Setting Up Skype to Use USB Headset in Fedora

I use Skype as a business line in my home office, which means I use it religiously. It has its ups and downs for sure, but it is cheap, and runs fairly well. That is unless you run Linux and you want Skype to pipe output to separate channels for ringing and voice actions. In other words, I want to use my USB headset as my default Skype communication device, but have the ringing (and all other system sounds) still pipe through the main speakers. After a whole lot of messing around I finally got it working, here's how.

1. Install pavucontrol. I am not really certain why this isn't included in Fedora by default. But, to be honest, you might never need it unless you want to do what we are doing today.
   
   

   sudo yum install -y pavucontrol



2. Open Skype and go to Options -> Sound Devices
   Un-check the option to allow Skype to adjust your mixer levels.
   
   


3. Make sure you USB headset is plugged in!


4. Open pavucontrol and get it side-by-side with the Skype Options screen.


5. In pavucontrol, go to the Output Devices tab and you should see two options, the Internal Audio Analog Stereo, and your USB audio device.
   
   


6. Each device has three buttons on the top right hand side for Mute, Channel Lock, and Set as Fallback. Choose the Set as Fallback option for your USB headset.


7. Switch to the Input Devices tab. You should see two items here, maybe just one if you don't have an internal microphone. Select the Set as Fallback option for your USB device again.
   
   


8. Now comes the easy part, go to the Playback tab. You might want to make the window a little bit bigger so that you can see all of the feeds.


9. In the Skype Options Sound Devices page, (you didn't close it did you?) click on the Make a Test Call button.


10. You should see the Skype output here now and it will be piped to the Internal Audio Device at the little button on the top.


11. Click that button and select your USB headset.
    
    


12. End the current test call and start another one. You should hear your Skype audio in your headset.


13. Have a friend call you on Skype and it should ring on your main speakers. When you answer, however, all of the voice action will be piped to the USB headset.

So I hope that helps someone else out there that might be having the same issue. I know it drove me crazy for a while.

Making Chromium View PDFs

Chromium by default has no built-in PDF viewer unlike its cousin Google Chrome. I am not really certain why the hell this is, but it is. This is the easiest way that I could get this to work on Fedora (sometimes I wish I was back in Arch).

1. Install Google Chrome. 
Yeah I know, just trust me here, besides we only need one file, libpdf.so.


sudo yum -y install google-chrome-stable



After Chrome is installed, copy the libpdf.so file out of /opt/google/chrome to Chromium

sudo cp /opt/google/chrome/libpdf.so /usr/lib64/chromium-browser/plugins/


Go ahead and change the file permissions on libpdf.so to 755.

sudo chmod 755 libpdf.so


Now open Chromium and go to chrome://plugins. You should see a plugin called libpdf. Mine was enabled at this point but if your's is not, then do so.


That's it!

See that wasn't too hard was it?

A side note you should be aware of, in this format libpdf.so will not get updated. So it might be a good idea to do so manually every once and a while. Or you can leave Chrome installed and create a symlink to the chromium install for libpdf.so. 

Running Evolution in Dropbox

After switching to Fedora several months ago I have been using the Evolution Mail client solely. I got away from my long-time friend Thunderbird over some rather ridiculous issues that I won't go into here. And so far, Evolution is great. And it integrates into the default Fedora 16 desktop beautifully.

My only gripe is when Fedora 17 is released I don't want to loose everything or spend mass amounts of time backing everything up for the re-install. (Or if something goes completely haywire with the linux kernel during an update.) So I mapped all of the Evolution data into my Dropbox folder. Here is how you can do the same thing.

Evolution stores basic settings and such in ~/.evolution/ and even though nothing of any real import is stored there, you still need to move it to Dropbox.

mv ~/.evolution/ ~/Dropbox/evolution

Now make a sym link to the default location for Evolution.

ln -s ~/Dropbox/evolution ~/.evolution

The main data files and all of your emails are stored in ~/.local/share/evolution so we need to do the same thing to that folder. I changed the name to evolution-data in my Dropbox but you can use anything you want.

mv ~/.local/share/evolution ~/Dropbox/evoulition-data/

And then make the sym link.

ln -s ~/Dropbox/evolution-data ~/.local/share/evolution

That is it. Now Evolution will save the files into the Dropbox folder and it will in turn be synced to the web. If you have crap loads of emails, like I do, then you might need to purchase the 50gb plan to deal with the space. For $9 a year it is definitely worth it.

Flushing DNS in Linux

This is the easiest possible way that I know of to flush your DNS in Linux when you are not running a DNS server. Simply toggle the lan port off and then back on.

Installing Chromium on Fedora

For some reason you really have to work to get Fedora to install the chromium browser. Hopefully this will help someone else out there, and serve as a reminder to myself when I need to do it again.

Illness Overtakes Murphy Family!

Reports are coming in that the Murphy household has been stricken with lung ailments. News right now is scarce, but it seems that the two youngest children, Addison & Jackson, both have bronchitis. The oldest girl, Jillian, has been diagnosed with pneumonia. And now reports are coming in that the patriarch of the family is coming down with something horrid.

In a press statement earlier, Mrs. Murphy, the only one not afflicted as of yet, stated that all "should keep their distance," and that they were "going to have to disappear for awhile" to attempt to nurse themselves back to health.

Apologies were made for any persons who might have come into contact with them in the last several days and for those they were supposed to see over the weekend.
We should have another update on the situation on Monday.