ID:32737
 
I've been playing with Ubuntu at work and it's got me thinking that maybe I should switch.
I don't use my PC for gaming much anymore. The consoles are all handling that really well. It's become a machine for browsing, chatting, watching movies, listening to music and syncing my iPod.
The browsing will be fine. I shouldn't notice a change at all.
The chatting will be fine. I'll notice the change, but there are Linux alternatives out there. I prefer to use the official client for MSN, but I'll get over that. My only true issue is that third-party clients tend to lag behind in features and have mediocre looking interfaces (as shallow as it is, I spend a lot of time looking at them).
In theory watching movies wont be a problem. I currently use Windows Media Player but that's simply because it's the default player.
Music and syncing will be a bit of a pain. I actually like iTunes. It handles my podcasts, TV episodes, movies and music all together. I've heard of people using CrossOver Office to use iTunes. The same post already gave a pretty strong recommendation of Banshee.
One potential solution is CrossOver Office for syncing and such, with Banshee as my actual music player.

So yeah. I'll download Ubuntu disc before I leave work. That way I can give it a shot, if I don't like it none of the changes will be permanent. If anyone could chip in some advice it would really be appreciated.
Do you use the iTunes store?
If not, you can use gtkpod.
I don't think switching your main PC to Linux is the best idea. There's going to be a lot of things you go to do and it's just not going to be able to do it without work or emulation/VM. I prefer having my main PC running Windows and a second less powerful system running Linux, that way I can have the best of both worlds. There's plenty of amazingly cheap systems out there that would be excellent for Linux.

Heck, my Linux box is an old 450Mhz Dell that Deadron GAVE me, all I paid was $45.00 shipping, and it's still a very solid system. It had a 32MB GeForce video card in it when I got it that burned out (and took a CD Burner with it) a year or so later, but I had a 4MB replacement and now it has a 64MB Radeon 7500 in it (got it damn near free, it beats the video on my main computer but the main computer only has PCI expansion).

I'm probably one of the biggest Linux-nerds on BYOND, but I still do appreciate the simplicity of Windows, it's never really given me any problems.
Well, I guess it really depends on what you WANT linux for, heck, you could always use a VM for Windows :)
@Flame Sage: Nope. None of the store functions but most of the other media functions. It's used for Podcasts, TV Shows, Movies, Music and syncing all that to my iPod.


There's plenty of amazingly cheap systems out there that would be excellent for Linux.

I was thinking about this, but I don't have the room for two PCs. Even if I did, I'm not the sort of person to use two PCs. Unless I got a keyboard/mouse/screen switch. I guess that could work out if I hooked it up somewhere out of the way and ran it as a jukebox type media PC. Share a directory so that I can transfer things from the main Linux machine.


I don't really have my heart set on either Windows or Linux, I'm just not seeing anything keeping me on Windows other than iTunes. I was just using it at work and it ran a lot smoother even on a very basic PC. If it can do all my day to day functions up on an acceptable level then I'll switch.
The worst case scenario from that point on is that I need to steal a laptop from work for a few days every now and then in order to preform the occasional Windows only task.
You COULD just upgrade your computer. Whens the last time you spent a lil money on your honey?
Dixon wrote:
You COULD just upgrade your computer. Whens the last time you spent a lil money on your honey?

I'm not really willing to spend any money on this rig. It's at a point where I need to upgrade everything if I want to upgrade anything. Then when it's all done I'd probably end up with Vista. That in itself will probably drag the performance back to this level of sluggishness (huh? sluggishness is in my FireFox spell check?).
When it comes down to it a PC five years older than this one should be able to do these tasks smoothly, it just seems Windows is too caught up in itself and slows everything else down.
From everything I've seen Ubuntu wont get as clogged up as easily.
Darkview, iTunes is a horrible media player, ditch it if at all possible. As mentioned, GtkPod is pretty good(Although I don't think it has a podcasting feature). If you really feel adventurist, there is a iPod interfacing library to make it really easy to put things on and pull them off(iTunes wont pull things off the iPod, only delete), so a little python could give you all the features you want.

As for a cold switch, I was forced into a cold switch for about two weeks when Windows died on me, and for every day tasks, I had absolutely no problems. Flash 9 works well on Linux, I already used Firefox and OpenOffice.org, and automatix allowed me to get all the media codec I needed.
Amarok is like.. the God of all media players on Linux. You should try Ubuntu out in a Virtual Machine (Virtual Box) before you actually install it.
I'm not sure if JetAudio has a linux install, but if it does... JetAudio always has every damn codec you can think of in it. They are the whores of the media world. If you're still using BYOND you might want to think of that before you make the major switch. BYOND's linux version is very VERY lax and although 355(and from what I hear 4.0) work with WinE, I found them to be difficult to get working(I didn't actually succeed at all with anything other than installing).

All I have to say now is "We've got you now, boy!"

Also; what's the difference between suceed and succeed? They both seem to be in the FireFox spell check.
Crashed is working on a linux IDE for BYOND, which looks very promising.
Lord of light wrote:
Crashed is working on a linux IDE for BYOND, which looks very promising.

It's not just a Linux IDE, it's an IDE that will be compatible with Linux and Windows. (And I believe Macs too)
:( KDE is better then gnome. use Kubuntu
Danial.Beta wrote:
Darkview, iTunes is a horrible media player, ditch it if at all possible.

Even though I like it I've got nothing against losing it. The issue seems to come down to whether or not these alternative media players still manage my movies and TV shows on my PC and iPod.
The only thing I'll miss is the library browser. I really like the way it's all laid out there (although after looking at gtkpod it does it better =P).

I probably should put Python to use and make my own. Making a virtual iPod that syncs my PC with my iPod when it connects would be pretty cool.
Danial.Beta wrote:
Darkview, iTunes is a horrible media player, ditch it if at all possible.

Explain.
All together, it just doesn't compare to the other popular ones. Look at Winamp, it takes no time to search through all your music. You have a search bar that is instant search. You have 3 panels, one for artist, one for album and one for song name, that way you can quickly filter for what you want. When you have files in your library that nolonger exist on the hard drive, you can clean them out with only a few clicks. I had to resort to a third party program to clean out iTunes when I moved a bunch of files. I'm not saying iTunes is a bad media player out of ignorance, I'm saying it is a bad media player because I deal with it daily!

Perhaps it would be fine if I had 50 songs, but I have 5,000! It is just completely useless with that many.

Sure, the interface is simple enough, but it's far too simple in some ways. If I'm syncing my iPod, listening to music, and downloading podcasts, that darn text box at the top will change so much that if any relevant information is shown on it, it changes before I can read it, and I have to wait a minute or two before it gets back to the message I want.

I actually bought an iPod in part because of you, Mike H. And I don't regret the purchase one bit, but I can't say I like iTunes for anything but podcasting. That it does pretty damn well.
Use ephPod, Danial.

I use it for my iPod all the time, it works great. I also think it has Linux support, but I'm not sure.
My only problem with iTunes is that the library doesn't browse independently of the current playlist like WinAMP. So I can't edit the tags of one album while listening to the other. Clearing the non-existant songs out of the library could be handled better, but it's only come up a few times for me and I was able to just hit select all.
The browse features on iTunes and WinAMP are essentially the same in terms of layout so I'm not sure what your issue is there.
You've got artist, album, genre (optional) and then at the bottom you've got the songs. The search function works instantly as well (as in letter by letter, you don't have to hit enter).

My current song count is 3,832 and I don't have any problems browsing with iTunes (apart from the previously mentioned sluggishness that seems to go with all Windows applications).
Sorry to derail the comment thread, please delete if you are so inclined! In case this doesn't come across in the text, I'm not trying to antagonize or be overly defensive - I really just want to understand a different point of view and/or share my own experience.

Danial.Beta wrote:
Look at Winamp, it takes no time to search through all your music.

iTunes takes no time for me (currently 5606 songs). Results are updated instantly with each keystroke on a 5 1/2 year old machine.

You have a search bar that is instant search. You have 3 panels, one for artist, one for album and one for song name, that way you can quickly filter for what you want.

I have Genre, Artist, and Album panels in iTunes. Songs are listed in the main panel as results are narrowed.

When you have files in your library that nolonger exist on the hard drive, you can clean them out with only a few clicks. I had to resort to a third party program to clean out iTunes when I moved a bunch of files.

The thing with iTunes, which a lot of techie people simply don't get (and I didn't get for a long time), is that it manages your music files so you don't have to worry about them. Why would I possibly care how the files are laid out or where they are? If I want to see the file for a particular song, one click shows it to me. If I want to copy the song files somewhere, I just drag the tracks directly out of the iTunes window. If I'm running out of space on the disk where the music is kept, I just change the library folder and everything's moved over.

The same thing applies to putting music on the iPod. One of the biggest knocks among the tech crowd is that you can't simply copy the files over and have it work. Again I ask, why the heck would you want to? It's such a waste of time to manually copy files when you can have it all managed for you. Breaking away from this mentality and giving up my control to let the machine do it better was difficult for me at first, but ultimately saved me a huge amount of time and hassle while doing a better job than I would have.

Oh, if you're using a Mac, you can move files around to your heart's content. iTunes will always find them. Sadly, Windows offers no such functionality so undoubtedly the Windows version wouldn't do that.

Or if you want to delete the files, it makes sense that you would delete them from your library (at which point the software asks if you want to keep the files or delete them). I wouldn't expect any software to know exactly what you wanted to do if you went and deleted data files out from under it.

I'm not saying iTunes is a bad media player out of ignorance, I'm saying it is a bad media player because I deal with it daily!

Do you? What you've listed so far seems to be misunderstanding at best. Did I misinterpret?

Perhaps it would be fine if I had 50 songs, but I have 5,000! It is just completely useless with that many.

I still don't see any evidence to back up this claim.

Sure, the interface is simple enough, but it's far too simple in some ways. If I'm syncing my iPod, listening to music, and downloading podcasts, that darn text box at the top will change so much that if any relevant information is shown on it, it changes before I can read it, and I have to wait a minute or two before it gets back to the message I want.

Not defaulting to the most important message in situations like this is one of my pet peeves. But there's a little arrow you can click to manually cycle through them as much as you want.

I actually bought an iPod in part because of you, Mike H. And I don't regret the purchase one bit, but I can't say I like iTunes for anything but podcasting. That it does pretty damn well.

Well, I'm not sure why anyone would buy an iPod if they didn't want to use iTunes. To me, that's the entire selling point. The ease of integration, seamless syncing with the music library. Without that, why wouldn't you buy another player that's cheaper? But that's just my opinion.


I absolutely hate defending Apple because they suck and it makes me look like an idiot fanboy (maybe it's true). But I also hate seeing unsubstantiated claims of any product being grossly inferior when it simply isn't true. Just like I can't let a fanboy get away with saying Windows is crap (it's not) or Macs "just work" (they don't), I can't let this go without further information.

If it's personal preference, that's great. iTunes is not, and never will be the perfect piece of software. Same goes for any of its competitors. But if it's because of something more like Apple being perceived as "simple", "crap", "toy", etc without facts to back that up, I have to call it out. Not implying that's the case here, just trying to get the real facts; otherwise people who don't know any better read stuff like this and get distorted impressions that aren't based in fact.
Back to the main topic, I would heartily recommend trying virtualization. As I've blogged before, it gives you the best of both worlds.

I haven't tried it, but apparently VMware Player [link] is free, along with plenty of pre-made virtual appliances [link] for Linux and other operating systems. Sounds like a great way to test the waters. You can then decide if you want to keep both systems running simultaneously, or take the full plunge and go all the way with Linux.
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