What is the differentiators between the books? Do they have core themes or do they just deal with different hacks?" Robert - who was the tech editor for Hacking Knoppix and also wrote an appendix, had this to say as an answer. He nailed it, IMHO.

<begin Robert>

Here's my take:

Knoppix Hacks: a large collection of small hacks
Hacking Knoppix: a small collection of large hacks

So, Hacking Knoppix goes into more depth on a fewer hacks, with a fair amount of emphasis on remastering.

I think the two books complement each other well. But perhaps I'm biased. :)

<end Robert>

(Check out all of our posts on Knoppix.)

My fave DIY blogging software is WordPress, as you can see at my personal blog (which I use for collecting anecdotes, factoids, &tc for use in my writing), called, appropriately enough, GranneBlog. As with most DIY blogging software, creating a cool theme can be pretty hard. Now, however, there's a really cool extension for WordPress called Canvas that promises to make this process a lot easier, and a lot more powerful. To really understand this thing, be sure to read "Why Not Take a Closer Look", which contains screenshots that explain just what this thing can do. It appears to be pretty neat stuff. Anyone tried it? Let us know how it went!

(Check out all of our posts on WordPress.)

Computer CPUs can stand really hot temperatures, but there comes a point at which things break. Want to know your CPU's temp? To tell, run this command:

cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THM0/temperature

(Note that it may not work on all machines).

(Check out all of our posts on the command line.)