Flash drive linux

Part of every pc repair toolbox ought to have been a linux live cd, for when there is no hard drive installed, no hard drive accessible, or a broken hard drive. It also would let you see if the system or windows is at fault. With UNetbootin, you can install linux to a flash drive. The system can then boot off of the flash drive. Some distributions even support persistent images(so that you could use your flash drive as the primary boot device. UNetbootin is open source and available for windows here.

(Image from UNetbooting sourceforge page)

Crossover Chrome

Crossover Chrome, built by Codeweavers, is Chrome for the Mac and for Linux. Its buggy and unstable, they used the Wine API’s to port it over. It does not auto-update. Available at Codeweavers. If you can wait though, the official team at Google is working on Mac and Linux native ports.

Ubuntu making proprietary formats easier to deal with

Canonical(basically the company that manages some Ubuntu stuff) has announced that codecs will be made available through Ubuntu’s apt package management. The one unfortunate part of this deal is that the full codec pack is $40. The alternative is what it has always been, to obtain the codecs illegally or buy software with the codecs built in. At least this provides an easy option to get the codecs legally.

VLC

So, as promised in my last post, today's post is all about VLC, a free, opensource, and cross-platform media player available at VideoLan. VLC is minimalistic, with a simple, small interface.

Opening any file in VLC will cause its window to expand to accommodate the media file.

(Video is blanked out)

VLC also has a huge number of options for playback, post-processing, output, and more.

The entire interface is completely skinnable.

It can also play internet and network video streams.

Overall VLC is a program with many pros and very few cons. The only con I have found is that the fullscreen mode does not include the normal playback information that is found in other media players.