command:
# yum install xmms
after which it will be located under Applications, Sound & Video as the Audio Player entry.
FIGURE 7.3 The very popular Xmms music player, seen here playing a local Ogg-Vorbis file.
Other music and sound-related applications can be found in the Sound & Video menu, and, of course, you are free to install your own selection of applications as well.
A handy utility that is included with Fedora is Sound Juicer, found under Applications, Sound and Video. Sound Juicer automatically detects when you install a CD and attempt to retrieve the track details from the Internet. From there it will rip the CD tracks into Ogg files for storage on your filesystem. You can see Sound Juicer in action in Figure 7.4.
FIGURE 7.4 Create your own digital music collection with Sound Juicer.
Streaming Audio
Streaming audio is for playing games, listening to Internet radio, and other online audio content. Streaming audio is designed to produce an uninterrupted sound output, but it requires the system to perform a content juggling act. Essentially, the system's audio buffer is continually filled with audio information, which is fed to the buffer through the system's Internet connection. Because of server and connection capabilities, the rate of input might vary. Because audio is used at a constant rate, the trick to managing streaming audio is to always keep the buffer full, although you might not be able to fill it at a constant rate.
Streaming audio is handled in Fedora in the .m3u format. The MPEG formats are also used for streaming audio. Although Xmms supports streaming audio, another popular application is the Real Player, available from http://www.real.com/linux/. An excellent resource for music and sound in Linux is http://linux- sound.org/. The Network Audio section of that website contains an extensive list of streaming audio applications.
The Icecast application, not provided with Fedora, is a popular streaming audio server. You can use Icecast to serve your MP3 music collection over your home LAN. You can learn more about Icecast at http://www.icecast.org/. A nice tutorial on Icecast is available athttp://www.linuxnetmag.com/en/issue4/m4icecast1.html.
Graphics Manipulation
Over a very short space of time, digital cameras and digital imagery have become extremely popular, to the point where some traditional film camera manufacturers are switching solely to digital. This meteoric rise has led to an increase in the number of applications that can handle digital imagery. Linux, thanks to its rapid pace of development, is now highly regarded as a multimedia platform of choice for editing digital images. Did you know that CGI effects for the film
This section of the chapter discusses The GIMP, a powerful graphics manipulation tool. You also learn about graphic file formats supported by Fedora, as well as some tools you can use to convert them if the application you want to use requires a different format.
The GNU Image Manipulation Program
One of the best graphics clients available is The GIMP. The GIMP is a free, GPLed image editor with sophisticated capabilities that can import and export more than 30 different graphics formats, including files created with Adobe Photoshop. It is often compared with Photoshop, and The GIMP represents one of the GNU Projects' first significant successes. Many images in Linux were prepared with The GIMP.
The GIMP can be found under the Applications, Graphics menu as simply The GIMP.
You see an installation dialog box when The GIMP is started for the first time, and then a series of dialog boxes that display information regarding the creation and contents of a local GIMP directory. This directory can contain personal settings, preferences, external application resource files, temporary files, and symbolic links to external software tools used by the editor.
Although The GIMP is powerful, it does lack two features Adobe Photoshop offers that are important to some graphics professionals.
The first of these is the capability to generate color separations for commercial press printers (CMYK for the colors cyan, magenta, yellow, and key [or black]). The GIMP uses RGB (red, green, and blue), which is great for video display, but not so great for printing presses. The second feature The GIMP lacks is the use of Pantone colors (a patented color specification) to ensure accurate color matching.
If these features are unimportant to you, The GIMP is an excellent tool. If you must use Adobe Photoshop, the current version of CodeWeavers' CrossOver Office will run Photoshop in Linux.
These deficiencies might not last long. A CMYK plug-in is in the works, and the Pantone issues are likely to be addressed in the near future as well.
After the initial configuration has finished, The GIMP's main windows and toolboxes appear. The GIMP's main window contains tools used for selecting, drawing, moving, view enlarging or reducing, airbrushing, painting, smudging, copying, filling, and selecting color. Depending on the version installed on your system, the toolbox can host more than 25 different tools.
The toolbox's File, Xtns, and Help menus are used for file operations (including sending the current image by electronic mail), image acquisition or manipulation, and documentation, respectively. If you right-click an open image window, you see the wealth of The GIMP's menus, as shown in Figure 7.5.
FIGURE 7.5 Right-click on an image window to access The GIMP's cascading menus.
Using Scanners in Fedora
With the rise of digital photography, there has been an equal decline in the need for image scanners. However, there are still times that you want to use a scanner, and Fedora makes it easy.
You can also use many types of image scanners with The GIMP. In the past, the most capable scanners
