1 <?xml version=
"1.0" encoding=
"utf-8"?>
2 <rss version='
2.0' xmlns:lj='http://www.livejournal.org/rss/lj/
1.0/' xmlns:
atom=
"http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
4 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen
</title>
5 <description></description>
6 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/
</link>
7 <atom:link href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel=
"self" type=
"application/rss+xml" />
10 <title>The new
"best
" multimedia player in Debian?
</title>
11 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_new__best__multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html
</link>
12 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_new__best__multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html
</guid>
13 <pubDate>Mon,
6 Jun
2016 12:
50:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
14 <description><p
>When I set out a few weeks ago to figure out
15 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html
">which
16 multimedia player in Debian claimed to support most file formats /
17 MIME types
</a
>, I was a bit surprised how varied the sets of MIME types
18 the various players claimed support for. The range was from
55 to
130
19 MIME types. I suspect most media formats are supported by all
20 players, but this is not really reflected in the MimeTypes values in
21 their desktop files. There are probably also some bogus MIME types
22 listed, but it is hard to identify which one this is.
</p
>
24 <p
>Anyway, in the mean time I got in touch with upstream for some of
25 the players suggesting to add more MIME types to their desktop files,
26 and decided to spend some time myself improving the situation for my
27 favorite media player VLC. The fixes for VLC entered Debian unstable
28 yesterday. The complete list of MIME types can be seen on the
29 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport
">Multimedia
30 player MIME type support status
</a
> Debian wiki page.
</p
>
32 <p
>The new
"best
" multimedia player in Debian? It is VLC, followed by
33 totem, parole, kplayer, gnome-mpv, mpv, smplayer, mplayer-gui and
34 kmplayer. I am sure some of the other players desktop files support
35 several of the formats currently listed as working only with vlc,
36 toten and parole.
</p
>
38 <p
>A sad observation is that only
14 MIME types are listed as
39 supported by all the tested multimedia players in Debian in their
40 desktop files: audio/mpeg, audio/vnd.rn-realaudio, audio/x-mpegurl,
41 audio/x-ms-wma, audio/x-scpls, audio/x-wav, video/mp4, video/mpeg,
42 video/quicktime, video/vnd.rn-realvideo, video/x-matroska,
43 video/x-ms-asf, video/x-ms-wmv and video/x-msvideo. Personally I find
44 it sad that video/ogg and video/webm is not supported by all the media
45 players in Debian. As far as I can tell, all of them can handle both
51 <title>A program should be able to open its own files on Linux
</title>
52 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_program_should_be_able_to_open_its_own_files_on_Linux.html
</link>
53 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_program_should_be_able_to_open_its_own_files_on_Linux.html
</guid>
54 <pubDate>Sun,
5 Jun
2016 08:
30:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
55 <description><p
>Many years ago, when koffice was fresh and with few users, I
56 decided to test its presentation tool when making the slides for a
57 talk I was giving for NUUG on Japhar, a free Java virtual machine. I
58 wrote the first draft of the slides, saved the result and went to bed
59 the day before I would give the talk. The next day I took a plane to
60 the location where the meeting should take place, and on the plane I
61 started up koffice again to polish the talk a bit, only to discover
62 that kpresenter refused to load its own data file. I cursed a bit and
63 started making the slides again from memory, to have something to
64 present when I arrived. I tested that the saved files could be
65 loaded, and the day seemed to be rescued. I continued to polish the
66 slides until I suddenly discovered that the saved file could no longer
67 be loaded into kpresenter. In the end I had to rewrite the slides
68 three times, condensing the content until the talk became shorter and
69 shorter. After the talk I was able to pinpoint the problem
&ndash;
70 kpresenter wrote inline images in a way itself could not understand.
71 Eventually that bug was fixed and kpresenter ended up being a great
72 program to make slides. The point I
'm trying to make is that we
73 expect a program to be able to load its own data files, and it is
74 embarrassing to its developers if it can
't.
</p
>
76 <p
>Did you ever experience a program failing to load its own data
77 files from the desktop file browser? It is not a uncommon problem. A
78 while back I discovered that the screencast recorder
79 gtk-recordmydesktop would save an Ogg Theora video file the KDE file
80 browser would refuse to open. No video player claimed to understand
81 such file. I tracked down the cause being
<tt
>file --mime-type
</tt
>
82 returning the application/ogg MIME type, which no video player I had
83 installed listed as a MIME type they would understand. I asked for
84 <a href=
"http://bugs.gw.com/view.php?id=
382">file to change its
85 behavour
</a
> and use the MIME type video/ogg instead. I also asked
86 several video players to add video/ogg to their desktop files, to give
87 the file browser an idea what to do about Ogg Theora files. After a
88 while, the desktop file browsers in Debian started to handle the
89 output from gtk-recordmydesktop properly.
</p
>
91 <p
>But history repeats itself. A few days ago I tested the music
92 system Rosegarden again, and I discovered that the KDE and xfce file
93 browsers did not know what to do with the Rosegarden project files
94 (*.rg). I
've reported
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/
825993">the
95 rosegarden problem to BTS
</a
> and a fix is commited to git and will be
96 included in the next upload. To increase the chance of me remembering
97 how to fix the problem next time some program fail to load its files
98 from the file browser, here are some notes on how to fix it.
</p
>
100 <p
>The file browsers in Debian in general operates on MIME types.
101 There are two sources for the MIME type of a given file. The output from
102 <tt
>file --mime-type
</tt
> mentioned above, and the content of the
103 shared MIME type registry (under /usr/share/mime/). The file MIME
104 type is mapped to programs supporting the MIME type, and this
105 information is collected from
106 <a href=
"https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktop-entry-spec/
">the
107 desktop files
</a
> available in /usr/share/applications/. If there is
108 one desktop file claiming support for the MIME type of the file, it is
109 activated when asking to open a given file. If there are more, one
110 can normally select which one to use by right-clicking on the file and
111 selecting the wanted one using
'Open with
' or similar. In general
112 this work well. But it depend on each program picking a good MIME
114 <a href=
"http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml
">a
115 MIME type registered with IANA
</a
>), file and/or the shared MIME
116 registry recognizing the file and the desktop file to list the MIME
117 type in its list of supported MIME types.
</p
>
119 <p
>The
<tt
>/usr/share/mime/packages/rosegarden.xml
</tt
> entry for
120 <a href=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/shared-mime-info-spec
">the
121 Shared MIME database
</a
> look like this:
</p
>
123 <p
><blockquote
><pre
>
124 &lt;?xml version=
"1.0" encoding=
"UTF-
8"?
&gt;
125 &lt;mime-info xmlns=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info
"&gt;
126 &lt;mime-type type=
"audio/x-rosegarden
"&gt;
127 &lt;sub-class-of type=
"application/x-gzip
"/
&gt;
128 &lt;comment
&gt;Rosegarden project file
&lt;/comment
&gt;
129 &lt;glob pattern=
"*.rg
"/
&gt;
130 &lt;/mime-type
&gt;
131 &lt;/mime-info
&gt;
132 </pre
></blockquote
></p
>
134 <p
>This states that audio/x-rosegarden is a kind of application/x-gzip
135 (it is a gzipped XML file). Note, it is much better to use an
136 official MIME type registered with IANA than it is to make up ones own
137 unofficial ones like the x-rosegarden type used by rosegarden.
</p
>
139 <p
>The desktop file of the rosegarden program failed to list
140 audio/x-rosegarden in its list of supported MIME types, causing the
141 file browsers to have no idea what to do with *.rg files:
</p
>
143 <p
><blockquote
><pre
>
144 % grep Mime /usr/share/applications/rosegarden.desktop
145 MimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition;audio/x-rosegarden-device;audio/x-rosegarden-project;audio/x-rosegarden-template;audio/midi;
146 X-KDE-NativeMimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition
148 </pre
></blockquote
></p
>
150 <p
>The fix was to add
"audio/x-rosegarden;
" at the end of the
151 MimeType= line.
</p
>
153 <p
>If you run into a file which fail to open the correct program when
154 selected from the file browser, please check out the output from
155 <tt
>file --mime-type
</tt
> for the file, ensure the file ending and
156 MIME type is registered somewhere under /usr/share/mime/ and check
157 that some desktop file under /usr/share/applications/ is claiming
158 support for this MIME type. If not, please report a bug to have it
164 <title>Tor - from its creators mouth
11 years ago
</title>
165 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Tor___from_its_creators_mouth_11_years_ago.html
</link>
166 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Tor___from_its_creators_mouth_11_years_ago.html
</guid>
167 <pubDate>Sat,
28 May
2016 14:
20:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
168 <description><p
>A little more than
11 years ago, one of the creators of Tor, and
169 the current President of
<a href=
"https://www.torproject.org/
">the Tor
170 project
</a
>, Roger Dingledine, gave a talk for the members of the
171 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/
">Norwegian Unix User group
</a
> (NUUG). A
172 video of the talk was recorded, and today, thanks to the great help
173 from David Noble, I finally was able to publish the video of the talk
174 on Frikanalen, the Norwegian open channel TV station where NUUG
175 currently publishes its talks. You can
176 <a href=
"http://frikanalen.no/se
">watch the live stream using a web
177 browser
</a
> with WebM support, or check out the recording on the video
178 on demand page for the talk
179 "<a href=
"http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/
625599">Tor: Anonymous
180 communication for the US Department of Defence...and you.
</a
>".
</p
>
182 <p
>Here is the video included for those of you using browsers with
183 HTML video and Ogg Theora support:
</p
>
185 <p
><video width=
"70%
" poster=
"http://simula.gunkies.org/media/
625599/large_thumb/
20050421-tor-frikanalen.jpg
" controls
>
186 <source src=
"http://simula.gunkies.org/media/
625599/theora/
20050421-tor-frikanalen.ogv
" type=
"video/ogg
"/
>
187 </video
></p
>
189 <p
>I guess the gist of the talk can be summarised quite simply: If you
190 want to help the military in USA (and everyone else), use Tor. :)
</p
>
195 <title>Isenkram with PackageKit support - new version
0.23 available in Debian unstable
</title>
196 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html
</link>
197 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html
</guid>
198 <pubDate>Wed,
25 May
2016 10:
20:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
199 <description><p
><a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram
">The isenkram
200 system
</a
> is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
201 related packages. The idea is to have a database of mappings between
202 hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
203 install the packages to use a given hardware dongle. Some use cases
204 are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
205 needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
206 proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
207 and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
208 install the driver for it. The system work well, and even have a few
209 command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
210 hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).
</p
>
212 <p
>The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
213 good documentation and example code on how to use it. But aptdaemon
214 is going away and is generally being replaced by
215 <a href=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/
">PackageKit
</a
>,
216 so Isenkram needed a rewrite. And today, thanks to the great patch
217 from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
218 rewrite finally took place. I
've just uploaded a new version of
219 Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
220 for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit. To check it out,
221 install the
<tt
>isenkram
</tt
> package and insert some hardware dongle
222 and see if it is recognised.
</p
>
224 <p
>If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
225 the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
226 program. This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:
</p
>
228 <p
><blockquote
><pre
>
244 </pre
></blockquote
></p
>
246 <p
>The hardware mappings come from several places. The preferred way
247 is for packages to announce their hardware support using
248 <a href=
"https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/
">the
249 cross distribution appstream system
</a
>.
251 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/
">previous
252 blog posts about isenkram
</a
> to learn how to do that.
</p
>
257 <title>Discharge rate estimate in new battery statistics collector for Debian
</title>
258 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html
</link>
259 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html
</guid>
260 <pubDate>Mon,
23 May
2016 09:
35:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
261 <description><p
>Yesterday I updated the
262 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats
">battery-stats
263 package in Debian
</a
> with a few patches sent to me by skilled and
264 enterprising users. There were some nice user and visible changes.
265 First of all, both desktop menu entries now work. A design flaw in
266 one of the script made the history graph fail to show up (its PNG was
267 dumped in ~/.xsession-errors) if no controlling TTY was available.
268 The script worked when called from the command line, but not when
269 called from the desktop menu. I changed this to look for a DISPLAY
270 variable or a TTY before deciding where to draw the graph, and now the
271 graph window pop up as expected.
</p
>
273 <p
>The next new feature is a discharge rate estimator in one of the
274 graphs (the one showing the last few hours). New is also the user of
275 colours showing charging in blue and discharge in red. The percentages
276 of this graph is relative to last full charge, not battery design
279 <p align=
"center
"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2016-
05-
23-battery-stats-rate.png
"/
></p
>
281 <p
>The other graph show the entire history of the collected battery
282 statistics, comparing it to the design capacity of the battery to
283 visualise how the battery life time get shorter over time. The red
284 line in this graph is what the previous graph considers
100 percent:
286 <p align=
"center
"><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2016-
05-
23-battery-stats-history.png
"/
></p
>
288 <p
>In this graph you can see that I only charge the battery to
80
289 percent of last full capacity, and how the capacity of the battery is
290 shrinking. :(
</p
>
292 <p
>The last new feature is in the collector, which now will handle
293 more hardware models. On some hardware, Linux power supply
294 information is stored in /sys/class/power_supply/ACAD/, while the
295 collector previously only looked in /sys/class/power_supply/AC/. Now
296 both are checked to figure if there is power connected to the
299 <p
>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
301 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats
">battery-stats
</a
>
302 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
303 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
<a
304 href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats
">github
</a
>.
305 Patches are very welcome.
</p
>
307 <p
>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
308 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
309 <b
><a href=
"bitcoin:
15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a
></b
>.
</p
>
314 <title>French edition of Lawrence Lessigs book Cultura Libre on Amazon and Barnes
& Noble
</title>
315 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/French_edition_of_Lawrence_Lessigs_book_Cultura_Libre_on_Amazon_and_Barnes___Noble.html
</link>
316 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/French_edition_of_Lawrence_Lessigs_book_Cultura_Libre_on_Amazon_and_Barnes___Noble.html
</guid>
317 <pubDate>Sat,
21 May
2016 10:
50:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
318 <description><p
>A few weeks ago the French paperback edition of Lawrence Lessigs
319 2004 book Cultura Libre was published. Today I noticed that the book
320 is now available from book stores. You can now buy it from
321 <a href=
"http://www.amazon.com/Culture-Libre-French-Lawrence-Lessig/dp/
8269018260">Amazon
</a
>
323 <a href=
"http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/culture-libre-lawrence-lessig/
1123776705">Barnes
324 & Noble
</a
> ($?) and as always from
325 <a href=
"http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-
22645082.html
">Lulu.com
</a
>
326 ($
19.99). The revenue is donated to the Creative Commons project. If
327 you buy from Lulu.com, they currently get $
10.59, while if you buy
328 from one of the book stores most of the revenue go to the book store
329 and the Creative Commons project get much (not sure how much
332 <p
>I was a bit surprised to discover that there is a kindle edition
333 sold by Amazon Digital Services LLC on Amazon. Not quite sure how
334 that edition was created, but if you want to download a electronic
335 edition (PDF, EPUB, Mobi) generated from the same files used to create
336 the paperback edition, they are
337 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig
">available
338 from github
</a
>.
</p
>
343 <title>I want the courts to be involved before the police can hijack a news site DNS domain (#domstolkontroll)
</title>
344 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_want_the_courts_to_be_involved_before_the_police_can_hijack_a_news_site_DNS_domain___domstolkontroll_.html
</link>
345 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_want_the_courts_to_be_involved_before_the_police_can_hijack_a_news_site_DNS_domain___domstolkontroll_.html
</guid>
346 <pubDate>Thu,
19 May
2016 14:
00:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
347 <description><p
>I just donated to the
348 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml
">NUUG defence
349 "fond
"</a
> to fund the effort in Norway to get the seizure of the news
350 site popcorn-time.no tested in court. I hope everyone that agree with
351 me will do the same.
</p
>
353 <p
>Would you be worried if you knew the police in your country could
354 hijack DNS domains of news sites covering free software system without
355 talking to a judge first? I am. What if the free software system
356 combined search engine lookups, bittorrent downloads and video playout
357 and was called Popcorn Time? Would that affect your view? It still
358 make me worried.
</p
>
360 <p
>In March
2016, the Norwegian police seized (as in forced NORID to
361 change the IP address pointed to by it to one controlled by the
362 police) the DNS domain popcorn-time.no, without any supervision from
363 the courts. I did not know about the web site back then, and assumed
364 the courts had been involved, and was very surprised when I discovered
365 that the police had hijacked the DNS domain without asking a judge for
366 permission first. I was even more surprised when I had a look at
367 <a href=
"https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://popcorn-time.no
">the web
368 site content on the Internet Archive
</A
>, and only found news coverage
369 about Popcorn Time, not any material published without the right
370 holders permissions.
</p
>
372 <p
>The seizure was widely covered in the Norwegian press (see for
373 example
<a href=
"http://www.hegnar.no/Nyheter/Naeringsliv/
2016/
03/Popcorn-time.no-beslaglagt-av-OEkokrim
">Hegnar Online
</a
> and
374 <a href=
"http://itavisen.no/
2016/
03/
08/okokrim-har-beslaglagt-popcorn-time-no/
">ITavisen
<a/
>
376 <a href=
"http://www.nrk.no/kultur/okokrim-gar-til-aksjon-mot-popcorn-time-
1.12842452">NRK
</a
>),
377 at first due to the press release sent out by Økokrim, but then based
379 <a href=
"http://blogg.torvund.net/
2016/
03/
09/okokrims-beslag-i-domenet-popcorn-time-no/
">protests
380 from the law professor Olav Torvund
</a
> and
381 <a href=
"http://www.klassekampen.no/article/
20160311/ARTICLE/
160319995">lawyer
382 Jon Wessel-Aas
</a
>. It even got some
383 <a href=
"https://torrentfreak.com/norwegian-authorities-sued-over-popcorn-time-domain-seizure-
160418/
">coverage
384 on TorrentFreak
</a
>.
</p
>
387 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NUUG_contests_Norwegian_police_DNS_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no.html
">
388 wrote about the case a month ago
</a
>, when the
389 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/
">Norwegian Unix User Group
</a
> (NUUG),
390 where I am an active member, decided to ask the courts to test this seizure.
391 The request was denied, but NUUG and its co-requestor EFN have not
392 given up, and now they are rallying for support to get the seizure
393 legally challenged. They accept both bank and Bitcoin transfer for
394 those that want to support the request.
</p
>
396 <p
>If you as me believe news sites about free software should not be
397 censored, even if the free software have both legal and illegal
398 applications, and that DNS hijacking should be tested by the courts, I
399 suggest you
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml
">show
400 your support by donating to NUUG
</a
>.
</a
>
405 <title>Debian now with ZFS on Linux included
</title>
406 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html
</link>
407 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html
</guid>
408 <pubDate>Thu,
12 May
2016 07:
30:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
409 <description><p
>Today, after many years of hard work from many people,
410 <a href=
"http://zfsonlinux.org/
">ZFS for Linux
</a
> finally entered
411 Debian. The package status can be seen on
412 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux
">the package tracker
413 for zfs-linux
</a
>. and
414 <a href=
"https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org
">the
415 team status page
</a
>. If you want to help out, please join us.
416 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git
">The
417 source code
</a
> is available via git on Alioth. It would also be
418 great if you could help out with
419 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dkms
">the dkms package
</a
>, as
420 it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.
</p
>
425 <title>What is the best multimedia player in Debian?
</title>
426 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html
</link>
427 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html
</guid>
428 <pubDate>Sun,
8 May
2016 09:
40:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
429 <description><p
><strong
>Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
430 Debian claim support for most file formats.
</strong
></p
>
432 <p
>A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
433 plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
434 Edu. I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
435 for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
436 plugin supported most file formats / media types.
437 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia
">The
438 result
</a
> can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
439 not been updated for a while. But browser plugins are less relevant
440 these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
443 <p
>A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
444 player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
445 Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why. The cause is a
446 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/
822245">missing MIME type in the VLC
447 desktop file
</a
>. In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
448 of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
449 only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
450 two for VLC. This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
451 compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
452 instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
453 support most file formats.
</p
>
455 <p
>The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
456 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport
">a
457 table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
458 in the table
</a
>, with the package supporting most MIME types being
459 listed first in the table.
</p
>
461 </p
>The best multimedia player in Debian? It is totem, followed by
462 parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
463 kmplayer. Time for the other players to update their announced MIME
469 <title>The Pyra - handheld computer with Debian preinstalled
</title>
470 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html
</link>
471 <guid isPermaLink=
"true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html
</guid>
472 <pubDate>Wed,
4 May
2016 10:
00:
00 +
0200</pubDate>
473 <description>A friend of mine made me aware of
474 <a href=
"https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/
">The Pyra
</a
>, a
475 handheld computer which will be delivered with Debian preinstalled. I
476 would love to get one of those for my birthday. :)
</p
>
478 <p
>The machine is a complete ARM-based PC with micro HDMI, SATA, USB
479 plugs and many others connectors, and include a full keyboard and a
5"
480 LCD touch screen. The
6000mAh battery is claimed to provide a whole
481 day of battery life time, but I have not seen any independent tests
482 confirming this. The vendor is still collecting preorders, and the
483 last I heard last night was that
22 more orders were needed before
484 production started.
</p
>
486 <p
>As far as I know, this is the first handheld preinstalled with
487 Debian. Please let me know if you know of any others. Is it the
488 first computer being sold with Debian preinstalled?
</p
>