Quarter 1, 2012: Home Theater, Home Server, Gaming, & Personal Computer System Design Guide & Suggestions!

Hello! This will be a little (but epic!) foray into the hardware realm here at Ainer.org. If it is well received I may update this on a semi-regularly basis in the future (yearly, half-yearly, quarterly). For now, this post will provide some suggestions on what hardware components, what peripherals, what display and audio components, what supplementary networking gear, and even what cables I currently suggest for a single system that can provide solid Home Theater Personal Computer (HTPC) functionality, excellent 1080p resolution gaming (Gaming PC), adequate room and connections for several storage drives (Home Server), as well as general purpose personal computer (PC) usage (Web browsing, document editing, et cetera).

How to Configure 7.1 HDMI Audio for Ubuntu & Some Ainer.org News!

Howdy all, I just found this link courtesy of the “Apps, tweaks, tips, and links for your Linux Media HTPC” thread over at AVSForums. Please note that I haven’t had a chance to test it yet. The instructions do look to be solid though, and if nothing else, I wanted to bookmark it for my own future usage.

Couch Potato… Version 2! (Open Beta)

Greetings! Well this is going to be an uncharacteristically short blurb of a news article for Ainer.org and I’m a little behind the curve on this one, but it’s certainly none too late to take a look and see what Couch Potato’s developer has been working on “behind the scenes” so to speak. You might have noticed some slowing of development around Couch Potato, and maybe even wondered if the project might be dying. Well, rest assured and cast those doubts aside, as Couch Potato Version 2 (V2) has become the priority and has been in fairly active development since around February of last year (2011).

Duck Duck Go! A Privacy Respecting Search Engine with Features Enough to Make You Not Even Care!

A month or so back I went on one of my little quests to find a piece of software that I don’t currently have buttoned down. This time around I was not looking for another handy-dandy media related application nor another operating system. Instead, I was looking for a tool I use daily to find other tools, a Web search engine. I have, in the past, looked for “Google alternatives” but have always found myself back with the nearly unavoidable digital giant. This seemingly inevitable return was, at least partially, due to old habits, market penetration (it’s the default just about everywhere!), and also simply because the suite of tools the Google behemoth provides work well, integrate well, and help me to be more productive and have functionality that, in many cases, I can’t find anywhere else (Gmail, Google Docs, Google Voice, Google Chat).

Ubuntu Alternatives, Xfce, & Having A Go With Fedora 16!

A little over a year ago I fired up the then latest version of Fedora (13) and found much that I liked. Ultimately though, it just wasn’t the right tool for the job and I ended up going back to Ubuntu and Linux Mint.

Fast forward another year, a few more releases have come out from Fedora, and Canonical has been making some choices that, while likely great long-term for Ubuntu, are a bit awkward currently for some of its user base.

Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) Beta Released, & Initial Impressions!

Ubuntu’s next release, the Oneiric Ocelot (11.10), will soon be upon us and the first beta for this release is now out! At this point, Oneiric has already gone through three alpha releases and the features and the interface should be, essentially, set in stone (both the feature and the user interface freezes have past). Following the beta release today the focus should shift from the user interface (UI) to polishing up the release, squashing bugs, and improving over all quality (see the overall workitems here!).

Kiwix: An Offline Reader for Wikipedia!

Kiwix is a neat little program that allows users to read content from Wikipedia offline. Using ZIM files, Kiwix displays articles exactly as they would appear on Wikipedia (pictures and all!), and also provides some functions that are used in web browsers (such as the ability to use tabs and bookmarks). Combine this with links to other articles, options, like selecting a random article to view, and it’s easy to forget that this is only an offline version of Wikipedia!