Archive for category Debian/Linux
Facebook Photo Zoom – Google Chrome extension gallery
Posted by Biffster in Debian/Linux, Firefox, Web on May 15th, 2010
I have just started converting to Google Chrome as my main browser. I love Firefox, and have been using it since way back in its Phoenix pre-build days. But Chrome is so fast, and so light-weight. Both browsers are open-source, and both are excellent choices.
One of the best parts of Firefox were extensions. People expanded the functionality of Firefox in ways that were never imagined thanks to the ease of writing extensions for Firefox. Google learned that lesson well, and made Chrome easily extensible, too.
I’ve been looking through the wide range of extensions available for Chrome. There are already thousands, some good, some not so good. The extension that I most miss – Paste Email Plus – doesn’t have an equivalent for Chrome. But I have stumbled across some excellent ones. And some extensions that are surprisingly simple yet elegant. One such extension is great for those of us who use Facebook:
Facebook Photo Zoom is a simple, light-weight extension that integrates directly into Facebook so you can see the larger images of photo albums, profile photos and more whenever you hover over a zoomable image!
Howto install amarok 1.4 in Ubuntu Jaunty | Ubuntu Geek
Posted by Biffster in Debian/Linux, Digital music, Install, Open Source on April 24th, 2010
I keep meaning to blog about this post, and keep forgetting. I personally can’t stand Amarok 2.x but loved Amarok 1.4. The link below gives an easy step-by-step procedure to install Amarok 1.4 in newer versions of Ubuntu/LinuxMint. Note: in the list of steps, replace “jaunty” with whatever Ubuntu distro you are using.
Some users are not happy with amarok 2 and they want to install amarok 1.4.This tutorial will help them to install amarok1.4 version.
Howto install amarok 1.4 in Ubuntu Jaunty | Ubuntu Geek
Stop Wine-ing: 15 Games for Linux | Linux Magazine
Posted by Biffster in Debian/Linux, Games on March 29th, 2010
Many believe that Wine and other Windows emulation solutions may be their only recourse for high-quality gaming enjoyment. That, however, it not entirely true. There are plenty of smaller, independent gaming houses developing and releasing premium commercial games for Linux alongside Mac and Windows offerings. Search hard enough and you’ll find games ranging from low-resource puzzle solvers to 3D first-person shooters.
Stop Wine-ing: 15 Games for Linux | Linux Magazine
Sell out and use iTunes? Oh *HELL* no!
Posted by Biffster in Debian/Linux, Digital music, Netcast, Podcast, Windows on March 11th, 2010
In one of my last updates on this blog (Am I really going to sell out and use iTunes?), I pondered switching to iTunes:
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.
On further reflection – and after trying to use iTunes as a media player – I have gone running away from it. iTunes sucks ass (no offense to my friends and family who have to use iTunes). It’s a CPU and memory hog, it’s counter-intuitive, not user friendly, and seems to be written specifically so users cannot configure it to their liking. (Actually, since it is an Apple product, it almost definitely is.)
So now I gladly move back to my media player of choice: Amarok 1.4! (Screenshot above) There are very few things I dislike (really, it’s hard to think of anything I dislike), but plenty of things to love. Easy playlist generation, separate views of the Library from the playlist that one has running, very flexible sorting of the files shown in the library, logical groupings for playlists and podcasts.
Other features that I love:
- Amarok has one huge, huge feature that iTunes is lacking: dynamic library tracking. Delete a file on the disk, Amarok automatically removes it from its library. Rename the file, and Amarok updates its library with the new location (without losing ratings information!).
- More flexible ratings system. Amarok is one of the few media library packages that allows rating a track with half-stars. I use 3.5 stars as the baseline for most of my smart playlists. In iTunes (and most other media managers), you can only use half-stars. This is *huge* for me!
That leave the issue of iPod/iPhone syncing. As I mentioned in my previous entry, there just aren’t any Linux apps that can sync everything I want to sync on my iPhone (Apps, ringtones, video podcasts, playlists, etc.) Which means I have to keep a virtual Windows XP machine with iTunes at the ready. I create playlists in Amarok, then export them into an iTunes-compatible format, then use iTunes to transfer them to the iPhone. *voila*!
(As an aside, I put together a short bash script to make the playlist conversion. it is:
#!/bin/bash
sed 's/\/music/M\:/' "$1" | sed 's/\//\\/g' - > win_"$1"
Simple, but I loves me some sed. 
Am I really going to sell out and use iTunes?
Posted by Biffster in Debian/Linux, Digital music, Podcast on February 27th, 2010
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.
iPhone 3G in Ubuntu/Linux
Posted by Biffster in Debian/Linux, Digital music, Palm/PDA on February 20th, 2010
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:
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.
LinuxMint
Posted by Biffster in Debian/Linux on January 8th, 2010
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.)
