Idiot goes Open Source

It seems that even the cat is using Ubuntu… the kids have seemingly seamlessly adapted to Open Source Software. My computer has also taken sides and is so slow it’s definitely trying to tell me something. Finally I’ve admitted defeat and have had to ask Al to make the change, with one caveat – that I can still use iTunes. A robotic sounding “virtual machine” is apparently the answer – it will pretend to run Windows in a little bit of Bill-space and iTunes will be none the wiser that I’ve actually left the Dark Side at last.

I know my new look will take some getting used to and I just have to get familiar but it definitely feels quite different. The icons look more home-made and the whole thing seems less slick. I keep repeating “Kill Bill” and “It’s Free”. I know I will get used to it but at the mo I could almost say I felt sad although probably remembering the “helpful” paperclip will remedy that – Yes, that’s done it – I will give it a chance.

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This is an excerpt from my ramblings on going over to Open Source Software. My husband (The Open Sourcerer) has persuaded me to put it on here but I’ve really no idea why. He said “people will be interested, you’ll be surprised.”

….surely they have better things to do??? I’d be interested in the work/chore that is so bad you’d rather read this than do it.

Windows is Dead (almost). Long Live Free & Open Source Software, i.e. Ubuntu

Finally.

My wife’s PC was the last bastion of proprietary software hell remaining in our home (and we have quite a few PCs). 2 days ago, Helen explained that she’d been having a nightmare with Windows. You’d start to login and immediately it would log you out again! Nice. And there was no easy way to prevent it. “Safe Mode” did the same thing. Very helpful – not. Googling threw up a lot of people with the same experience and some rather dodgy sounding workarounds to rectify the situation.

Helen has had a dual boot setup for a while, has been getting used to the nuances of Ubuntu and the Gnome desktop and is now fairly comfortable with it. So, rather than trying to fix an inherently broken OS we decided to make the switch. There was one caveat however; iTunes. Her work is a franchised music therapy business for elderly and disabled residential care homes. She uses a big iPod and iTunes to manage her many playlists etc., and all the music is in Apple’s lossless proprietary format. (I know, but I didn’t have an opportunity to suggest an alternative at the time…)

To make the move to Ubuntu as painless as possible I bought some more RAM and a 320GB HDD from Scan Computers to give her some more space and also just in case I ended up needing to do a fresh Windows install for a dual-boot setup. But my plan was to first of all attempt to use VirtualBox for the iTunes requirement. Unfortunately Wine didn’t seem like a viable option at this time.

After what seems like far too much effort, the iTunes Library is now hosted on our home server so it can be backed up easily. A VirtualBox (the closed source PUEL edition for USB passthrough) VM is running a fresh new install of XP and only iTunes, and it connects via a Samba share (Windows is configured to re-connect the network drive (Z:) on startup) to the music library.

The iTunes library was a complete PITA to move. There are lots of how tos and such like on the web but when it boils down to it, you need to check, very carefully, the structure in the iTunes Library.xml file so it matches the new location of the music itself. What didn’t help me was discovering, after several failed attempts, that iTunes at some stage in the past, had decided to create two complete “Compilation” and “Podcasts” directory structures, each with mostly different content, but some of it overlapping.

Essentially, the process is something like this:

  • Backup the whole library!
  • Create the new library location and copy in the data
  • Delete the *.itl files from the root of the iTunes library
  • Examine the iTunes Library.xml file and use a good editor/comparison tool to alter all the paths so they point to the correct locations in your new library structure
  • Fire up iTunes, edit the Music Library location to where the new one lives
  • Under the File menu (IIRC) you choose “import library” and point it at your modified iTunes Library.xml file
  • Cross your fingers, toes and anything else 😉

Judicious use of that great comparison tool Meld and my eyeballs meant that finally I managed to restructure the library so it was consistent and not duplicated. I think that had it not been like this, my experience would not have been so bad or so lengthy, but iTunes will leave always a very nasty taste in my mouth. Also, had Windows not completely barfed (again) I would have been able to use the already installed iTunes app and move the library using it’s own built in tools (as this is apparently possible according to the interweb).

Probably the next step will be to introduce Helen to Songbird (or similar) and see if we can migrate the library, playlists and music across to that. I’ll do some playing on my own before suggesting it though. Small steps to catchy monkey I think.

VirtualBox 3.02 seems to be really good though. The USB pass through and auto-filtering is just brilliant (so Ubuntu doesn’t alert when you plug in the iPod when the VM is running; it goes straight through to the Windows VM). It does seem to take quite a long time for the whole Windows/iTunes thing to settle down after I’ve plugged the iPod in but it might be just because it’s a big 120G iPod anyway… But it isn’t a major issue.

So, although Windows isn’t completely dead in our household, it is certainly on its very last legs. And good riddance to it to.

Songbird 1.2 Released

My favourite music player has just been updated and version 1.2 released.

I picked up the story from The H where they’ve done a great job of describing most of the new features in a single paragraph.

One of the biggest new features is the ability to automatically organise library files across multiple folders based on track metadata, such as artist and album information. In addition to several performance improvements to features like search, Songbird 1.2 now supports 2-way syncing with iTunes, which is especially useful for users who purchase songs in the iTunes Music Store. Songs added to Songbird can also be synced back into iTunes for syncing with iPods and iPhones. Last.fm support has been included in Songbird for some time now, however, users can now access even more artist, track, album and tag information. A new 10-band equalizer has been added to Songbird to let audiophiles tweak the frequency response of audio playback.

With the ever expanding feature set and the superb extensibility thanks to their Mozilla platform pedigree we have a really good alternative to the “other” much touted music player based on Mono. I know which one I prefer.

Songbird, incidentally, was the only music player I found on Ubuntu that would sync with my iPod Nano 4th Gen. And that was the previous release of Songbird too. With iTunes synchronisation I think I have just found the last piece of the puzzle to get my wife off Windows once and for all.

Thanks to all the community and developers behind Songbird. I can’t wait to get this new release installed and give it a work out.