Quickly showing off GNU/Linux?

hexidecimate · n00b Joined: 16 Apr 2009 Posts: 4

Sometimes when I got my laptop out a person mentions that hey, what is that? That's not Windows? That's possible? Naturally, I end up explaining what Linux is and I start to show it off a little. Usually I'll dock my buddy list in a corner and turn off the window decorations, and then I'll run mplayer in text mode and play either porn or an episode of Star Trek:TNG through libcaca to show some of the more original features of the programs. I.E. mplayer -vo caca -really-quiet -framedrop <movie file>.

What does everyone else do to quickly show off just how damn neat Linux is? I'd like to throw a few new tricks into my bag for the inevitable "What the hell did you do to Windows?". :D

alex.blackbit · Advocate Joined: 26 Jul 2005 Posts: 2390

IMHO mplayer -vo aa -monitorpixelaspect 0.5 is much more geekish.
cmatrix is nice too.
i like to demonstrate that virtually everything can be done without using a graphical environment.
therefor i show mutt, vi, links, screen, lspci, lsusb, dmesg, ssh, ... stuff like that.
maybe ls -lR /

Dr Croubie · n00b Joined: 21 Nov 2006 Posts: 74

i've only had my laptop a few days, but already i've had someone in a trainstation next to me notice that i was browsing the web in links (and yet, using a mouse on the commandline! he didn't get that that was possible).

doing a nice big emerge -uDvp world and showing how you can choose _exactly_ what you want to use is always fun, if you've got time playing around with framebuffer settings and bootsplash images then rebooting is also possible.

when i get this thing eventually (hopefully) working with xen, saying something like "but i do have windows, look, but it's only in this box over here" would be great to showoff to non-technical people...

timeBandit · Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 6:44 pm Post subject:

Moved from Documentation, Tips & Tricks to Off the Wall. Does not meet the criteria for the former.
_________________
Plants are pithy, brooks tend to babble--I'm content to lie between them.
Super-short f.g.o checklist: Search first, strip comments, mark solved, help others.

sts · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 02 Jul 2007 Posts: 97

I'm usually using Emacs and strangely people don't come talk to me.

energyman76b · Advocate Joined: 26 Mar 2003 Posts: 2022 Location: Germany

well, I don't use mplayer for showing of, because it is crap. xine or vlc are much better - in every regard.

KDE svn. Effects on. xine. done
_________________

Kenji Miyamoto · Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 6:57 pm Post subject:

wswartzendruber · Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 7:17 pm Post subject:

Sadako · Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 7:30 pm Post subject:

poly_poly-man · Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 7:36 pm Post subject:

switch terminals.
_________________
iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAA

avatar: new version of logo - see topic 838248. Potentially still a WiP.

Kenji Miyamoto · Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 7:38 pm Post subject:

poly_poly-man · Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 7:51 pm Post subject:

szczerb · Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 7:58 pm Post subject:

zixnub · Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 8:01 pm Post subject:

mei · n00b Joined: 08 Dec 2004 Posts: 27

kernelOfTruth · Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 8:28 pm Post subject:

kernelOfTruth · Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 8:30 pm Post subject:

juniper · l33t Joined: 22 Oct 2004 Posts: 756 Location: EU

DtZ · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 09 Sep 2005 Posts: 124

IMO mplayer/smplayer is much better than any other media player available for linux. I've tried both xine and vlc and they simply can't play all the formats that mplayer can. It also works nice on my FreeRunner.
FreeRunner with X11 is also a very good way to show off linux. You can easily run apps on the phone and display their windows on your laptop. Another nice thing you can do easily on linux and afaik you can't do on windows and osx is network sound. With pulseaudio + padevchooser it can be done with one click of the mouse. This way I can use my 7.1 speaker set from any computer that has access to my local home network without messing with cables.

energyman76b · Advocate Joined: 26 Mar 2003 Posts: 2022 Location: Germany

xine has nice menus, working preferences, makes dvds playing easy and has a working playlist.

Oh - and the keybindings are easy and logical. Unlike mplayer.
_________________

DtZ · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 09 Sep 2005 Posts: 124

nice menus - I don't care I just want to watch the movie not the menus,
:arrow:

working preferences - both mplayer.conf and preferences in smplayer work fine for me,
:arrow:

dvds - with smplayer open-> DVD from [drive|folder], with cli mplayer dvd://1, easy enough for me,
:arrow:

playlists - I only use them when listening to the music, IMHO mpd is better for this task than both mplayer and xine.

For me the most important feature of a media player is how many different file formats it can play. Xine fails in this regard so I use mplayer.

energyman76b · Advocate Joined: 26 Mar 2003 Posts: 2022 Location: Germany

video playlists: no way with mplayer
mplayer.conf - I prefer a nice menu instead of learning another stupid config
keybindings in mplayer = completely brain dead
nice menus - make managing the video playlist, easy and nice. Also: no need to learn keybindings
nice guy - maplayer doesn't has one.

smplayer is a crutch for a broken application.

oh - and for listening to music:
amarok
or:
alsaplayer
_________________

freelight · Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 11:49 pm Post subject:

When you think mplayer + kde, think smplayer. It's not a crutch, it's a front-end. Kaffeine was another good front-end.

poly_poly-man · Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2009 1:08 am Post subject:

pjp · Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2009 1:16 am Post subject: