This tutorial will show you how to use ANY IR remote in your house to control XBMC.
I have used this method with COMPLETE success on many remotes. I have yet to find one that wont work.
To demonstrate this technique I will download and install the latest XBMCbuntu Live CD (Frodo 12.2) to verify it works “out of the box”
If you deviate from the Live CD XBMCbuntu install you are on your own installing and configuring LIRC.
A wireless hotspot enables a computer to serve as a router over Wi-Fi. Ubuntu lets you easily create a wireless hotspot by using the Network Manager, but it uses an ad hoc network and most Android and Windows Phone devices can’t connect to such networks.
For this reason, I’ve created (in collaboration with Satya) a script called AP-Hotspot that automatically creates an infrastructure (Access Point mode) wireless hotspot in Ubuntu that should work with Android and Windows Phone devices. The script uses hostapd and dnsmasq and it requires Access Point mode support for your wireless card – AP-Hotspot checks for this automatically and won’t run if your wireless card doesn’t support it.
On Wednesday, July 24th Google launched the Chromecast. As soon as the source code hit we began our audit. Within a short period of time we had multiple items to look at for when our devices arrived. Then we received our Chromecasts the following day and were able to confirm that one of the bugs existed in the build Chromecast shipped with. From that point on we began building what you are now seeing as our public release package.
Exploit Package:
Our Chromecast exploit package will modify the system to spawn a root shell on port 23. This will allow researchers to better investigate the environment as well as give developers a chance to build and test software on their Chromecasts. For the normal user this release will probably be of no use, for the rest of the community this is just the first step in opening up what has just been a mysterious stick up to this point. We hope that following this release the community will have the tools they need to improve on the shortfalls of this device and make better use of the hardware.
Additional comment: These devices might be a lot more useful to some of us if someone could figure out how to 1) Add a wired network connection, 2) Add an optical audio output for those of us with older receivers (that don’t have HDMI connections) and TVs (that don’t pass audio from a HDMI port back to the receiver). They’re obviously selling these to the low-income crowd, so why would they not assume that you might want to connect this to perfectly good but slightly dated equipment that requires optical audio, or maybe even to a large screen computer monitor that doesn’t have any audio capabilities?
Additional additional comment: If the XBMC developers could create an add-on that would emulate the Chromecast device and in effect turn XBMC into a Chromecast receiver WITHOUT the need for the Chromecast dongle, that would make us VERY happy!
If you have accepted the default option while installing Ubuntu, or that your computer comes with Ubuntu pre-installed, chances are that your Home folder and the system folders all lie in the same partition. This is perfectly fine, but if you want to upgrade your existing Ubuntu version, or reinstall Ubuntu, you won’t be able to preserve your app settings, or even retain your files and documents. One of the good practice is to give the Home folder its own partition, so whatever changes you made to the System folder won’t affect your Home directory, and you can easily upgrade or reinstall Ubuntu with ease.
If you want to move your Home folder to another partition, here is how you can do so.
deb is the extension of the Debian software package format and the most often used name for such binary packages. Debian packages are standard Unix ar archives that include two gzipped, bzipped or lzmaed tar archives: one that holds the control information and another that contains the data. The accepted program for handling these packages is dpkg, commonly used via other programs such as apt/aptitude or Gdebi.
RPM Package Manager (RPM) is a package management system. The name RPM variously refers to the .rpm file format, files in this format, software packaged in such files, and the package manager itself. RPM was intended primarily for GNU/Linux distributions; the file format is the baseline package format of the Linux Standard Base.
If you can only find some software you want to install in one of these package types but you need the other, this article tells you what to do. Note we are just passing along the link, and do not guarantee that this will work:
This is a quick guide to diff and patch which will help you in these situations by describing the tools as they are most commonly used. It tells you enough to get started right away. Later, you can learn the ins and outs of diff and patch at your leisure, using the man pages.
A cross compiler is a compiler that runs on one platform/architecture but generates binaries for another platform/architecture. With devices like the Raspberry Pi, where you really don’t have much CPU or memory to work with, if you’re doing any heavy compiling (like when working on the kernel) a cross compiler is the only way to go. For example, I build all my Raspberry Pi kernels on my nice Sandy Bridge Xeon E3 home server where they compile in only a fraction of the time they would on the Pi.
Another choice would be to switch to a better Linux distribution. Many people seem to like Linux Mint; others simply go back to plain old Debian (both Ubuntu and Mint are based on Debian).
The Raspberry Pi makes a nice compact platform to attach an indicator light to for all sorts of projects—weather notification, new emails, etc. Read on as we show you how to hook up an LED module to your Pi and set up some basic notifications.
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