Feb
27
2010
By Biffster
iTunes thumbnail
In one of my most recent entries, I wrote about how I was able to get my iPhone 3g syncing in Ubuntu. That works very well, with a couple of issues that are quickly turning into show stoppers. My major issues are:
- Playlist support. I am not a random/shuffle guy, nor really an album guy. I like to make my own playlists, or create smart playlists. Rhythmbox can’t do iPod/iPhone playlists, which pretty much rules it out. That leaves me with the too simplistic GTK Pod.
- Syncing ringtones: GTK Pod can’t do that.
- Backing up apps: I am fairly certain that GTK Pod can’t do that.
- Video podcasts: As silly as the idea is, I’ve gotten pretty hooked on watching video podcasts on my iPhone. GTK Pod can’t handle that.
So, when you add things up,that means that I have to use iTunes for a lot of the functionality that I want from my iPhone. Which probably means I’ll end up using iTunes as my default media player from now on. Which annoys me to no end. And really does make me feel like a sell-out. But at the current time, there’s no open source alternative that does even half of what I need.
This makes two apps that I can’t find equivalents for. Good thing that VirtualBox is pretty damned good at what it does. And VirtualBox’s seamless mode makes the app look like they are running natively in XFCE.
Feb
20
2010
By Biffster
I got an iPhone 3g recently, and was really, really bummed out that I was having to fire up iTunes in a virtual machine so I could manage music, playlists and podcasts on it. Since I have my music library set up with a samba share for my wife’s laptop access, I just mounted the music directories there and added them to the iTunes library. But so much just isn’t cool about iTunes, and I have so many songs and playlists and ratings and such in Amarok, I just really didn’t want to switch.
So, like any good Linux user, I went bumping around Google to find a way to get the iPhone working in Ubuntu. I started out with a good article from FatButtLarry. I followed the HOWTO to the letter, but I could not get a successful sync. I could copy files to the iPhone, but the actual iPod software on the iPhone would not see it. So I went off on another search.
Fortunately, I stumbled on this excellent tutorial by StoneCut via WebUp8:
In our
previous tutorial we showed how you to access the iPhone OS 3.x filesystem and read/write to its music database using iFuse and by compiling our own libgpod4. Then we had to create a file on the iPhone, manually mount the phone each time and so on. Maybe a bit complicated for an average user.
However, there is now a lot easier way using GVFS which will automount your iPhone for syncing with Rhythmbox, for example. And you don’t need to compile anything anymore. It works for Ubuntu Karmic and Lucid (only Karmic tested). The required PPA does not carry any packages for Jaunty, sorry.
I am now quite happily using Rhythmbox to manage music and podcasts on my iPhone. I reckon eventually I’ll have to hook up to iTunes just to back up the apps I have, maybe to install some new ringtones… Or maybe not. 
Feb
12
2010
By Biffster
I have *no* idea how I missed it, but Facebook Chat is now officially XMPP-capable! Lifehacker spells it out in an excellent post titled “How to Add Facebook Chat to Your IM Client“:
If you are using a multi-protocol IM client such as Pidign, Adium, or iChat, set-up is really easy—you just add a new Jabber or XMPP account, the username being your username@chat.facebook.com, with your password being the same as your Facebook password. If you still haven’t gotten a Facebook username (the tag that appears after www.facebook.com/ for your profile page) you’ll need to go to your Settings page to enable it.
All I have to say is: ‘HUZZAH!!!!!!’
Jan
08
2010
By Biffster
I have decided that I really, really like LinuxMint. The latest version, LinuxMint 8 (Helena), is a very slick, very elegant OS. I actually liked it enough that I am now running it on my home desktop, my personal laptop and my work laptop. Color me a green convert. (My only exception is on my fileserver, which still runs Ubuntu Server, and pretty much always will.)
