I have previous written about PDF Editors for Windows and Linux here and here, so this is, in effect Part 3.

I have used OpenOffice PDF Import Extension, PDFEdit and numerous other tools listed in my first posts but nothing works as well as the latest Inkscape. It has one downside though, right now. That is, you can only edit one page at a time.

So here’s a random PDF I found by googling for random PDF ;). Here’s a shot of the first page in my PDF Viewer (evince).

Now we open Inkscape click File -> Open and you will see the following dialogue box where we can choose which page to import.

Now you can see that the page imported perfectly into Inkscape and objects are editable.

and finally, here’s our slightly edited, more up-to-date version.

A few other tips.

Inkscape won’t import encrypted PDF’s. To get around this you can use pdftops .pdf which turns the PDF into a Postscript file. You can then use ps2pdf .ps to return the file back into an unencrypted pdf.

On Linux, you can print to PDF automatically. On Windows, you will want to have installed a PDF Printer, like PDFCreator and on Mac OSX, read this tutorial about setting up a free PDF printer.

If you need to merge multiple PDF’s into a single PDF, there is a nice tool called PDFtk that can do that for you which is available for Windows, MacOSX and Linux.

Technorati Tags: open source, pdf editor, pdf editing, inkscape, pdfcreator, pdftk, ps2pdf, pdftops

Skype for Asterisk has been released at last.

A new Skype for Linux Beta 2.1.047 has been released which fixes CPU problems with new PulseAudio and works brilliantly and also adds SMS support.

Also, I came across a very Rapid Application framework for building Ajax web apps called Wavemaker. They have an open source version and an Enterprise Version. Watch one of the videos where he builds a searchable client database in 10 minutes while explaining concepts.

Also, an announcement from Netenberg, the people who make Fantastico for Cpanel have announced that they will be open sourcing their AccountLab Plus application in Jan 2010.

Technorati Tags: cpanel, web hosting, skype, ria, javascript framework, open source

netboot.me is a service that allows you to boot nearly any operating system or utility on any computer with a wired internet connection – without having to know ahead of time what you’ll want to boot.

netboot.me works through the magic of netbooting over http. There are a number of ways to boot a computer with netboot.me. The simplest is to download a bootable image, which is 626Kb and burn it to a CD or put it on a USB memory stick, or floppy disk. Boot off it on any networked computer, and it will automatically fetch the latest boot options from netboot.me and let you choose from dozens of installation, recovery, testing, portable desktop and other tools. You can also start netboot.me from any computer running gPXE, or from any netbootable computer with some simple tweaks to your DHCP server.

Here’s a screenshot:

I just tested it and it works beautifully. It seems to update it’s menu system from it’s website each time it boots, so it’s always fresh. Currently in the menu, the following are available:

Installers
FreeBSD 7.2 (x86 or amd64)
Debian Lenny (5.0)
Debian Testing (x86 / amd64)
Fedora 11(x86/amd64)
OpenSUSE 11.1 (x86/amd64)
Ubuntu Jaunty & Karmic (x86/amd64)
Live  Linux
Tiny Core Linux 2.2
Micro Core Linux 2.2
Tools
Diagnostics -> (Memtest86 & 86+, HDT 0.3.4)
Disk Tools -> (Gparted LIve 0.4.5-2, Parted Magic 4.4)
Rescue -> (Ubuntu Jaunty / Karmic in rescue mode)

Anyway, I grabbed Micro Core and on my 1024kbps connection, it was booting in about 30 seconds and I had a runnning linux distribution.

Technorati Tags: netboot.me, pxe, linux, liveboot, netboot

Guake has some of the basic features of Yakuake but is still lacking in a few things. The main ones for me are:

• Yakauke allows you to choose terminal width / Guake takes up fullscreen width. The advantage of this for me is that I can sit Yakuake on the right side of the page and read a web page as a reference if I am programming in vim or copying instructions for something.
• Yakuake allows you to Alt+Shift+Left/Right to increase / decrease terminal width size on the fly. So if you can’t quite read the text you are referencing, it’s easy to shrink the terminal slightly so you can.

Still, if you are looking for a nice Gnome-based Quake style terminal window, Guake is a good alternative to both Tilda and Yakuake.

TonidoPlug is a tiny, low power, low cost home server based on the 1.2 GHz Sheeva processor that allows you to access your applications, files, photos, music and media from anywhere (Powered by Tonido).

TonidoPlug comes pre-installed with powerful Tonido Applications – Photos, Jukebox, Webshare, Workspace, Thots, Explorer, Torrent and Search – all running on top of embedded Ubuntu Jaunty Linux OS. Additionally, TonidoPlug can be extended by installing new applications from Tonido App store.

Not sure if we are going to see them in Australia anytime soon, and if any adapters will be needed

Here’s a Youtube review of the TonidoPlug:

Technorati Tags: sheeva, tonidoplug, p2p, Torrent, Jaunty, Ubuntu, Embedded

Chromium is the open source version of Google Chrome for Linux. It’s still in alpha stage but it’s been very stable for me. The biggest downside is lack of Flash support for things like Google Analytics and Youtube.

For Ubuntu, install Chromium like so:

echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main #chromium-browser" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/chromium.list
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0xfbef0d696de1c72ba5a835fe5a9bf3bb4e5e17b5
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install chromium-browser

to get Flash working:

cd /usr/lib/chromium-browser/plugins
sudo ln -s ../../flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so

Screenshot running on 64bit Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope. Watching this was consuming approx 25% cpu in a single chromium process instance:

Flash for Chromium on Linux

I am now likely to spend most of my day in Chromium, though extensions are working in Chromium, my favourite part of Opera is native mouse gestures. I tested a few of the mouse gestures available for Chromium but none are working very well at the moment.

I will still use Firefox for it extensions like Firebug, Web Developer Toolbar & Yslow

1. Your URL you type into a browser, translates to an IP address – this check should take a very, very short time
2. Your browser then begins to access the web server where your website is hosted to ask for the page you want, this can cause some delay, typically 40-200ms (bottleneck 1.)
3. In the case of Magento,it uses PHP as the software language that runs the site, so the php begins to execute (bottleneck 2.)
4. PHP then reaches a part of it’s code it needs to access the database to retrieve website data and sometimes insert information about who you are. (bottleneck 3.)
5. The PHP code retrieves the information, does a bit more computing on it (for simplicity, this is still bottleneck 2) and then sends it to your web server
6. Your webserver can then send it or compress it and then send it to you (bottlneck 4)
7. The data is sent over the internet to your browser (bottlneck 5)
8. Your browser must ‘render’ the data it receives into an actual web page (bottleneck 6)

I will assume you are here specifically for Magento issues, so let’s get started with the basics. I will make the assumption that your web server is running Apache and you have very little control over that.

Preparation – the “before”

1. If you are familiar with the, use Firefox and the Firebug extension and the Yslow extension. Take a screenshot of your statistics.
2. Alternatively, what I suggest is to go to WebsiteOptimization if you’re fairly new to this. You basically enter your URL and click. Print out the page, preferably to PDF before we begin.

Check Magento Caching is turned on (if not developing still)

1. Login to your Magento Admin
2. go to System -> Cache Management
3. in the dropdown box, choose “enable” and tick all the boxes, then save settings.

Let’s start simple – .htaccess and gzip/deflate

1. Go to mod_gzip tester and enter your magento site address. If it comes back with a big green tick and says http://yourmagentosite.com is gzipped, then you’re in business and skip step 2. If not..go to step 2
2. Using ftp or ssh, however you access your magento website, go to the root of the site and find your .htaccess file. Scroll down until you see something like:

<ifmodule mod_deflate.c>
# Insert filter
SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
# Netscape 4.x has some problems...
#BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
# Netscape 4.06-4.08 have some more problems
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
# MSIE masquerades as Netscape, but it is fine
BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
# Don't compress images
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary
# Make sure proxies don't deliver the wrong content
Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary
</ifmodule>

3. Make sure it looks like above. A hash in front of the line means it’s commented out. If your .htaccess file does look like this AND mod_gzip tester is still not showing enabled, you need to talk to your web hosting provider. They may not allow overrides or may not have the deflate module installed or enabled. If it doesn’t look like the above, remove the hashes from your lines so that it reflects what is above, then retest with mod_gzip tester
4. Take a screenshot / pdf printout of Yslow / websiteoptimizer results. ;)

Let’s shrink our javascript

1. Magento uses A LOT of LARGE javascript libraries and depending on your template, it’s a good chance that these make up for 50% of your website page size. This should only affect the first page load but it’s often the first impressions that count, so let’s shrink it.
2. For this, we will use the Fooman Speedster Extension from magentoconnect. Click on the “get extension key” and then copy the key to your clipboard.
3. Now go to your magento store admin interface and click on “System -> Magento Connect -> Magento Connect Manager”. Enter your admin user/pass to access magento connect manager.
4. *Warning – once you install the extension until you fix your .htaccess, it may break your website*
5. Paste the extension key to install the extension
6. Now go to your .htaccess and under the line: #RewriteBase /magento/ add this line

   RewriteRule ^(index.php/)?minify/([^/]+)(/.*.(js|css))$ lib/minify/m.php?f=$3&d=$2


7. Save your .htaccess and access your site (it may take a while to load the first time as it minifies and creates it’s cache.
8. **Test your site is working properly**
9. Take a screenshot / pdf printout of Yslow / websiteoptimizer results. ;)

Let’s check our php settings

1. Create a file called phpinfo.php and enter this information into it.
2. Check for the following: memory_limit
3. If it’s less than 128M, try and add an entry into your .htaccess like so:

php_value memory_limit 128M

Finally, MySQL – for experienced users.

1. If you’re a mysql hero, you don’t need me to tell you how but we want to try and get the following settings in your my.cnf

query_cache_type = 1
query_cache_size = 32M
query_cache_limit=2M

2. If you don’t have root access to check /etc/my.cnf (or /etc/mysql/my.cnf) variables, then login to mysql or use phpmyadmin to show variables.

$ mysql -u mysqluser -p magento_database_name
$ mysql> SHOW VARIABLES;

3. If you don’t have control over your mysql configuration, go knocking on your Web Host’s support tickets to get them to modify it to suit you or if you’re in Australia, check us out

**If you want someone to do this all for you, lodge a support ticket at Yourwebhostingsupport with the Subject “Magento Optimisation”

Technorati Tags: magento, optimization, apache, mysql, speed

One area sadly lacking in most Linux installs is the availability of really nice fonts useful for design and great fonts are not cheap, circa $150 for a font set. Best all in one location for getting great free fonts, I think is www.fawnt.com

If Ubuntu really wants to have a go at competing with the Mac, this is certainly an area that needs improving.

You can install fonts system wide by dropping them (or folders of font families) into /usr/share/fonts or alternatively, kfontviewer a KDE application will give you a nice gui for installing fonts.

Need to manage large amounts of fonts on Linux? Try Fontmatrix

sudo apt-get install fontmatrix

Technorati Tags: Graphic Design, Fonts, Free, Web Design

• No Install to Host/Join meetings
• Easy Share Screens&Webpages
• Audio & Video Conferencing
• Present PowerPoint and PDFs
• Private & Public Chat
• Whiteboard & Annotations
• Record and Playback Meetings
• Open Source and open APIs
• SynchroLive Co-Browsing
• Free Recording & Archiving
• Mac & PC Screen Sharing (no Linux??)
• Multiple Presenters
• Free Teleconferencing Calls
• Secure, Private Meetings
• Faster and Easier than ever
• No Install to Host meetings

It’s available as a vmware virtual appliance or for those of you using Qemu / KVM / Xen, you should be able to convert the image using:

qemu-img convert -f vmdk -O qcow

We are building the world’s first replicable, open source, modern off-grid global village – to transcend survival and evolve to freedom. We are farmer scientists – working to develop a world class research center for decentralization technologies using open source permaculture and technology to work together for providing basic needs and self replicating the entire operation at the cost of scrap metal. This is a stepping stone to transcending survival and evolving to freedom. Factor e Farm is the land-based facility where we put this theory, Open Source Ecology, into practice. Visit the site

Technorati Tags: solar, farming, open source, green technology