How to upgrade to Jessie?

Hey!
After having some problems, I decided that the easiest solution would be reinstalling my OS. Since I have separate /home partition, this only meant that I'd have to install few programs back, so it wasn't much of a pain(turned out many useful things like emacs extensions etc. were saved on /home too, so I almost didn't notice reinstallation).

So, here is the tutorial for upgrading fresh installation of Crunchbang Waldorf from Wheezy to Jessie. If you do this on not fresh installation, remember that some things may go wrong. I strongly advise separate /home.
PS. The same works for Sid, you just have to replace corresponding Jessie things with Sid things.

1. Install Crunchbang.

Reason: well, pretty obvious.
Solution: Install Crunchbang.

2. Update and upgrade

Reason: if you don't do this, you'll meet some dependency problems later on.
Solution: Run 

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

3. Remove some packages

Reason: Jessie comes with Gnome, and you're using Openbox. If you don't remove these packages, you'll have two DE that will collide. Long story short - if you don't do this, you'll face problems.

Solution: the packages that will be problem is girl1.2-gnomebluetooth-1.0 and gnome-bluetooth, both easy to find with autocompletion(tab). Remove them, and (optionally) install replacement: libsmbclient.

sudo apt-get remove gir1.2-gnomebluetooth-1.0 gnome-bluetooth tint2conf && sudo apt-get install libsmbclient

4. Change sources.list and preferences

Reason: You need sources.list pointing to Jessie in order to get Jessie's packages, and same goes with preferences.
Solution: First edit sources.list:

sudo geany /etc/apt/sources.list

There, you need to either comment out or remove everything that's inside, and replace it with sources.list genrated from here: http://debgen.simplylinux.ch/. If you don't know what to choose, select your country, 32- or 64-bit version, depending on what you installed(if you're unsure, run installation disc - when you're prompted to choose between Installation, Live Session and memtest, you'll see if you have 32 or 64-bit version), and then main, contrib, non-free and security. You can also get sources if you want.

Save file, and now edit preferences:

sudo geany /etc/apt/preferences

You only want to leave only three lines:

 Package: *
Pin: release a=testing
Pin-Priority: 500

Save, exit. We're getting there :)

5. Upgrade to Jessie

Reason: If you've done everything so far, you should be good to go. You just need to download Jessie packages, and you'll be in Testing land.

Solution: Just run:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

After that, reboot. You should see a little bit of changes, but now you're on Jessie! 

Chromium 35 Flash Issues

Hello,
this post will be short, because issue is easy to fix.

Lately, I've updated my Chromium to 35 version. First thing I noticed was unusual fonts - in adress bar it was intended, in others - not, but they fixed it fast.
But it also came with flash problems. I'm not fond of flash, but sometimes I do use it. Turns out Chromium changed API(if I'm correct) they use, which results in flash not working, sometimes.
Fix is rather easy - just install correct API:
http://itsfoss.com/fix-flash-player-issue-chromium-in-ubuntu-14-04/
I believe it's in nonfree Debian as well. After typing those lines everything came back to normal.
Just in case the link goes down, here's what you need to type in:

sudo apt-get install pepperflashplugin-nonfree
sudo update-pepperflashplugin-nonfree --install

That's it.
Cheers!

Dropbox as your backup

Oh snap!
That's a REALLY first thing that I do every time I install Linux, yet I forgot about it completely. Well, here it comes at last...

Before I start - I'm talking about Dropbox, because I started using it - and it doesn't make me mad at it, and I can use it on my GNU/Linux and Android. If you prefer other cloud service, it works just the same. You'll be only using different software and storage place.

To those, who know what Dropbox is: you can skip this paragraph. Otherwise: Dropbox is a service that allows you to have storage in their cloud service. It can be used as backup place, place to share things, etc. Google Drive works the same as far as I know. I use Dropbox, because I got +50GB for 2 years because of some anniversary or something. And 50gb is fine for me. In this post, I'll briefly speak about how to set it up and show you one easy trick.

So, what you need to do at first is go to their website - dropbox.com , register an account and find .deb file to download, than install it. It's third-party, and CLI, so you have to find an option with GUI somewhere there. I believe it's an option that pops up during installation, so you shouldn't worry too much. From what I remember installation was pretty simple.

After you've installed Dropbox, you'll have a new folder(by default it's ~/Dropbox) waiting for data to be shared. It works as two-way folder - you can throw something in there, and it'll be uploaded to your Dropbox, or you can add something to this folder in Dropbox, and it'll be automatically downloaded.
For example, every time I make a photo with my smartphone and I'm connected to wi-fi, my phone will automatically upload it to dropbox service. Than, every time I start using my PC, the folder will update, downloading photos. So effectively I both have a backup server, and I automatically download every photo from my phone, without touching the cable. :)

So that's pretty basic. You can use it to download things, you can put some things in it. But sometimes you want to keep your files up to date all the time - e.g. you write books, or play games, and want the files containing books/save files to be up to date all the time - so if something goes wrong, you won't regret that you forgot to synchronize data.
The idea is as simple as it can be - you only need to create a symbolic link to the place you selected. You do it by using following command:

ln -s path/to/file-source path/to/destination

e.g.

ln -s ~/Books ~/Dropbox/Books

Link is something like Shortcut in Windows. It points to other file on your PC. That's why it's always up to date, and you never need to change anything inside Dropbox to update it.

Thanks for anyone who read it, and if you have questions or notes, write a comment below. Cheers!

Setting media keys for Clementine

Hey!

I'm not too familiar with GNU/Linux OS yet. I hope this will change soon, but for now I'm always looking for some information on web. I thought that making this blog will be good option for me and other users in need to find what they are looking for.

Anyway, since it's first post, short information about my OS:

I'm using CrunchBang Linux Waldorf 11(it's a debian-based distro). It comes as wheezy-based, but I upgraded to Jessie. CrunchBang is great debian distro, I really like it. I tried Mint(Cinnamon flavor), Ubuntu, Debian by itself(with Gnome 3), and came back to Crunchbang. I guess it's just really nice distro, and community is helpful. :)

So, back to the topic! 

I am using Steelseries keyboard. It has some media buttons, which I wanted to integrate with Clementine. They don't work by default(at least not for me) except for volume keys.

I separated this into few parts.

First, let's check key names:

For this, you use "xev" program. I have it already installed, so I didn't have to download anything, but I guess it's in any Debian repositories.

After starting xev in console, you got small window which will output to console any input that it catches. I just put mouse pointer inside the window, press the buttons to get their names, and write the names down(I don't know if it's same for everyone, but e.g. my "play/pause"  button is called "XF86AudioPlay".

Once you got names of keys, you can open console and type in "man clementine", to check available commands. 

Then, you have to open menu(right mouse button) and edit rc.xml(Settings->Openbox->Edit rc.xml).

If you aren't familiar with xml, don't worry. If you're intelligent, you won't have any problem with it.

Scroll down to keyboard shortcuts. You'll notice something like this:

    <keybind key="W-A-Right">

      <action name="Execute">

        <command>cb-aerosnap --right</command>

      </action>

    </keybind>

That's shortcut for W-A-Right(which would be Window key + Alt + right arrow), and it executes command cb-aerosnap --right. It's just an example, so I won't explain what it does(it's easy to figure out anyway). What you need to know is that it's template for our clementine shortcut.

Now, you can do next step anywhere between <keyboard> and </keyboard> tags,  although I recommend doing it at the very end, so it's not scattered in the file.

Here's what I did:

    <!--My own keybinds for media keys -->
    <keybind key="XF86AudioPlay">
<action name="Execute">
<command>clementine -t</command>
</action>
    </keybind>
    <keybind key="XF86AudioNext">
<action name="Execute">
<command>clementine -f</command>
</action>
    </keybind>
    <keybind key="XF86AudioPrev">
<action name="Execute">
<command> clementine -r</command>
</action>
    </keybind>

If your media keys are named the same, you could pretty much just copy and paste it. Just to explain what I did here:

I execute clementine command with some flags. -t is called play/pause - it will start playing track or pause it, depending on current state. -f will go forward one song in playlist and immediately play it, -r does the same backwards. Any of these commands will run clementine, if it isn't running.

After that, save rc.xml and close it. Then, go again to menu, and press Settings->Openbox->Reconfigure. Voila! It should be working.

If it helped you, please let me know!

Cheers!

PS. I've searched the web, and found... my own post where I asked how to set media buttons to work with clementine :) It also had something I was looking for: volume keys!

    <keybind key="XF86AudioMute">
      <action name="Execute">
        <command>amixer set Master toggle</command>
      </action>
    </keybind>
    <keybind key="XF86AudioLowerVolume">
      <action name="Execute">
        <command>clementine --volume-down</command>
      </action>
    </keybind>
    <keybind key="XF86AudioRaiseVolume">
      <action name="Execute">
        <command>clementine --volume-up</command>
      </action>
    </keybind>