Developing for Linux - linux

I want to develop multimedia encoder for Linux.
I want to make use of ready command line codecs like ffmpeg.
I want to build nice GUI for that & pass arguments to command line encoders.
I am thinking to use Qt. (Is it possible?)
I don't know anything about Linux programming, but I have been an Ubuntu user for 8 months.
Please provide me with links to tutorials. (I've tried the Ubuntu forums but it's all beginners stuff in there!)
I am in need of tips from you guys. I am ready to learn everything about it!
I am ready to learn new languages.
Thank you!

Funny story, actually. Two years ago, I developed this for a GTK frontend. You can grab the code at vive.sourceforge.net. I since abandoned it when nobody was using it and I had no need for it, anymore, but the code is still there and you're absolutely free to go tear it apart, laugh at my mistakes, and take what you can from it.
I will warn you, that code is fairly laughable. I was learning C and GTK at the time, so be easy on me :)
If you'd like to take it over, I'd be glad to turn it over!
It looked like this:

Related

Getting Image in Python Without Modules And Python Details

1)I am new to programming and was wondering how one would go about getting an image from a file location to the screen in python without having to import any modules (if this is possible).
2)Maybe what I am really asking is for a tutorial or an advance tutorial on python, computer programming in general, or maybe some tutorials in computer science. Some direction and guidance on where I can answer all of my question about what is part of the python programming language and what is made for quick and easy coding would be appreciated. (An example question of what I would liked answered is "can I make every built in and downloadable python module using just python code or is lower level coding needed and if no lower level coding is needed what is the python code to make these really cool modules"?)
(I took a beginners class in python and have become extremely fond of computers ever since. Now I have been teaching myself C++ and Java and just want to understand the details behind these languages and want to understand how computer scientist and software engineers create the things they do so sorry if I ask a lot of questions.)
1) Of course it's not possible. You can open the image file, but to render it on the screen you need some sort of graphical toolkit, and you need to import modules to do that.
In fact, only the absolutely most common things are, as it's called, "built in" in Python. You need to import a lot in Python, and there is no reason for you not to do this, so the question in itself doesn't make sense.
2) There are tons of tutorials that do what you want. One of the most popular ones are "Learn Python the Hard Way". I've looked at it briefly and it seems good.

Conky in C/C++ language

I want to change image of my desktop in mint :)
I wan to add sth like conky to desktop but I don't know LUA language :(
Is it possible to write it in C/C++ language? (for example I want to connect with forecast server to download some png with my weather and so on:)
Anyone knows how to do it?
I'm not sure that conky supports C/C++. But you can find many sample conky/lua scripts on google. It's not hard to find something close to what your looking for in appearance and in features, and simply modify the conky and lua scripts manually through trial and error. Its really quite easy to decipher. You can also check the conky man page for info:
http://conky.sourceforge.net/docs.html
Lua is extremely easy to learn, definitely a lot easier compared to C/C++. I suggest you check out the book Programming in Lua and learn the basics. If you really want to use C, you can always call C functions from Lua and do the real work there. It is explained in the book aswell ;-)

simple game development on linux

I'd like to develop simple 2d games on linux. Something like one below. The only decent tecnology I've found was PyGame. Is there any other worth taking a look? Is there a possibility to develop flash games on linux?
Thanks in advance.
I will have to agree with previous user , pygame is an amazing powerful and easy to use library.
Now about your flash games, there is a back door.
First forget about flash. Yes I know that this seems a bit out of topic , but no worries you can compensate for this.
Now python has something called Pyjamas, dont laugh its actually a very serious package. What pyjamas does is to convert python code to javascript code, all this happens automatically and you dont need to know a single line of javascript , even though knowing javascript could help as well. Of course the benefits of converting python to javascript means that not only you can run python apps inside any browser and any device supporting a browser including iPad, iphone, and pretty much anything else you can also use javascript libraries. Actually you can use only javascript libraries , so forget about using pygame with pyjamas.
Now HTML5 is the future, its still an ongoing project and far from finished, but YouTube already is using it with alot of success. Html5 together with the new version of javascrip offer features very similar to Flash, with the added advantage unlike Flash which is tied to Adobe , HTML5 is open source and a web standard. That means that borwser support Html5 out of the box with no need to install anything. So you could use HTML5 and Javascript to build your browser games. I think that HTML5 will replace the Flash in the near future. Remember because you will be using pyjama you will writing your code in python only, but of course you could mix it with some javascript code if you wish so.
I will advice for the time being epxlore pygame , because its dead easy to use, and when the right time comes and feel confident with python, take a look at pyjamas and fire away your browser games. The important thing to remember is that unlike other easy to lear language Python is a serious language used for almost anything, so you never run out of option. So do your coding and have fun.
Oh in case you need to check out pyjamas its right here.
Pyjamas Website
Here's a list of some open source game engines in general. You'll want to look at the cross-platform, 2D-oriented engines and see which one best meets your needs as far as programming language and features.
However, PyGame is pretty well-developed, and Python is an exceptionally easy and fun language to do anything in, including game development. I recommend you check out PyGame first, I think it would work well for your task.
As for developing flash games on Linux, there's little chance of that. To develop flash games you need Adobe's suite, and it is only compatible with Windows and Mac. So unless your computer can handle the stress of Adobe software (which is pretty high) in an emulated environment (Wine, which adds considerable hardware overhead), you'd need Windows or Mac OS X to do that. You can still play them, however.
There are flash libraries for games that work in linux. It's a but more of a pain in the ass but maybe all the hassle will teach you a thing or two ?
Here are some usefull links
http://flashgamedojo.com/go/
http://www.flixel.org/download.html (mentions some linux options)

How do I start contributing to GNOME?

How do I start contributing to GNOME? I can program in C++ and Python, but have never touched C. I am not familiar with GTK even.
To be honest, I have no idea how GNOME works. All I have is a deep desire to somehow contribute to it.
Where do you recommend do I start? Any tutorial, mailing list or anything. I am ready to do the hard work, I just need a direction.
PS: I could have googled for the problem, but nothing beats the experience I have seen since Google returns SO for most of the questions.
Visit Join GNOME.
Figure out what you want to do for them
If it's development, then:
learn C and GTK
checkout the source code
browse through the bug-tracker to find a reasonably sized task and ask for help of more senior committers to tell you what is at your level
fix it and submit a patch
wait for roses and glory
But maybe you can help with other things, as mentioned on Join GNOME
Translations
Design / Artworks
Technical Documentation (review, proofreading)
Best of luck and thank you for trying to contribute.
Be sure to check out GNOME Love as well. It's a site aimed at getting people started with GNOME.
You may find it handy and useful by creating new extensions for Gnome shell.
There are a lot of extensions on https://extensions.gnome.org/. It requires JavaScript programming. It will also give you insights of how things work in Gnome.
start simple program with below manual.
The GTK+ tutorial
GTK+ 2 Reference Manual
GTK+ 3 Reference Manual
show your program here: http://www.gtkforums.com/ (Project Showcase)
also to note:
you don't have to learn C (even though it's a good idea). You can use PyGtk for GTK development in python (but i won't recommend that because of the speed of python).
GTK bindings for c++ also exit it's called gtkmm. It have binding for many other librays (Cluttermm, Cairomm, Pangomm).
there are bindings for A LOT of languages but native C is the best solution.
I would recommend learning vala because of it's ease of use but also because of it's speed (but that's just personal preference).
also check the gnome-devel-demo out. can be useful

Guidance on broadening horizons

Let me setup my question with some info. I'm not in college yet and strictly a hobby programmer. Probably a little more than 2 years ago I got started programming on mac. I started with very simplistic GUI examples with Cocoa and XCode. Long story short, I learned from the top down, first learning objective-c, then venturing into more "low-level" projects where I became better at basic C and even used a few C++ libraries in my existing projects.
What I'm saying is that I've never really done anything outside of an XCode project and occasional iPhone project. I've implemented lots of stuff, algorithms, math, etc. but all within that environment. I look at the world of programming and there is so much out there that's not necessarily a standalone application. It seems to me that the hardest thing is finding out where to start; how to setup the environment. I guess I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions, projects, tutorials, maybe on setting up environments for different languages on different systems. Web programming, java applets? etc.
On the note of environments, I would be interested in knowing on a more basic level what makes a "development environment." To my basic knowledge, an "environment" combines the language, with the compiler that interprets that language, and contains libraries that provide an API for the language, where the compiled product runs on a certain system. This is my basic concept, but again, I'm here.
Sorry if this question... well... combines too many questions, but any input or guidance is welcome. Thanks in advance for any replies!
Not sure if I understood your question correctly or if this will help you, but here are my (relative newbie) thoughts and rambling:
I've done Java at uni in two different courses, one where we wrote the code in Notepad and then compiled it in command line, in some dubious DOS application, and then two years later when we worked in NetBeans and while NetBeans was a lot better and easier, I learned a lot and was a lot more careful when writing code after the Notepad experience (especially after waiting for several minutes for a compile only to see a message caused by a silly bug).
If you can choose between IDEs, I would read on different blogs, see what people prefer and why and make a choice. The problem is that most of the time, both at uni and at work, you can't choose and have to go with the teachers/managers choose, and make the best of it.
It seems to me that the hardest thing is finding out where to start; how to setup the environment.
I think it would be easiest if you found something that you want to do, and then take small steps and get bits done. I work as a desktop app developer and 3 years ago I set up a wordpress blog for a friend and imported posts and comments from a different blogging platform, with minimal knowledge about everything involved. I started with things that were already done by others and learned how to use them and then slowly tried to fill in the gaps - the comments part wasn't done then, so I had to learn about databases, how I could see them and then write the code that inserted in them, etc.
What I'm trying to say is that if you find something to do (and if you don't have ideas for projects, you can find several posts with ideas here, on SO) and then set goals towards doing that, even if you don't finish it, or your studying takes you in areas you hadn't expected, it will all be useful at some point.
I guess I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions, projects, tutorials, maybe on setting up environments for different languages on different systems. Web programming, java applets? etc.
This is way too broad a question. If you're doing web programming, you need to set up a web programming environment. At a minimum, you would need an HTTP server. You'd probably also need a relational database. The rest of the web environment would be language dependent.
If you're doing GUI programmng, you would need access to the device or devices (iPhone, Android, etc.) that you want to write programs for.
To my basic knowledge, an "environment" combines the language, with the compiler that interprets that language, and contains libraries that provide an API for the language, where the compiled product runs on a certain system.
That gets you started, yes. You'd want an integrated development environment to write the code. Again, you'd probably need a relational or object oriented database. The rest of the development environment is language dependent.

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