Linux Musings

Smoothly cruising with Linux for some time now, the data corruption notwithstanding, a few things to note :
1. When using larger screens, anything larger than 15", I find the KDE mouse pointer acceleration controller far superior than XP's, The ability to fine tune the acceleration values makes moving all over the screen quite easy, presently I have set it to 5 (threshold is always 1) on a 1280 X 1024 resolution screen. In XP a lot of lifting of the mouse is needed to get to the corners.

2. The last data corruption left me with a lot of files without proper names or extensions. In XP these show up as unidentified files, where as in Linux, even without the extensions, konqueror is able to identify the file types from the file headers. Impressive.

3. One area where XP scores is in the file transfer process. For some absurd reason, Linux creates empty folders in the target destination much before shifting the files within them. This can create a lot of problems if the transfer is interrupted for some reason, as the folders all exist at the destination giving the impression that the transfer has been completed. Then the user has to go to the target destination and check each folders properties to see if they are merely shells. I am sure there would be some script to automate this shell checking process.

4. Bulk renaming is a cinch in XP, strangely this is a novel concept in  Linux. There is no way to convert all files with one extension into another. In XP something like ren *.jpg *.xyz works, but in Linux you need a script, like this one which I use to rename the youtube videos files from the browser's cache where it is stored without extension:
 for file in *; do echo $file; new=$file.flv; echo $new; mv $file $new;
(the whole thing can be typed out at the prompt)

5. The difficulties faced in getting a video editor seem unsurmountable. Virtual dub and Wine do not tango. From the net, the many alternatives exist as source files requiring considerable patience in modifying them into usable form. Something I have been unable to accomplish so far. This is the only reason why I still need to have an XP installation.

6. Virtual box, the OS emulator fails to install properly, inspite installing from the DVD while installing the OS. No solution is forthcoming from the OPensuse forums in this regard, besides trying out the latest version.

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Multi page pdf printing

One of the reasons I preferred to use Foxit pdf reader with wine was because the inbuilt pdf reader did not support printing multiple pages on a single A4 sheet. Ofcourse I could use the bloated Adobe reader which had a linux version as well, but since I already had wine for Opera 7.54, the 2 MB Foxit was much better. Unfortunately, in some cases Foxit would not run as expected,eventhough other windows apps did.
After looking around a bit, I think I may have found a universal setting that allows multiple page printing. It seems the print manager has the required settings. But, since the print manager is not launched automatically when the job is sent to the printer, and also since the job shows up only after it has been sent to the printer from the application, using the feature is a tricky affair, if it works at all - much like the rest of Linux!
The modus operandi : First launch the print manager, in Opensuse it is under the Utilities, Printing menu in the Start menu. Then send the file to print. This will cause the job to show up in the print manager.Here right click on the job and check its properties. In the properties window the number of pages per sheet can be set - 4 being the max.
While this feature exists, I have been unable to use it since the modified settings would not be accepted as the root username and password would be rejected. Probably some fine tuning is required.


Update : 24.11.08

A thorough ferretting through the Print options revealed that the print manager allows printing upto 4 pages per page. This option is available while printing any page. I had previously downloaded Adobe's bloated pdf reader to get this facility, since foxit in wine did not work and Kpdf did not have multiple page printing. This latest find is a significant help.