jcxz100
Denmark
Tutorials
| Title | Score |
|---|
Software reviews
| Software | Score |
|---|---|
| xreader "Would be nice to have a way to set preferred view as continuous for new documents. Other than that I find its simplicity refreshing." |
4 |
| aegisub "I used this in mint 20.x and liked it a lot. It's got a lot more features than I ever used, and felt rather mature as a piece of sw. So why - I wonder - doesn't this exist anymore in mint 21? I could of course install the windows version under Wine, or switch to another app like gnome-subtitles.." |
5 |
| anbox "Doesn't seem to work in LM 20.1 either. Launch splash box shows for 30 secs, then nothing." |
2 |
| lighttpd "Very lightweight :-D Runs smoothly even on old computers with low memory." |
5 |
| filezilla "It has a lot of features and that's great... but it hangs when I try to enter my local web-site folder with 400 MB (3300 files). Judging from various bug reports (from Windows users) this is a behaviour that has been there for at least 5 years." |
3 |
| unattended-upgrades "I didn't have the patience to find out how to use this. Wrote and cron'ed a script myself instead (using apt-get). Also it can't discern between the Mint "levels" of packages, so "dangerous" updates are happily applied too. Note: There's the same problem with my own script; but at least there I know what's going on." |
2 |
| lirc "Doesn't work (why??)" |
2 |
| timidity-daemon "Solved (well, almost) the problem with staggering sound; *that* comes if you try to use timidity in its -iA mode (user mode host) for a certain Win3.1 MIDI player (run under Wine). Now to get rid of the staggering altogether I run the application as: nice wine PROGRAM.EXE... win3.1 programs can't handle that much cpu anyway." |
4 |
| bridge-utils "You don't need this package for bridging in Linux Mint; that can be managed in the "Network Connections" dialog. If you have two NICs, just set IPv4 of the one that *isn't* connected to the Internet to "Shared to other computers" rather that "Automatic (DHCP)". This isn't transparent bridging, but Internet works. Most wifi cards refuse to work with bridge-utils package btw." |
3 |
| libgtk2.0-dev "Needed for building wxGTK-2.8.12, which in turn is needed for building audacity 2.06 (and upcoming 2.10 it seems)." |
4 |
| vlc-plugin-pulse "I don't need this package. VLC works fine (well it works) without it (i.e. through the older ALSA system). Better keep things simple: Neither VLC nor pulseaudio is all too stable, so best keep them separated. Maybe (hopefully) both will mature soon, so we can get rid of ALSA; but as it is, VLC doesn't actually *need* the extra low latency of pulseaudio." |
3 |
| pavumeter "Not sure what this is supposed to integrate into... everything seems to work the same with and without it(?) Anyway: This package is not necessary for everyday use of pulseaudio." |
2 |
| paman "Low level GUI tool for controlling settings of pulseaudio streaming. The tool integrates nicely with package 'pasystray', which is an optional panel shortcut for accessing all things pulseaudio related. (Note: Neither of these packages are needed for normal use - only if you like to mess with things; like I do)." |
4 |
| pulseaudio-utils "Low level CLI pulseaudio tools, that offer much control but require a lot of knowledge. This package is not necessary for every day user (thankfully)." |
4 |
| pulseaudio "Lots of features (I like features), but audio crashes and/or it delivers white noise instead of mic input at random intervals. But when (and as long) as it works, it does a good job of delivering low latency audio. Doesn't seem like a 100% mature package though. Note: Take care that you install modules that match your version of Mint (MATE contra Cinnamon), or else you could be installing yourself into a cesspool of trouble..." |
4 |
| pulseaudio-module-gconf "This module is necessary for package 'paprefs' to install. But I suppose it is also the reason for most of paprefs not working for me. The reason is: This is a 'gconf' (i.e. GNOME 2 / MATE) aimed module, and so probably doesn't integrate with Cinnamon. Ok, ok: I *am* just guessing here, but it sort of makes sense." |
2 |
| gnome-user-share "I did not notice any trouble from having this installed (I'm on Mint 17 64bit Cinnamon) - but it *is* meant for GNOME 2 (i.e. MATE), not for Cinnamon; so drawing from the experiences I've had with other GNOME 2 tools (that messed up part of my config), I uninstalled it because I didn't really need it anyway." |
3 |
| libav-tools "This set of tools are command line only and the full help for their options makes up I'd say around 100 screens of closely packed info - of which you'll probably only ever use 10 to 15. Just my kind of tool :) Btw: I prefer libav over the closely related ffmpeg tools, mostly because of the philosophy behind the development. Also ffmpeg seems a little slower in adapting new features. But from the enduser's perspective there is very little difference." |
5 |
| libavcodec-extra "It is pretty impossible to get an explanation of why you will need this package, "libavcode-extra", rather than plain "libavcodec". See for instance this ubuntu forums question: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1423948 (it is from 2010 and still unanswered). But my guess is that you won't have for instance mp3 ability without it (no, I didn't test that). After all the "MPEG-1 & -2 Audio Layer III" specifications are copyright by Fraunhofer IIS et al., and these companies have every right to one day ask everyone in the world to pay for the use of it... not a likely scenario, but still it could possibly be the reason for having a libavcodec that does not support it." |
5 |
| blueman "Let me be positive first: This enabled me to change the human-readable name of my pc from 'mint-0' to something more precise (I cannot find a native "bluez" setting for this in Mint 17 64bit Cinnamon; why??) But other than that, it messed up my bluetooth configuration, and parts of it stayed on my system even after I uninstalled it, which sucks. The symptoms were that I could no longer connect/disconnect Bluetooth devices from the rightclick-menu of the panel; I had to open Bluetooth Settings every time, and even so I might have to click twice for it to work. Only after manually disabling startup process "Blueman Applet" did I get back full control. The problem, I guess, is that Blueman is meant for GNOME 2 (i.e. MATE), not for GNOME 3 (Cinnamon)." |
2 |
| ppa-purge "I highly recommend this tool for disabling annoying PPAs that keep re-enabling themselves and which you cannot get rid of otherwise! This is command line only, but even if that scares you, please take the time to type in those few letters and press enter; if you've gotten yourself in the same kind of mess that I had, it's totally worth it! My story: Shortly after having installed Mint 17 for the first time ever, I had some problems I thought was gpu driver related; so I played around with "intel-graphics-installer" (from Intel's own website 01.org, it is *not* in the official repositories, and that is how it should be, nuff said!) - I since learned that the problem was not related to gpu or driver, but I was utterly unable to get rid of the PPA. Finally the command line "sudo ppa-purge -s download.01.org ppa:gfx/ubuntu" did the trick for me. I would have given it a 5 star review if only it had had a list (GUI or CLI) that would let you pick from what external repos you have enabled. As it is you need a bit of skill to (1) identify the culprit, and (2) figure out what exactly you should type at the command line." |
4 |
| vlc-plugin-notify "VLC used to ignore my multimedia keyboard (old thinkpad) before I installed this (I'm on Mint 17 Qiana, 64 bit, Cinnamon). Note: (1) installing it isn't enough, it has to be enabled manually too: Go to Settings: switch them to "all" i.e. advanced mode; and under Interface -> Control Interfaces tick off the "LibNotify Notification Plugin". (2) Unfortunately after reinstall of crashed VLC I can't make this work anymore :-( ... I tried manual deletion of ~/.config/vlc/, but it makes no difference. I probably have to start liking the totem player (aka "Videos")." |
3 |
| winff "Not my cup of tea. Can be used in two ways: Either you have to go with the presets (not my style); or else you find yourself typing command line options for the underlying FFMPeg/avconv library... and no help for what those params should look like." |
3 |
| paprefs "It has at least one useful option: Sending audio to several outputs at once. There's also an interesting option of sending sound to remote devices or hosts, but I couldn't make that work. The learning curve on that one (command line hacking apparently necessary?) was too steep for me to bother." |
3 |
| sshfs "I *very much* prefer sshfs to samba. ssh transfer is solid and safe. Never again will I use samba for a linux-to-linux transfer! Granted, sshfs transfer may have slower transfer-rate, but come on... samba breaks all the time - or is that just me?" |
5 |
| esekeyd "Linux Mint (Cinnamon version included) probably already supports your multimedia shortcut keys! - Do you disagree? And are you using VLC? Then try to go to the advanced settings of VLC HotKeys and enable 'libNotify Notification Plugin'. - Did I just waste two days searching the nets for a solution to this, while, in the process, installing every single stale package that was at some time in the past used for support for multimedia keys? Well, yes, yes I did." |
2 |
| tpb "Linux Mint (Cinnamon version included) already supports the thinkpad shortcut keys! - Do you disagree? And are you using VLC? Then try to go to the advanced settings of VLC HotKeys and enable 'libNotify Notification Plugin'. - Did I just waste two days searching the nets for a solution to this, while, in the process, installing every single stale package that was at some time in the past used for support for multimedia keys? Well, yes, yes I did." |
2 |
| xkeycaps "Sorry, but I cannot recommend this. It seems very oooold. There's no support/mapping for newer keyboards and laptops; you'd have to modify the source code for that to work. Anyone?" |
1 |
| wm2 "Do you live and breathe command line? Do you enjoy hacking and recompiling source? Is your XWindows of choice actually "none"? Well, then this is for you! To be serious: If you believe you need this window manager to spare some memory and cpu cycles for *the real* stuff, then you probably would be running a custom built Arch Linux instead of Mint. Just saying." |
2 |
| dconf-tools "Highly recommended for tweakers. Or: if you know you'll only be using either the GUI or the CLI version you could install only the ony you prefer, and then you don't need this meta-package. Note: This is for tweaking Nemo, Cinnamon, and Cinnamon specific packages *only*! If you have installed extra apps yourself, there's a good chance many of them are developed for gnome (MATE) and to tweak those you'll need to also have the gconf-editor package." |
5 |
| gconf-cleaner "I wouldn't trust this too much (on Qiana Cinnamon). Some of the entries it wanted to remove, I was pretty sure should stay in. So I exited, and got a very strange looking dialog, asking me (as far as I could decipher) to reconsider my actions. Thus I did - or rather... I gazed at it for few seconds, trying to figure which button meant "get me the h*** out of here!" ;) In short: This does not seem like a finished program." |
2 |
| mintdesktop "My review is "Like it", simply because I don't want to discredit a package that others will need... That said, I'm pretty sure this is an ubuntu related package, which Minters do not need to install. I installed it some time ago (I like to tweak. A lot!); but I can't find it anywhere in menus? And when I run it with alt+F2, it does *nothing* - there is no "failed to execute" error, which would have indicated, it wasn't installed after all." |
4 |
| gconf-editor "An absolute must for people who like to tinker! It handles apps, that are gnome (i.e. MATE) compatible; if you have installed extra sw packages yourself (I have), you probably have a good deal of those (I do). Note: You will also need to install the package "dconf-editor" for tweaking Cinnamon itself, the Nemo file manager, and the few other Cinnamon specific apps." |
5 |
| dconf-editor "For all the tweaks that ought to have been there preinstalled!! DConf has made me like Cinnamon again, and I no longer ponder a drop-back to MATE (for now ;-) )" |
5 |
| flashplugin-installer "Skip that: It currently doesn't integrate correctly with firefox. I guess Adobe broke something with recent version(s?) and didn't test before release. My advice: Stick with the default package (adobe-flashplugin), which always has verified version." |
1 |
| midori "This seemed great, but it's crashed a lot for me (both on ubuntu and now on mint 17 xfce 32bit). It' like it can't handle being run on a machine with limited RAM; and then what's the purpose of using it? Also, I haven't been able to make it work with Flash / gnash. I'm sticking with firefox." |
2 |