This week my Internet connection was shaped to 64k during on-peak times.  This means that from 12:00 PM until 2:00 AM I can't really download anything without it causing a major headache.  This led me to wonder if I could set up the bittorrent client that comes with Ubuntu to automatically execute only during the off-peak times (from 2:00 AM until 12:00 PM) in a fairly intuitive manner.  I don't want my torrent downloads slowing down my on-peak net usage!  I've figured it out and the following describes how I achieved it.

To begin create a new Directory in your home directory called 'torrents'.  To do this from the terminal type:

Ubuntu Hardy Herron has been released for a week now so I decided to give it a shot on my notebook and try it out.  This is by far the best Ubuntu version yet and was the simplest to install and configure of all the versions that I've used in the past.  My notebook, a Compaq Presario V3118AU has had a few issues with Linux in the past so I was a little weary about installing it over my Gutsy install (which was working fine).  Well I had no need to be concerned, everything went fantastically well.  The following is a brief documentation of my install.

SETUP:

Today I stumbled accross a site that offered Real Media files, something I haven't encountered in a while.  Further, these .rm files needed a codec that is closed source to operate.  Never mind, I thought, I'll just apt-get RealPlayer for my distro.  As it turns out, however, RealPlayer is not available for Ubuntu Linux x86_64 archetucterues.  The following short tutorial will illustrate how you can install Real Player 11 on Ubuntu Linux x86_64 bit systems. (This will also work for most Linux distros and not just x86_64 bit systems).  This process is conducted within the terminal so I'll present all of the steps for those unfamiliar with command line arguments.

Many users of Linux miss the equalizer presets that they had on Windoze applications such as WinAmp. The following terminal scripts will install the WinAmp equalizer presets for Audacious.

To download the WinAmp presets type:

wget http://www.xmms.org/misc/winamp_presets.gz

To install the presets for the Audacious media player type:

gunzip -c winamp_presets.gz > ~/.config/audacious/eq.preset

Perhaps the greatest virtue of Linux is its command line.  You can do so much at the command line in Linux and downloading files via torrents is no different.  With the small terminal application bittorrent you can download your files while using minimum system resources.

To install the bittorrent application type sudo apt-get install bittorrent at the command line.  Simple (Debian based distros only such as Ubuntu)

Want to listen to streaming media/radio, such as ABC Radio National, with Rhythmbox or your media player of choice, or at least outside of your browser window? (most modern media players are capable of playing streaming media) 

This is a great option as it gives you much more freedom.  For example, you can 'bookmark' your favorite streams/radio stations so you don't need to boot up your browser every time you want to listen to them.