Archive for the 'Community' Category

Jordan LoCo: Ubuntu Desktop Course


Yesterday we had a very energetic LoCo meeting and we decided to have a fixed monthly schedule

  • Monthly FLOSS introductory lecture
  • Monthly Ubuntu Desktop Course
  • Monthly Ubuntu Installation Festival

This month we will do it at Jordan University and I’m so excited about it but that’s just the kick start of what we are planning to do.

I’ll keep this blog updated about LoCo Team activities and plans in the Kingdom, so stay tuned!

Ubuntu Desktop Course - Ubuntu Jordan LoCo Team

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Posted on Thursday, March 6th, 2008
Under: Community, GNU, Linux, Open, ubuntu | 2 Comments »

Batch photo editing, The Linux way


I’m really in love with those tiny tools that can do the magic to you when you are really depressed looking for a miracle to get your task done.

I work as action photographer in my free time and yesterday I had to edit 200 shot in a very short time, first I downloaded the RAWs into my computer and then started to delete the ruined ones and then I needed a way to convert all of my CR2 files into JPG; after bit of googling I found that there is a living application out there called DCRAW that let you decode all of your RAW files and then you can pass your decoded data into a tiny application called CJPEG that can compress the image file into JPEG image file and so I did

  1. for i in *.CR2; do dcraw -c -a -w -v   $i | cjpeg -quality 100 > $i.jpg; done;

This is the magic of command line tools in GNU/Linux, I was able to get all of my RAWs decoded and converted into JPEG in about two hours which includes googling for for the way to batch edit photos and convert RAWs to JPEG.

If you are into Photography then you would understand how many hours I have saved to get this task done.

Later I wanted to add a border and my signature to all of these photos plus I needed to resize them for web usage so I used Phatch.

Phatch is a simple to use cross-platform graphical Photo Batch Processor and Exif Renamer with a nice graphical user interface. Phatch handles all popular image formats and can duplicate (sub)folder hierarchies. Phatch can batch resize, rotate, apply shadows, perspective, rounded corners, … and do much more actions in minutes instead of hours or days if you do it manually.

I can certainly confirm that phatchs saved lots of my time, in return I’ll start translating it into Arabic language out of respect and to give something back to the developers and the community.

Photo editing under Linux isn’t that user friendly yet, but I’m pretty sure it will definitely be user friendly when Phatch get stabilised and gets more features.

NOTE: This example was tested with dcraw v8.80 and cjpeg 6b. cjpeg is available under libjpeg-progs package.

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Posted on Saturday, February 9th, 2008
Under: Community, GNU, Photography, Software, ubuntu | 4 Comments »

Jolug Winter Contest: Build your own SnowPenguin


And win free PIZZA!!!

You can use this HowTo:
http://www.wikihow.com/Build-a-Snow-Penguin

take a photo of your SnowPenguin and send it to us, Core Committee will decide which is the best SnowPenguin within 10 days. The prize will be given in our next Social Meeting.

Do not forget to write the name of your favourite GNU/Linux distribution on it, however this isn’t a must.

Originally uploaded by Philocrites

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Posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008
Under: Community, GNU, Linux, ubuntu | 1 Comment »

Amman Linux Installation Festival


Saturday 29th of December was one of the days that I would never forgot, We worked really hard to prepare for the festival and we got it done in less than three weeks.

The event was a great success, we installed GNU/Linux on about 30 boxes, distributed about 300 DVD and 100 CD mainly Ubuntu 7.10 and Fedora 8 but OpenSuse 10.3 has its dose too (I can tell that people liked it even more than Fedora)

The goals of festival were met, we wanted to turn luggers on and to get new fresh blood and we succeeds in getting 120 new lug members and the old ones working on new year resolutions now which is great step forward for us.

People were amused by the topics of Free Software, Open Source, starting from the philosophy ending with the available technologies, They were asking Are you doing this for free? we thought you’re going to sell us something and the answer was Of course, we are selling you your freedom

Now we are planning to setup another installation festival within four months, hopefully we will find a sponsor so we can achieve a larger class of people.

Kudos to JoLug members who helped to make this event one memorable event, hopefully we will have more good news to share soon.

leave you with some photos of the installation festival.


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Posted on Sunday, December 30th, 2007
Under: Community, Linux, Software, ubuntu | 1 Comment »

Amman Linux Installation Festival


Under the High Patronage of Mighty Penguin, Jordan Linux Users Group is pleased to invited you to Amman Linux Installation Festival 29th December 2007.

Time: 9:00 a.m - 9:00 p.m. on Saturday December 29th 2007.
Place : Azzahra’ Hall - Jordan Engineers Association (Mojamma3 Elnaqabat) in Shemisani. Amman, Jordan.
What: Live installation of various Linux flavors. Bring your PC or laptop and get professional help in installing the latest and greatest GNU/Linux OS.
Who: Volunteers from Jolug members.
Duration: All day.

Free entry tickets
Free Linux DVDs & CDs
Free Linux Installation
Free presentation
Free soft drink.

Way to confirm

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Posted on Thursday, December 27th, 2007
Under: Community, Linux, PHP, ubuntu | No Comments »