Let the configuration begin

What I've done so far:

- Installed amule, amuled, amuleGUI, and amuleCMD -> Those are for downloading files from ed2k network, amule is the main program, it has a GUI, but I want it to run as a deamon, so I got it on amuled. amuleGUI is the graphical interface for amuled and amulecmd is the CLI for amuled. It is a very easy to use program, and even though it uses just ed2k network, it's faster than mldonkey (because of a lundunum servers mess up). BTW, dont forget to get ed2k (apt-get install amule-ed2k), this is a CLI program to add files to the download queue, is great when you have a list of ed2k:// links and know how to use for :).

- Installed LIRC.
Now, this was a P.I.T.A. The concept of winlirc(which I was used to) is so much simpler, you just install a program, points to the serial port, set a couple of stuff and, thats it! Now in linux, LIRC makes a lot of kernel modifications and that is a bit strange at first. Besides that, is a great app, it executes anything you can set up at CLI. So far I just set the basics on my remote, just configured amaroK, mplayer and volume control, I still have to play with it.

- TV card config.
To make it work with TVtime (best tv viewing program I've seen so far) these lines are required in /etc/modules:
tuner type=2 debug=1
bttv card=37 radio=1
and take all references to bt878 out.
I'm still looking for a nice PVR-like system.

- Scripts:
so far I just made a script to mount my thumbdrive, compactflash reader, and SDcard reader. In the near future I'll ask some friends for help on creating a script to:
- mount the cfcard
- create a directory on /mnt/photos/ based on date (YYYY-Month[in PT_BR]-DD)
- move all pictures from /mnt/cfcard/ to the recently created directory

Another script I made is the mp3 recompact: I have a mp3 player with just 150MB available, so, to carry a fair amount of music, I must recompact and normalize them all. It's very simple:
random:/home/user/dir_with_the_musics_I_like$ mkdir ready && for i in *.mp3;do mp3gain -r -T -k "$i"; lame -b 96 -h -m j "$i" ready/"$i"; done

- K3b and NeroLinux:
Ok, I loved the K3b's interface, but it has 2 majors flaws:
- It *NEVER* burns the speed I want to. I don't know if it's a bug with "BURNfree", but every time I burn a CD, it takes ages, I have DMA ON, my computer is very fast, the buffer was manually set to 256MB (which I think is a truckload of RAM for a cdrecorder app)
- My divx player (settop box) doesn't open the subtitles when the cd is burned with k3b and joliet is enabled. When the files are burned in windows, it works OK (BTW: is not a problem with CR-LF, I tried that)

UPDATE: Fixed the issue with the speed: There's a kde service called KDED with keeps probing the CD drives searching for media, and this is a bad thing when you're recording. Stop IT!.
1 - go to control center
2 - KDE components
3 - Service Manager
4 - Stop the useless stuff (but even stoping them here didn't make my recordings that fast) so I killed the KDED (CTRL+ESC then search for KDED and kill it.)
Now it works perfectly.

- Image Viewer:
I have a lot of pictures, and I want a practic way to view them on my computer.
ACDSee is perfect for all my needs there:
- It supports rotate, stretch, and other gamma/brightness corrections, without messing with EXIF data and timestamps
- It supports descript.ion files (text files with descriptions of pictures, this format is important, so I can upload it to my digital album[http://eduardo.fotopic.net] and fotopic's servers automatically inserts comments in each photo)
- FAST viewing.
- FAST thumbnail generation

So far all the programs I tested in linux are not as good as ACDSee:
Gliv: the good.
- Doesn't have descript.ion support
- Is not as fast as ACDSee (it's slow as heck when using big pictures [ie, bigger than 2000x2000])
- There's no way to rotate pictures and save them automatically.

XNview: the bad.
- It supports descript.ion files
- But it's slow..

GThumb: The ugly.
- It's slow
- It doesn't save rotated pictures automatically

I'll review more ImageViewers here soon..

These are some of the functionalities on my linux box, more will follow.