Fedora™ Unleashed, 2008 edition

Personal Video Recorders

The best reason to attach a television antenna to your computer, however, is to use the video card and the computer as a personal video recorder.

The commercial personal video recorder, TiVo, uses Linux running on a PowerPC processor to record television programming with a variety of customizations. TiVo has a clever interface and wonderful features, including a record/playback buffer, programmed recording and pause, slow motion, and reverse effects. Fedora does not provide any of the many applications that attempt to mimic the TiVo functionality on a desktop PC running Linux. However, several such applications, including DVR, The Linux TV Project, and OpenPVR, are listed at http://www.exploits.org/v4l/. These projects are in development and do not provide .rpm files, so you have to know how to download from CVS and compile your own binaries. For something a little easier, check out MythTV at http://www.mythtv.org/; a Fedora .rpm file should be available from ATrpms.

Linux, TiVo, and PVRs

Some TiVo users say that using this Linux-based device has changed their lives. Indeed, the convenience of using a personal video recorder (PVR) can make life a lot easier for inveterate channel surfers. Although PVR applications are not included with Fedora, open source developers are working on newer and better versions of easy-to-install and easy-to-use PVR software for Linux. For more information about TiVo, which requires a monthly charge and a phone line (or broadband connection with a newer TiVo2), browse to http://www.tivo.com/. Unrepentant Linux hardware hackers aiming to disembowel or upgrade a TiVo can browse to http://www.9thtee.com/tivoupgrades.htm or read the TiVo Hack FAQ at http://www.tivofaq.com/. A PVR makes viewing television a lot more fun!

A number of Linux sites are devoted to PVR software development. Browse to the DVR project page athttp://www.pierrox.net/dvr/.

DVD and Video Players

You can now easily play DVDs with Fedora as long as you install the appropriate software. (Fedora doesn't provide any.) Browse to http://www.videolan.org/, and then download, build, and install the vlc client.

You must have a CPU of at least 450MHz and a working sound card to use a DVD player. The default Fedora kernel supports the DVD CD-ROM file system. As mentioned earlier, Xine and MPlayer do a great job of playing DVD files.

NOTE

The VideoLAN HOWTO found at http://videolan.org/ discusses the construction of a network for streaming video. Although you might not want to create a network, a great deal of useful information about the software and hardware involved in the enterprise can be generalized for use elsewhere, so it is worth a look. The site also contains a link to a HOWTO about cross-compiling on Linux to produce a Windows binary.

Reference

> http://www.cdcopyworld.com/— A resource for technical information about CD media and CD writers.

> http://hardware.redhat.com/hcl/ — A database of supported hardware.

> http://www.opensound.com/download.cgi — The commercial OSS sound driver trial version download.

> http:/www.xmms.org/ — Home to the Xmms audio player.

> http://www.thekompany.com/projects/tkcoggripper/ — A free (but not GPL) Ogg CD ripper.

> http://faceprint.com/code/ — An MP3 to Ogg converter named mp32ogg.

> http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/apps/sound/convert/!INDEX.html — Home to several sound conversion utilities.

> http://linux-sound.org/ — An excellent resource for Linux music and sound.

> http://www.cnpbagwell.com/audio.html — The Audio Format FAQ.

> http://www.icecast.org/ — A streaming audio server.

> http://www.linuxnetmag.com/en/issue4/m4icecast1.html — An Icecast tutorial.

> http://linuxselfhelp.com/HOWTO/MP3-HOWTO-7.html — The MP3 HOWTO contains brief descriptions of many audio applications and, although it focuses on the MP3 format, the information is easily generalized to other music formats.

> http://www.exploits.org/v41/ — Video for Linux resources.

> http://fame.sourceforge.net/ — Video encoding tools.

> http://teletext.mb21.co.uk/faq.shtml — The Teletext FAQ.

> http://xine.sourceforge.net/ — Home of the Xine DVD/video player.

> http://www.MPlayerHQ.hu/homepage/ — Home to the MPlayer video player.

> http://www.videolan.org/ — A VideoLAN project with good documentation.

> http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW/ — The DVD+RW/+R/-R[W] for Linux, a HOWTO for creating DVDs under Linux.

> http://www.gimp.org — Home page of The GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program).

> http://f-spot.org — Home page of the F-Spot project.

> http://www.linuxformat.co.uk — Website of Linux Format, home of a long-running GIMP tutorial by Michael J Hammel.

> http://www.exif.org — More information on EXIF and how it is used in digital cameras.

> http://www.sane-project.org — Home page of the SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) project.

> http://www.imagemagick.org — Home page for ImageMagick.

> http://www.codeweavers.com — Home of the popular crossover office; required if you want to try to run Photoshop under Linux.

> http://gimp.net/tutorials/ — Official tutorials for The GIMP.

CHAPTER 8 Printing with Fedora

From the word go, Fedora provides support for a huge range of printers from many different manufacturers. This chapter looks at how to get your printer connected and talking to Fedora, as well as at the software that Fedora uses to manage printers and print jobs.

In keeping with most of the other Linux distributions, Fedora uses CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) to handle printers. Other systems are supported, such as LPRng, but you do not have access to some of the graphical management tools from within Fedora.