Poster printing on four A4 sheets in Linux

I wanted to print a poster sized image but I only have an A4 printer. Solution: PDFPoster, as described on the the Propheris blog. The application is in the Debian repository. The Ubuntu manpage helped me find the right command for a four A4 sheet poster:

pdfposter -mA4 -p2x2a4 in.pdf out.pdf

Realtek ALC883 on Debian laptop

One feature of my laptop that has never worked in Linux is the SPDIF output. In Windows the socket glowed red to show that there was some sort of optical connection available. Since I don't have any digital audio equipment, the lack of a digital output didn't bother me. I also don't have any multi-channel speakers, so the inability to switch to 4.1 or 5.1 output didn't bother me.

Trying out the Live USB for Gnome 3.6 recently, I noticed the SPDIF light glowing on boot, and on investigation I found that a digital output was available. Support for my sound card is obviously coming in Linux. Then a few days ago I noticed a post on the Debian forum describing how to install the Realtek driver.

I gave it a go and found that installing it gives me an option of using the digital output or switching to 4.1 or 5.1 output. It also seems to give me an option to switch to recording from the sound card, an issue which I bemoaned in my previous post.

Record from soundcard in Debian Wheezy

Today I wanted to record a radio program from the internet in Debian Wheezy. I've done this before with Sound Recorder in Squeeze without (as far as I can remember) any difficulty by simply selecting the soundcard as the source.

In Wheezy this doesn't seem to be possible, and it took me a while before I came across a solution on Stebalien:

1. Install pavucontrol and the gnome-sound-recorder.
2. Open the gnome-sound-recorder and start recording
3. Open the pulseaudio volume control and switch to the recording tab
4. Click on the down arrow of the "gnome-sound-recorder" Record Stream, Select "Move Stream" and move the stream to the "Monitor" stream for your sound card.