By now you are probably familiar with Ted: Torrent Episode Downloader.  In fact, Michael recently covered, how to Turn Your Computer into a DVR with Ted.  However, I have yet to see a guide on how to install/run Ted in Linux.  Since it is written in Java, it is fairly straightforward to get running, but there are probably some new guys to Linux that could use some help.  I will also show you how to create a menu icon to launch Ted.

Requirements

Java is the only software requirement to actually open Ted.  According to Ted’s website, you need at least Java 5.  If you don’t already have Java installed, you can install it from the Ubuntu Software Center, by searching for java6.  You need the ‘Sun Java 6 Runtime’, not just the plugin.

You can also run the following command:

sudo aptitude install sun-java6-bin

Getting Started

It just so happens Ted released a new version yesterday, so make sure you download the most recent release.  You will notice there is a a different download depending on which operating system you want to run Ted in.  Obviously, you are going to want to choose the Linux download, which is in the form of a .zip archive.

Once the download is finished, we need to extract the contents of the zip archive.  You can do this several ways, depending on if you are a click and point kind of person, of if you prefer the command line.

For those of you who like the mouse, right click on the downloaded zip archive and choose ‘Extract Here’.  Be sure to rename the extracted folder to ‘ted’ (without the quotes).  The name of the folder will matter later on.

You can also use the command line by navigating to the directory where the zip archive is located and running the following commands:

mkdir ted
unzip tedv09715.zip -d ted

*Note: the second command will change slightly with each version of Ted.

If you want to move the ted folder to another location, now would be the time to do it.  The location does not matter, but changing it after this point will cause problems.

Creating an Application Launcher

Right click on the Applications menu, and choose ‘Edit Menus’

Choose the Internet menu from the list on the left.  Then click the ‘New Item’ button on the right.

Now, add the Ted entry. Be sure to change the location of the ted.jar file to where you put it earlier.

Finally, we will add the Ted icon to the launcher.  Click the spring looking icon button in the upper left corner.  This should open a window allowing you to browse for icons.  Click the Browse button and then navigate to the ‘ted’ folder. You will only be able to see the folders within the ted folder; however, this is okay. Simply click the Open button and you should see a file named ‘winicon.ico’.

Select the icon and then click ‘OK’.

(Optional)

Now for those of you who like doing everything on the command line, don’t fret, I haven’t forgotten about you.  Start by creating a text file named ‘ted’ that contains the following:

#!/bin/bash
java -jar /home/eric/ted/ted.jar

Obviously, change the location of the ted.jar file to match your system.  Next, we need to make this file executable.  To do so, run chmod +x ted from the command line.  Last, we need to move it to a folder included in your search path.  For example:
sudo mv ted /usr/bin/

Notice root privileges are needed here since you are copying the file to a system folder.  Enter your password when prompted.  You should now be able to run ‘ted’ from the command line to launch the application.

Upgrading safely

Since Ted includes the version number in its folder names, you have to be careful to not break the application launcher.  Either follow the Getting Started section above, or simply copy and paste the contents of the new release of Ted into your current ‘ted’ folder.

Troubleshooting

If your application launcher quits working, it is probably because the path to the ted.jar file has changed.  Just double check that it is still in the same location, and update either the launcher or the location if it is different.

In some of the older versions, Ted was set to use a tray icon by default; however, this would cause problems with Java.  This problems seems to have been fixed in newer versions of Ted, but I thought it was still worth mentioning.  If you get an error similar to the following:
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: no tray in java.library.path
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary(ClassLoader.java:1709)
at java.lang.Runtime.loadLibrary0(Runtime.java:823)
at java.lang.System.loadLibrary(System.java:1028)
at org.jdesktop.jdic.tray.internal.impl.GnomeSystemTrayService.(Unknown Source)
at org.jdesktop.jdic.tray.internal.impl.ServiceManagerStub.getService(Unknown Source)
at org.jdesktop.jdic.tray.internal.ServiceManager.getService(Unknown Source)
at org.jdesktop.jdic.tray.SystemTray.(Unknown Source)
at ted.TedTrayIcon.(TedTrayIcon.java:28)
at ted.TedMainDialog.initGUI(TedMainDialog.java:312)
at ted.TedMainDialog.(TedMainDialog.java:121)
at ted.TedMain.main(TedMain.java:37)

try changing the command to run Ted from java -jar /home/eric/ted/ted.jar to java -jar /home/eric/ted/ted.jar noTray This can be substituted for the normal command in any of the examples given above.

I can’t afford the DVR my cable company offers. Plain and simple. Even if I could afford it, I wouldn’t be willing to pay for it. It just costs too much money.  As a busy student and TV addict, I would often have to choose between watching that new episode of my favorite TV show or studying and doing homework. Of course you can always watch the rerun, which usually shows during that next weekend, but I want to watch my shows when I want to watch them. Ted solves this problem for me. Ted is an automatic TV show downloader. Enter in your favorite TV shows and when that new episode airs, Ted starts searching the internet for a torrent of it. Ted will automatically download the torrent file and even pass it on to your bittorrent client. Here’s a quick overview of some of the features of Ted.

To use Ted, you need will to:

1.) Download Ted here for Windows, Linux, and Mac versions. (This link downloads version 0.971, go to http://www.ted.nu/ to see if there are newer versions)

2.) Have a bittorent client installed. If you don’t already have one, here are a few options:

Transmission

Deluge

Azureus/Vuze

uTorrent

I use both Transmission and Deluge. They are both great programs. I have never used Azureus or uTorrent, but I have heard good things about them. This is by no means a complete list of bittorent clients. You can use whatever client you prefer.

**If you want to automatically download TV shows, follow this guide to Ted and set your bittorrent client to always download to a specific directory.

Now, once you’ve downloaded and installed Ted, open up Ted and you should see:

The first thing to do is to edit the preferences. In Teds main window go to Extra (top left) then ‘Preferences’. Here you will see:

Here you can specify how often you search for episodes. I keep it at 60 minutes myself. Keep a note of the download directory, this is where Ted saves the .torrent files that will be loaded into your bittorrent client. If you have the ‘Open in default bittorrent client checked’ it should load the torrents automatically, but if it doesn’t, you can set most bittorrent clients to automatically import files in a specific directory. Just find that setting in your bittorrent client and set it for the same directory Ted downloads to.

The ‘Look and Feel’ tab at the top will show:

Here you can set whether Ted runs on startup or not, shows alerts, and allows logging. I definitely recommend you keep logging turned on because the logs may come in handy some time.

The ‘Advanced’ tab shows:

You can stop Ted from downloading certain file types; this is where you would want to put that information. Of course you can remove these standard ‘do not download’ file types, but I don’t like dealing with .zip or .rar so I keep them in there.

Click Save and return to Teds main window.

Now you need to add a show. Click ‘Add a show’.

The Add a show screen lists quite a few shows. Click one and on the right a tv.com summary will show up. Here you can choose to download starting with the next newest episode, the last episode that aired, or a custom episode. Once you’ve selected a show, click ‘Add’ in the bottom right. Don’t worry if your show isn’t on the list, just click ‘Add a custom show’ at the bottom and enter your show’s info.

Your show should now be in Teds main window (as you can see I’ve added the show Top Gear):

Now you will want to edit some of the preferences. Just select your show in the above window, right click and then click edit.

The General edit window will appear:

This is where you can edit the title of the show and which season and episode to look for next. If you were to select Season 1 episode 1 in the case of Top Gear, ted will try and find Season 1 episode 1, then try and find Season 1 episode 2 and so on. If an episode is not found by Ted, however, it will not move to the next episode until that episode is found. So if it can’t find episode 2, it will not continue to episode 3 until it has found episode 2 (unless you go to this screen and manually tell it to search for episode 3).

To add feeds, click the ‘Feeds’ at the top. You will see a window like this:

As you can see Ted has already populated 2 feeds for Top Gear. Unfortunately, mininova no longer offers TV shows, so you can remove that feed. Just click it and then click the minus sign at the bottom.

To add a feed, click the plus sign at the bottom:

You can choose from any of these and have it automatically add the feed for your particular show. I recommend putting in as many feeds as you can. There is no limit, and Ted will just download from the first one it can. Click ‘user defined’ to add a feed from a torrent site not shown in this list.

Now click Filters:

Here you can edit the minimum  and maximum size of the video file. Any show that’s runs for 30 mins will usually be around the 300mb size, so choose a minimum of 150mb and a maximum of 500mb. Any show that runs for an hour, could be around 300-800 mb, so choose the minimum to be around 250mb and the maximum to be around 1000mb. If you specifically want HD content, click ‘Download in HD quality’ at the bottom and significantly increase my recommended minimum and maximum sizes.

I would recommend you use the following snippet of code in the Keywords block to stop Ted from downloading unrelated or private torrents:

(!(www | lol | com | net | org | cx | cc | leech | torrent | nova | bay | bit))

If you click Schedule at the top, you will see:

Don’t forget to click ‘Save’.

Once you have a few shows listed in Ted, on  Teds main window, click edit and then click ‘Edit all shows…’

Here you can edit values for all of your shows at once.

You should now be setup to automatically download your favorite TV shows.

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I wanted to create a short list of sites to visit for new Linux users. I have been using Ubuntu for a few years now and I still visit some of these sites (especially when new versions come out and I have to fix some bugs).

1. http://www.linux.org/lessons/beginner/toc.html is a very detailed site to help with many of the problems people have when they are new to Linux. The twenty lessons offer info from partitioning to the ‘grep command’ to even X-Window Configuration.

2. http://www.linuxrsp.ru/win-lin-soft/table-eng.html shows a great comparison chart of Windows programs and the Linux equivalent. Simply look for the program you would usually use in Windows and see the available Linux programs that does the same (or similar) thing(s).

3. http://ubuntuforums.org/ – this is the main forum site for Ubuntu users. If you use another distro then their particular forum site will be useful to you. Simply google your distro and the word forums. The Ubuntu forums have helped solve many of my little problems. Forums also give you the opportunity to ask for help with your particular problem (provided you can’t find that problem anywhere else in the forums).

4. http://tuxradar.com/content/linux-tips-every-geek-should-know – this site simply lists a bunch of tips ‘every geek should know’. Take a read through and you will learn something new, even if you’re an experienced Linux user. If you’re new to Linux, I would recommend you stick to the ‘Easy’ difficulty tips on this site.

I decided to come up with a poll in the hope to provoke some comments. I want your opinions!

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I’ll start:

I am an Ubuntu user. I have used Mandriva and OpenSUSE before but decided on Ubuntu in the end. The biggest thing I like is the community. I can find out how to do anything because there is such a big community of users. I managed to get things done a lot faster as an Ubuntu beginner than I managed with either Mandriva or OpenSUSE before.

I would have to say Ubuntu is a great beginner Linux distro. The ’safe’ choice. It’s also nice because I know it’s going to work for me day in and day out. If you are someone who loves to delve into the mysteries of computer systems then you will probably find another distro more appealing, but for now I will be sticking with Ubuntu.

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I will also say that I am a GNOME user. I tried KDE first and disliked it so much that GNOME was such a breath of fresh air. I have not used any other environment I’m sorry to say, but may be willing to try if you persuade me in the comments.

One of the hardest things for former Windows users to get used to is you can’t press Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up the task manager. So what do you do when there is a program that has become unresponsive???

There is a simple solution and you actually have a couple different options.

Option 1: (my favorite, also the easiest)
The easiest way to quit a program that stopped responding is by using the force quit button.  In Ubuntu this button can be added to any panel by right clicking on the panel and choosing ‘Add to Panel.’ Then scroll down and select ‘Force Quit.’

Then, when there is a program you need to stop, just click on the force quit button (which is now on your panel) and your mouse cursor will change into a set of cross hairs. At this point, click on the program window that you would like to stop.  If you decide you don’t want to quit any programs after already clicking the force quit button, just press Esc to cancel.

Option 2:
The second way to stop an unresponsive program is to use the System Monitor. This can be found under System->Administration->System Monitor. I like to add the System Monitor to my top panel so I can keep tabs on what my computer is doing.This can be done by using the same process as above.

Once the System Monitor is running, click on the ‘Processes’ tab.

Then, similar to Windows, click on the process you want to stop and then click the ‘End Process’ button in the bottom right corner. One nice feature of the System Monitor is you can sort processes by name, status, CPU usage, and memory usage.

Option 3:
This option is for more advanced users, and those who wish to use the terminal.  If you already know the name of the process you wish to terminate, all you need to do is type the following command:

killall process-name

Here, “process-name” is the name of the process you wish to terminate.

If you don’t know the name of the process, you could type in a command such as ‘top’ to see which programs are using the most resources.