DEV Community: Seth

How to fix microphone including system sounds on Linux

Seth — Thu, 16 Sep 2021 11:49:09 +0000

🔎 The Problem

Recently, I have been on voice calls with my friends, and I have been noticing that my system sounds are being included in my microphone playback. An example of this would be if I listen to music whilst talking to friends, my friends can hear the music too. This isn't ideal, so I decided I would try and fix it. Luckily, I found it to be quite an easy fix.

💡 The Solution

To fix this, open up a terminal and type alsamixer.

Next, make sure the correct sound card is selected. If you aren't sure, the default one is probably correct. You can press F6 to view your options and switch to a different card.

The field we're interested in is the one called Loopback.

Using the arrow keys, navigate to right until you have it selected. Then press the down arrow key to set it to disabled.

⚙️ Testing

Hopefully this is all you'll need to do to fix your microphone issues. You can now press Esc to exit Alsamixer.

If you want to make sure that this has worked, then navigate to a folder somewhere in your home directory and type arecord test.wav. Now talk a bit, and play some music or audio in the background. When you're done, press Ctrl+C to stop the recording.

To play the audio file, run aplay test.wav to playback the recording. If this sounds good, then you should have solved your problems.

The last thing you should do is delete the file you created to test your microphone, you can do this with rm test.wav.

🤔 Not working?

If this didn't solve your problem, then don't panic. In my experience this is the most common cause of the issue, but there are definitely others out there.

This forum post goes into quite a bit more detail and solves a more complex instance of the issue.

And if that still doesn't help you, feel free to tag me on Twitter and I'll do my best to help you figure it out.

For the original version of this article, with images for guidance, see: https://saluki.tech/posts/2021/09/2021-09-16-fix-mic-playback-with-system-sounds/

How to transfer files between Linux devices with scp

Seth — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 11:55:19 +0000

🌋 The Problem

Let's assume that you have a file that you need to get off of a server, or one that you want to put on a server. It would be a bit long winded to go and setup some form of FTP client, or to configure a share to deal with this small task.

Fortunately, this is where scp comes in. SCP allows you to securely transfer files between devices through the command line. And it comes preinstalled on almost every Linux system.

🧭 Usage

It's super easy to get going with scp.

Remote to local:

scp username@host.com:/remote/file.md /local/directory/

This will transfer file.md from host.com to /local/directory on your device. You would be prompted to enter the password for username before the transfer could continue.

Remote to remote:

scp username@hostA.com:/source/file.md username@hostB.com:/destination/file.md

This will transfer file.md from hostA to hostB. You would be prompted to enter your password for both hosts to run this command.

Local to remote:

scp /local/file.md username@host.com:/remote/

This will transfer file.md to host.com from your machine. You will be prompted to enter the password for host.com to run this command.

⛰️ Limitations

Whilst scp is a very powerful command, it does have some limitations.

Incompatible with non-Linux machines:

You can only use scp to transfer files between devices running Linux distributions.

Limited to your permissions:

When it comes to scp, there is no sudo. You can only transfer files to directories that you own.

Want to get around this? You can just copy the files to a directory you own on the remote machine, and then SSH into it and move them with sudo.

This article was originally published on https://saluki.tech. For more articles like this, please take a look.

How to automatically clear old files from a folder on Linux

Seth — Wed, 14 Jul 2021 13:15:40 +0000

One of the greatest things about Linux is how easily you can automate it. It gives you a huge amount of flexibility and control over your system, and it allows you to offload all the mundane or repetitive tasks to the system.

In this guide, I’ll briefly show you how you can periodically clear old files and folders from a directory. I use this to clear down my downloads folder, but you could use it anywhere.

You can view the guide here: https://www.saluki.tech/2021/07/14/how-to-automatically-clear-your-downloads-or-any-folder-on-linux/

Making a game: Avoiding burnout

Seth — Mon, 28 Jun 2021 15:11:16 +0000

Making a game: Avoiding burnout by Seth

One of the most common reasons that a game will not get finished is burnout. It’s probably the number 1 project killer out there in fact, and it doesn’t just stop projects from getting finished, it also discourages people from making games. This is why it is very important to acknowledge that burnout is a thing, and for you to be proactive in preventing it from shutting down your game (or any other long-term project for that matter).

If you can avoid burnout, you can keep working. And if you can keep working, you can finish your game.

The post Making a game: Avoiding burnout is available in full on Saluki Tech.

4 things you should do to get started with programming

Seth — Mon, 28 Jun 2021 11:37:32 +0000

Lots of people want to be a developer but don’t know quite where to start. And fair enough, getting started is arguably the most difficult part of becoming a developer. Luckily, learning to code doesn’t have to be hard. You’re about to learn everything you need to know to start your development journey.

But first, you need to be prepared to keep trying. Things don’t work straight away, you aren’t going to be writing any really complex programs for quite a while. It takes a lot of time and commitment to become a programmer, but if you’re willing to dedicate that then everything else will follow in due time.

You can read the full article for free here: https://www.saluki.tech/2021/06/26/4-things-you-should-do-to-get-started-with-programming/

Making a game: Engine considerations (Unreal vs Godot)

Seth — Sat, 26 Jun 2021 11:43:38 +0000

When you want to make a game, one of the first things that you’ll need to consider is whether or not you want to use a game engine for it, and then if you do, which game engine you actually want to use.

It’s quite easy to spend an excessive amount of time worrying about which engine you’re going to use, and comparing them all down to the last little detail. But at the end of the day the engine isn’t going to make the game – you are. This is something you should keep in mind.

Everybody has their own opinions on which game engine is best for them, and that’s absoloutely fine. You should always go for the choice that best suits you and your use case. However, in this article I’m going to give a brief overview of my prefered engines to work with. Over the last few years, I have made games using Unity, Godot and Unreal Engine and I have learnt a fair amount about each of these engines, although I would not call myself an expert user in any of them.

The full article is freely avaliable over here: https://www.saluki.tech/2021/06/14/making-a-game-engine-considerations/

I hope you enjoy it, and find something useful there. As always, I'm open to feedback.

Making a Discord bot with Python

Seth — Thu, 24 Jun 2021 13:28:06 +0000

Discord is a large communication platform that has been immensely popular among gamers, but in recent years has expanded its reaches to anyone looking to create or get involved in a community of any size. It has a wide range of different features and is extensible with bots, which is partly why it’s so popular.

I’ve had experience making Discord bots before, and I am actually a verified bot developer (which just means I was among the first people to get a bot verified on the platform). Whilst I’m definitely a long way from being a top developer, I do have intermediate experience with making bots in discord.py, and I’ll be walking you through getting a bot setup and making your first few basic commands in this simple tutorial.

For this tutorial, you’ll require:

A Discord account
An IDE with Python support (I’ll be using VSCode)
Python installed on your device, with access to Pip

I would also recommend:

Basic Python knowledge
Moderate knowledge of how to use Discord

(If you have any problems, feel free to reach out to me through the comments and I’ll do my best to try and fix your issue)

When you're ready to get going, you can view the full tutorial for free here: https://www.saluki.tech/2021/06/19/making-a-discord-bot-with-python/

You'll also be able to get speedy help with any problems you may have by commenting.

Making a game with open-source tools

Seth — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 12:50:32 +0000

When you are making a game, you quite quickly discover that there are a large range of different tools that you ned to use. Usually, you’ll need a game engine, an art tool, a modelling tool (for 3D games), a music/sound tool and a planning tool. The exact requirements will vary between different projects, but as a general rule they’ll include these.

Now all of these tools are fairly sophisticated, and they can take years to develop. This means that you can end up agreeing to split revenue with other companies, or having to pay some hefty license fees. Unfortunately, a lot of people can’t afford this or don’t want to pay it so they are unable to use the tools they need to make their game. Well, not anymore. Over the past few years open-source game creation tools have come a very long way, and I am pleased to say that you can now make a full game without ever having to pay for your tools.

It should also be noted that even closed source tools can be free, and they can also be a good choice for your game. I recommend keeping an open mind towards using them for some or all parts of the game development process.

If this sounds interesting to you, then you can read the full article for free on my blog: https://www.saluki.tech/2021/06/16/making-a-game-with-open-source-tools/

Picking the right hosting provider

Seth — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 16:07:28 +0000

Most modern technology projects need to be running 24/7/365 to maximise their avaliability and to become a reliable service for their clients. And even if this is not the case for your project, chances are that you’ll still need some form of hosting to make your service avaliable when it’s being used. In this article, I will be covering a small range of the hosting options that are avaliable to you, and I will try to accomodate all budgets and a wide range of technical requirements and skill levels.

Just before I get started, I would like to encourage you to look into some form of shared hosting if you want to run a small website or service with minimal hassle. The hosting providers I’ll be covering will all give you full access to a VM as well as (potentially) other options.

It should also be noted that all of the hosting solutions I mention could be used to host the following (and a lot more too):

Websites
Apps
APIs
Databases
SaaS
IoT

If you think this would interest you, then you can read more about these service providers here: https://www.saluki.tech/2021/06/15/picking-the-right-hosting-provider/

As always, I would love to hear your feedback, either here or via a comment on my blog.

4 tools all developers should use

Seth — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 13:53:47 +0000

Developers are always looking for simpler ways to do more advanced things in less time, and one of the many ways that they can achieve this is by using a selection of tools to supplement their workflow. The aim of this article is to cover some of the major tools that people use, and to give you an insight into what they can do to make your life easier.

And to seal the deal, all the tools I’ll be mentioning are completely free to use, which is an incredible price for what you’re getting from them.

Git / Version Control

Git is the most well-known version control tool out there. It allows you to store your code on a server (thereby reducing data-loss risks), collaborate with other developers and share your code online. Another huge plus to Git is that it allows you to go and look at other people’s public repositories, and see how they solved certain problems. This can then help you solve the problem in your application, and it can save you lots of time and effort.

Git is open-source itself and it comes with a huge selection of extensions that allow you to modify the functionality of the system in a huge range of different ways.

The fact that Git allows you to go back and review previous versions of your code, see how it’s changed and keep track of issues as well as provide you with lots of automation tools makes it quite clear that Git, or a Git alternative is a must-have for nearly every project.

Whilst you could install a system like Gitea on a VPS and then run your own Git server, there is a selection of different services out there that provide Git repository hosting as a service. These services often come with lots of extras too, and usually a very generous free tier. The most notable Git host out there is definitely GitHub, but it is closely rivalled by GitLab among other solutions.

Want to read more? You can find the full article on my blog: https://www.saluki.tech/2021/06/18/4-tools-all-developers-should-use/