Chapter 9
Must-Have Utilities
IN THIS CHAPTER
Learning about GIMP, a Photoshop alternative.
Learning about Inkscape, an Illustrator alternative.
Learning about VLC, a media player.
Learning about Tor and Privoxy, a pair of privacy tools.
Learning about KompoZer, a web authoring tool.
Learning about BitTornado, a simple-to-use Bit Torrent tool.
Learning about K3b, a CD and DVD utility.
This chapter introduces a set of applications that I couldn’t do without:
GIMP: A high-end graphics processor, similar to Adobe Photoshop.
Inkscape: A vector-based illustration program, similar to Adobe Illustrator. Inkscape is built to create SVG graphics files.
VLC media player: A very versatile, simple-to-use media player.
Tor and Privoxy: A combination of applications that, when used together, can help make web surfing anonymous.
KompoZer: A powerful web page and CSS editor.
BitTornado: A BitTorrent client. BitTorrent provides a more efficient way to download very large files (such as the installation ISO files for other versions of Linux).
K3b: A versatile CD and DVD writer.
Admittedly, as a writer, I’m biased toward the communications side of things. However, I tried to provide enough of a mix of useful applications that you’ll find a few things you like.
The end of the chapter introduces a few applications that I’d really like to use that don’t work under Xandros. These applications do work under other Linux versions on the Eee PC (and, in one case, under Windows), and I’ll talk about that as well.
By the way, you need to be in Full Desktop to load these applications, because you’ll be using the package mangers to get them. Also, these applications load by default into the Full Desktop Launch menus under Applications.
GIMP
GIMP (GNU Image and Manipulation Processor) is an open source application that is similar to Adobe Photoshop, with many of the same capabilities. It enables you to create bitmapped art or edit and retouch photography. The photography in this book was cropped and edited using GIMP. GIMP can handle such esoteric tasks as correcting “keystoneing” in photograph color correction. You can crop photos, clone images, apply all sorts of filters…in short, do just about everything you’d want to do in a digital darkroom.
What makes GIMP especially handy on the Eee PC is the Eee PC’s portability. If you’re a serious photographer, you can actually toss the Eee PC in your camera bag. While the screen space is limited on the Eee PC, it does provide all of the power you need to edit and fix photos on-site and have them ready for upload when you can get to an Internet connection.
Think of GIMP as a bigger toolbox than the built-in Photo Manager application (Gwenview). Photo Manager is great for the simple, day-to-day photo processing and organizing tasks. However, if you really want to edit or retouch a photo, you’ll need GIMP. Also, if you’re a Photoshop fan, you’ll love GIMP. Figure 9.1 shows a photo being cropped in GIMP.
GIMP, the brainchild of Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis, is extremely powerful in its own right, but also has many plug-ins. For example, you can install plug-ins for extra brushes, or to manipulate SVG (Scalable Vector Graphic) images, or even to create animations. Even the Help tool is a plug-in (which makes sense, to save space, because you need to load only the Help version specific to your language).
FIGURE 9.1 Cropping a photo in GIMP.
The package repositories listed in Chapter 8, “Getting More Linux Applications,” have all the information that you need to load GIMP and many of its plug-ins. So, loading GIMP is a bit like filling out a shopping list. Simply look for GIMP in the Synaptic Package Manager, and check out the various other packages that begin with gimp (see Figure 9.2). GIMP automatically installs into the Launch menu under Graphics.
FIGURE 9.2 Selecting GIMP in the Synaptic Package Manager.
GIMP runs flawlessly on the Eee PC, though you’ll need to use the Alt-drag mouse technique to drag the oversized setup windows up a bit when the program is first run. The controls extend below the screen. Once GIMP is running, you’ll probably want to drag the two GIMP control windows wider and make them shorter to fit the smaller screen size. Keep in mind that space is limited on the Eee PC and that photos can be quite large. Naturally, having more memory will help if you have a lot of larger photographs. To learn more about GIMP, peruse the tutorials, and so forth at http://www.gimp.org.
Inkscape
Inkscape is an illustration package, and you are probably asking, “Why do I need another illustration package when I have OpenOffice.org Draw?” Well, Inkscape can do things that OpenOffice.org Draw can’t. Inkscape was designed to work from the ground up with an XML graphics format called Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). SVG can display in web browsers and even Microsoft Internet Explorer if you have the SVG plug-in installed.
Like Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape has Bezier-curve drawing tools, freehand tools, tools for drawing geometric shapes, and even an eyedropper tool for transferring color from one thing to another. It also has some nonstandard tools, such as a really interesting spiral/arc tool and a calligraphic freehand tool. If you know how to use Illustrator or Draw, it won’t take you long to learn Inkscape. However, if you do get stumped, http://www.inkscape.org has FAQs and documentation.
The other great thing about SVG is that it’s an XML-based graphics file format, meaning that you have another way to edit files. You can call up your drawing in a built-in XML editor and edit it. For example, Figure 9.3 shows a rectangle from the drawing in the XML editor.
FIGURE 9.3 Editing an SVG graphics XML file in the built-in XML editor.
You can also tap the resources of the SVG clip art files at http://www.openclipart.org if you don’t want to draw something yourself. These aren’t terribly extensive, but they’re nicely executed and (best of all) completely free. They also serve as interesting examples you can study to learn techniques.
You can install Inkscape via the Synaptic Package Manager using the repositories listed in Chapter 8. It also runs flawlessly on the Eee PC hardware, although you might want to consider an external monitor if you’ll be using Inkscape a lot. Inkscape also automatically installs into the Launch menu, under Graphics.
VLC Media Player
For some file formats, VLC media player works better than the built-in SMPlayer application (which is actually the graphical interface for MPlayer). For example, VLC can play some video formats that SMPlayer can’t handle. It’s nice to have both media players, especially because VLC is very lightweight. As I pen these words, I’m listening to streaming audio on the Eee PC via Radio Rivendell. Yes, I could also use Music Manager, but VLC is so compact and easy to use that I just prefer it.
Firefox, by the way, was set by default to use VLC as the default player for some audio formats, but this was modified on the Eee PC. You can fix that by going to Firefox Preferences (under Edit), clicking the Content tab, clicking the Manage button under Filetypes, and resetting this back to the VLC default in the Change Action dialog box (see Figure 9.4).
FIGURE 9.4 Resetting the audio defaults in Firefox.
One great thing about VLC is that it has a very easy-to-use audio equalizer you can access through Audio, Presets. The equalizer has lots of nice presets, ranging from Classical to Techno (see Figure 9.5). It really seems to excel when you are listening to or watching streaming media. Its visualizations are pretty ho-hum, but you can’t have everything.
VLC also loads easily via the Synaptic Package Manager from the repositories listed in Chapter 8. It automatically installs itself in the Multimedia section of the Launch menu. You can get more information about VLC at http://www.videolan.org/vlc/.
FIGURE 9.5 VLC media player’s audio equalizer.
Tor and Privoxy
Tor (The Onion Router) and Privoxy combine to build an environment that purports to provide autonomous web browsing. Basically, Tor is a large set of Internet relays that bounce your web communications around until they’re nearly impossible to trace back to the originating computer. As such, Tor slows things down a bit (okay, maybe more than just a bit, although it’s tolerable). Its website is http://www.torproject.org.
The best explanation of Privoxy comes from its website (http://www.privoxy.org): “Privoxy is a non-caching web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for enhancing privacy, modifying web page data, managing HTTP cookies, controlling access, and removing ads, banners, pop-ups and other obnoxious Internet junk.” In a nutshell, Privoxy enhances security and enforces privacy.
Using Tor and Privoxy together can be a simple choice to not have one’s Internet browsing tracked or it can be deadly serious business if you live in a country that frowns on free speech or freedom of information. I cannot vouch for how good the anonymity or privacy is that’s provided by these packages, but I do know many folks use them.
You can install these packages via the Synaptic Package Manager from the repositories listed in Chapter 8, and installation is straightforward. However, you must configure Privoxy to have it work properly. The configuration file in question is config, and it lies in the /etc/privoxy/ directory. Open the config file by either browsing to it via the Administrative File Manager or using the command line (don’t forget sudo). You can use the default text editor from the Administrative File Manager. Find this line:
listen-address 127.0.0.1:8118
and add the following line after it:
forward-socks4a / localhost:9050 .
Save the file and you’re done. You’ll need to start Tor and Privoxy from an xterm window or Konsole command line. The syntax is
> sudo /etc/init.d/tor start
> sudo /etc/init.d/privoxy start
Instead of the start argument, you can use stop (to stop the process) or restart (to stop and start the process) in the commands. You can create a simple shell script to do this if you like. (Chapter 11, “Introduction to the Linux Command Line,” explains scripts and autostarting them.)
Now that you know how to install and run Tor and Privoxy, you need a way for a browser to use them. The simplest add-on to Firefox is called Torbutton, found at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2275. To install it, simply click the green Add to Firefox button on that web page. Once it is installed, you’ll see a dandy little button at the bottom of the Firefox window that says Tor Disabled. If Tor and Privoxy are currently running, simply click the button (it will change to Tor Enabled).
The next trick is to determine that it’s really running. Fortunately, the Tor folks provide a web page to test this: http://check.torproject.org. If it’s working, you’ll see something like the web page shown in Figure 9.6.
Tor and Privoxy are kind of fun to play with. For example, when enabled, if you navigate via Firefox to Google, you’re never sure in what language the Google page will greet you, because that depends on the last relay in the set. Also, sometimes Google will detect that it’s a known Tor relay and will balk by throwing up a Captcha screen. This is Google’s attempt to foil automated tomfoolery via programs that use Tor. You’ll also find that Wikipedia may block you, because some nefarious types have vandalized the entries under cover of the Tor relays.
FIGURE 9.6 Apparently, Tor is working..
KompoZer
KompoZer is a complete, integrated website, HTML, and JavaScript development application. It’s an outgrowth—well, actually a bug-fix version—of the popular Nvu editor. KompoZer is a marvelous environment for web-page development, with FTP upload capability, a full JavaScript console, and a cascading style sheets (CSS) editor.
If you’re not the greatest web wizard of all time, KompoZer is for you. It has lots of wizards and helpful dialog boxes, and can insert HTML tags via menus. It can also validate your HTML and clean up your HTML to make the code more readable. Figure 9.7 shows an HTML file loaded into KompoZer, showing the HTML source. You can get more information about the program from http://kompozer.sourceforge.net. (SourceForge.net is one of the largest repositories of open source code on the Internet.)
You can easily load KompoZer via the Synaptic Package Manager using the repositories listed in Chapter 8. It automatically installs a menu entry under Launch, Applications, Development.
FIGURE 9.7 KompoZer in action.
BitTornado
Getting Linux distros and so forth for the Eee PC is best done via BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file-sharing technology that is popular for downloading really big files, such as the ISO CD image files for Linux distros. You’ll want to use BitTorrent if you’ll be downloading such big files, which means you need a BitTorrent client. BitTornado (http://www.bittornado.com) is just such a client. It provides an easy-to-use GUI to download “torrent files,” the peer-to-peer method used by BitTorrent. Torrent files may be found on BitTorrent catalog sites, which are searchable, such as http://www.torrentz.com. There are other easily installable clients, such as Vuze (formerly known as Azureus), but BitTornado is very easy to use.
BitTornado is another easy install via the Synaptic Package Manager using the repositories listed in Chapter 8, and the installation provides a Launch menu entry under Internet. Actually, the toughest part of using BitTornado, or any other BitTorrent client, is getting your ports open on your router’s firewall. If you don’t, download speeds are excruciatingly slow. The dead giveaway that Tor is having firewall challenges is a big yellow circle on the upper right of the interface. If you see that, it’s time to go to your router documentation and find out how to get the ports open. Figure 9.8 shows the various status lights that BitTornado can provide.
FIGURE 9.8 The BitTornado status lights, which let you know if you’ve got a firewall issue.
You can get some real assistance with configuring your router’s firewall from a company called Port Forward. It maintains a series of instructions for getting BitTorrent and your router to cooperate, at http://portforward.com/english/applications/port_forwarding/Torrent/Torrentindex.htm. Also, the following forum is a good resource: http://forums.afterdawn.com.
K3b
If you plan on hooking a DVD writer to your Eee PC, you’ll really appreciate K3b (http://www.k3b.org/). Xandros mounts and reads data CDs and DVDs just fine, but won’t format or write them. However, the Eee PC will format and write data CDs and DVDs with K3b.
This absolute gem of a program is available via the Synaptic Package Manager (see Figure 9.9) using the repositories listed in Chapter 8. Figure 9.9 shows the trick in loading it: You must mark K3B-1.0 for installation, not K3B. It is installed under Launch, Applications, Multimedia.
FIGURE 9.9 Installing K3b from Synaptic.
When you launch K3B, you’ll see a few nuisance dialog boxes and messages. One will ask if you wish to integrate K3B functionality with the Konqueror file manager/browser. If you use Konqueror instead of the Xandros File Manager, this is a nice convenience feature. Another may complain that the cdrecord function is running without root privileges. This is OK, just close the dialog box.
K3b provides a file-manager–like interface that’s a snap to use. It has large buttons on the main screen for creating new audio and data CD projects, as well as data DVDs. It also has a one-button solution for copying CDs.
K3b can also rip audio CDs, and it does a marvelous job at that. In addition, it can rip a video DVD, although space becomes a trifle challenging in the Eee PC environment.
FIGURE 9.10 K3b formatting a data DVD.
Stuff That Doesn’t Work Under Xandros
Two programs that I really wish worked easily under Xandros are TrueCrypt and Scribus.
TrueCrypt
TrueCrypt is, I think, an essential application for a machine as portable (and therefore as easily stolen) as the Eee PC. TrueCrypt provides military-grade data encryption capabilities and can either create encrypted partitions on a flash drive or memory card or (if you have the latest version) encrypt a file system.
If you have confidential or sensitive information on your Eee PC, it would be great to protect it with TrueCrypt. Unfortunately, very few people have gotten it to work on the Eee PC. (There is a solution provided by a gentleman in Hungary who has a precompiled version that appears to work. However, many folks feel a little uneasy about accepting an encryption program compiled by another private individual.) TrueCrypt does work under some other Linux distros and under Windows.
Scribus
Scribus is a personal favorite of mine: it’s a full-blown desktop publishing program for Linux. Scribus has roughly the same page layout power as the last edition of Adobe PageMaker. Scribus is not yet on par with Adobe InDesign or Quark Express, but it’s catching up fast. Added to the trio of OpenOffice.org Writer, Inkscape, and GIMP, Scribus would complete a true desktop publishing suite of tools running on the Eee PC.
Again, one can get Scribus running under other distros and Windows. But it sure would be cool if it would work on the Eee PC version of Xandros.
Summary
This chapter presents a few “best-of-breed” applications that you can install on the Eee PC. These applications can make using your Eee PC even more fun. One word of caution: consider how much disk space you have available if you are thinking of loading them all.