Mplayer is an excellent video player for Linux. It’s plays DVDs and just about any thing else that it needs to - even WMV files. The problem with Mplayer is that it lacks a native GUI. You can play a file with mplayer by typing # mplayer /path/filename but all you’ll see is a small window with no navigation pop up, play until the end of the file, and then close itself.

Kplayer is the solution to that. Kplayer does to Mplayer what Kaffeine does to Xine. Kplayer is a frontend for Mplayer that integrates well into KDE (allowing drag-and-drop of files and compatibility with other KDE apps). It also provides start and stop (and other) controls for multimedia playback.

Kaffeine does this with Xine. Kaffeine is a frontend for Xine that gives Xine total compatibility with the rest of KDE. The new version of Kaffeine that ships with KDE 3.4 also features excellent playlist management.

The big thing that you’ll need to know about these two programs is this: If Kaffeine won’t play something, try it in Kplayer - and vice versa. They run off of totally different multimedia processing engines and they compliment each other nicely - so make sure you’ve got both installed.

xmms-kde is an applet that runs in the KDE taskbar and allows you to control XMMS through some small buttons and volume sliders. It’s handy if you want to run XMMS out of sight but have a need to change the volume or switch songs often.

If you run XMMS and KDE regularly, xmms-kde is essential.

I was trained on Photoshop running on Windows. Back before I switched to the open source world I can’t say with a completely clear conscience that the software I learned on was installed and used legally - but how else was a 15-year-old supposed to learn Photoshop but through piracy?

Anyway, I kept my Windows/Photoshop skills when I moved to Linux but felt very disappointed in the lack of software that Gnu/Linux offered me as a replacement to Photoshop. I heard much about The Gimp but after trying it a few times to edit some pictures for a web layout I was left confused and frustrated. The Gimp doesn’t have the same look and feel that I was used to and I found that I couldn’t even execute basic tasks.

Then two days ago my roommate told me about GimpShop. Due to the open source (and therefore highly modular and well-written) nature of The Gimp it’s possible to change its interface. That’s exactly what Scott Moschella did. Being familiar with Photoshop himself he created a program that modifies the Gimp to look like Photoshop. GimpShop.

It’s a must for any graphic design Linux converts. Scott designed it for Mac OS X but it runs fine under Linux. You can find it in various forms at the following places:

GimpShop for Mac OS X 10.3 (you’ll need Apple’s X11)
GimpShop for OS X Info page

GimpShop for Linux RPM Torrent
GimpShop for Linux RPM (direct)
GimpShop for Linux Source
GimpShop for Linux Gentoo Ebuild
GimpShop for Linux Info page
GimpShop ported to Linux by CodeMills

GimpShop for Windows
GimpShop ported to Windows by CodeMills

I’ve been using DVD::RIP for a while now (that means a week) but ever since I upgraded to KDE 3.4 I’ve been having troubles getting it to work reliably will all of the components that it needs. It’s become common for DVD::RIP to tell me that it can’t read dvd’s, encode anything, get a table of contents, or preview a frame. Mind you it can do all of these things - just not at the same time.

And despite this I’ve had an overwhelmingly positive experience with Gentoo. I’m still not smart enough to get a recent release of IPW2200 working with it yet, but I’ve really enjoyed portage. Something about the transparency and fluidity of a package manager that can upgrade and install anything - even itself - is really desirable.

The same guy who cracked the DVD encryption years ago (which turned out to be a simple process but it really angered DVD companies) has now done somethins similar with iTunes.

DVD Jon (as the media is calling him) has released a version of iTunes that runs on Linux and removes the password protection from the downloaded songs. It turns out that the client (iTunes) is what encrypts the songs after they are downloaded so it was not such a task to create a version of iTunes that simply doesn’t add the encryption. It’s written in Python and runs on - you guessed it - Linux. They’ve got a Windows client but have announced that after this last version (v 0.4) they will not release anything for the Windows platform.

So if you’re interested in paying the same amount but getting the rights to your music that you deserve - check out PyMusique.
Visit Jon Johansen’s website
Download PyMusique

Back when I was using Suse 9.2 I couldn’t get a program called DVD::RIP to install. Something about the configuration of Suse kept me from installing the necessary package to get DVD::RIP up and going. Now that I’m on Gentoo all I had to do was type # emerge dvdrip and I was all set.

DVD::RIP is the single best application for turning DVDs to Xvid on Linux. It is technically just a frontend (GUI) for other programs, but it’s invaluable to any user because the programs that it controlls are impossible to use at the command line. DVD::RIP does not process individual VOB files, only whole discs - though you can select tracks and chapters at will. Despite this drawback it’s still the best utility for Linux at the moment.
It requires and uses the following programs:
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For those who learned graphic design on Photoshop and are now considering Linux Emil Haukeland has an excellent article on how to run Photoshop on Linux (yes, it’s possible).

The Gimp has been a mainstay of Linux graphics for a while, but it’s never approached Adobe Photoshop in usablity. Photoshop can be run under Linux thanks to the good people of the Wine program (and Codeweavers which moved it’s development a long way).

A few weeks ago I wrote about the benefits of switching to XMMS for Winamp users. I just came across an article elaborating on the joys of AmaroK (wolf in Inuit) so I thought I’d link to the review here.

AmaroK allows you to create file trees using artist, album, year, or genre in any order. So to find, say, all the albums that were released in a particular year, sort by year first and then by album, and a file tree opens that lists all the years in the first level, and all the albums in the second. There’s also a simple search filter to find something particular. I have four different versions of The Left Banke’s “Walk Away Renee,” and I can quickly find them all by typing that song title in the search box. The ability to structure the file tree in a number of different ways and to search it easily is amaroK’s single most important usability feature.

NewsForge | AmaroK is a step up for Linux audio players