How To: Take Screencasts Of Your Linux Desktop

Now many people want to take screen casts a.k.a video captures of their Linux desktop to maybe show someone how to do a specific task or something like that. Video Screencasts are much better than the ordinary still screen shots.Taking screen casts is really easy, I am going to show you how to do so using two programs the first is called Xvid cap which you can download from the repositories of your Linux distribution.

When you first start Xvid cap you get a red square like the one in the image below:

This red square is your recording area means that anything inside this square will be part of your video and anything outside it will not. You can resize the square to fit your needs. To start recording simply click on the red button like the one in the image below:

Now your recording has started, if you would like to pause your recording for a while just click on the pause button, and to stop it completely click on the stop button. When you click on the stop button you will get an option to save the video, and your done you have just made a screen cast in Linux. Xvid cap by default encodes in real time using Xvid(obviously) as a video codec and mp3 for audio

The second tool is called Istanbul, and it is very simple. Like Xvid Cap you can get Istanbul from the repositories of your Linux distribution. The first time you start Istanbul you get nothing but a small red button in your task bar or panel like below:

To start a recording simply click on the red button like the one pictured above, the red button will turn into a gray stop sign and clicking on the stop sign will stop your recording and and a dialogue box will prompt you as to where to save the recording, and your done, its that simple. Istanbul unlike Xvidcap saves in the open source codec Theora for video and Vorbis for audio.

Connecting To The Internet Via Your Cellphone in Linux

Many People who are new to Linux are confused a bit on how to connect to the internet using their cellphone via bluetooth, it’s quite simple actually here’s the procedure which will get you started with it:

first turn your bluetooth adapter on ,most Linux distros by default have drivers for bluetooth adapter so no worries there. Now first u need to find the mac address of your phone,to do that open a command line and type

sdptool search DUN

you will get an output like this

“username”:/ # sdptool search DUN
Inquiring …
Searching for DUN on 00:16:DB:D5:9C:1C …
Service Name: Dial-up networking
Service RecHandle: 0×10001
Service Class ID List:
“Dialup Networking” (0×00001103)
Protocol Descriptor List:
“L2CAP” (0×00000100)
“RFCOMM” (0×00000003)
Channel: 2
Profile Descriptor List:
“Dialup Networking” (0×00001103)
Version: 0×0100
“username”:/ #

Now your phone’s mac address and the channel used will be flashing on your screen,now we need to bind these to a port. Simply open a command line again and type

rfcomm bind 0 “put your mac address here” 2 (remove the quotes)

now to check if ur phone has been binded to the port type rfcomm

the output of which will be similar to this: rfcomm0: “your mac address” channel 2 clean

now we will use an application called KPPP to dial the connection for us. If you are usin the KDE desktop environment then KPPP comes installed by default but if you are using Gnome then u will need to install it. Now open KPPP and and click on configure

On the Device tab, give the modem a name that you like, set Modem device to /dev/rfcomm0, Flow control to None, Line termination to CR, and Connection speed to 921600, uncheck Use lock file, and then click on Ok:

Select the created Modem and click on Edit

Click on the Modem tab then click on Modem Commands match the configurations to this:

Now the highlighted selected section in the above image is your service providers APN you will have to find it in the settings specified in your cellphone to connect to your service providers network. Now click OK and then click on Ok again. Now Click on the Accounts tab and click on New:

When prompted select the manual setup:

Give the connection a name you like, then click on Add and add the phone number *99#, Select the authentication as PAP/CHAP, check store password, set callback type to none and click on OK:

Now select the Connection you just created and enter the User Name and Password given to you by your Service Provider and click on OK, and your done!! Now you can browse the internet using your cellphone: