Arch, Mint, And A New Convert

Where to start? First of all, installing Arch went well.

It installed with relative ease, had a clean (text) installer, though it required me to do a few things such as install xorg and gdm, these were easy tasks. Initial thoughts are that it is a very basic system with almost no applications, kind of nice if you like to have control over every application installed on your system, but I find it a bit irritating. To be honest, I was expecting it to be very fast but it seems to take twice as long to open an application in Arch as it does in Mint. So because it only made things harder for me, and there was not an increase, but a decrease in performance, I will be sticking to Mint Linux.

It may be that I’m too use to having the Distro do everything for me, but it seems like too much trouble to bother with all the extra work, for at best, minimal performance gains. Maybe one day I will give it another try, but at current, it’s not what I’m looking for.

On a similar topic, I have convinced my brother to let me install Linux on his computer. He has a very old E-machine that has the same install of Windows XP that it had since we bought it, so as you can imagine, there are many documents, pictures, and music scattered throughout the hard drive. For the last few weeks, he has been having problems with spyware and viruses on it, I’ve tried to help him in every way I can, so when I removed the virus I thought it was fixed, but the virus keeps coming back from a mystery source. The spyware comes up on his computer, pretending to be an anti-spyware application, informing him that his computer may be infected with spyware, and that he should buy this software to have it removed. It wasn’t so bad before, but now he has one that completely removes his background and, in very large letters, informs him of this limited time offer. Long story short, he’s had it with Windows, and he said that he hears me talk about Linux a lot and wants to give it a try.

I’m currently in the process of backing up his files and when they are done, I will wipe the hard drive clean. I think I will set him up with Mint because it has been such a good distro for me and it is very easy to learn. All he does is use Microsoft Word to do some school work, Browse the web, and sometimes he plays Tac-Ops (A Mod for UT2004), so in this case, Linux can easily do everything he needs. I’ll set him up with OpenOffice, Firefox, and install UT2004 along with the mod. We should have another Linux convert soon.

auf Wiedersehen

Long time no blog

Hello everyone,

I haven’t blogged in forever it seems. The reasons behind this are numerous, but the biggest cause is having to spend more time with my school studies.

I guess I need to update at least once a year so here goes.

First of all, I’m currently downloading the Arch .iso to give a try, Mint is all good and well, but I get bored with my distros after a while and start wanting to try new things. As I’ve heard many good things about Arch Linux, and they just released a new update, I thought now is the time to give it a try. I will make a post in the next few days explaining how it went, and whether I will continue to use it or not.

Second, I’ve been using Songbird as my main music player since the 0.5 release and I’m really pleased with it, I’ve had no problems other than the long load times on a cold start, and on my Linux box I use Compiz, but it doesn’t have any of my effects in the Songbird window, but other than that it plays all my music perfectly, keeps my library clean, and it can even detect my Creative ZEN. This is just me being picky, but for such an early product, I really like where Songbird is going.

Songbird 0.5 Final Released

0.5 Final has entered the station with hundreds of bug-fixes and several new features including:

 

MTP Device support
Windows users have a shiny new MTP Add-on that introduces MTP Device Support! Most portable media players and cell phones integrate the MTP spec so try plugging in your device and share your findings on the MTP Device Compatibility Wiki Page.

The extension requires Windows XP-SP2 or Vista, as well as WMP v11.

 

 

 

 

Media Views
Tired of music players that look like spreadsheets? Media Views provide new ways of displaying, manipulating, exploring, and contextualizing your media library. Songbird ships with two default views: a traditional playlist view, and a second playlist view with three filter panes. Developers can create new Media Views and upload them to the Add-ons site. This example media page replaces the standard playlist filters with tag clouds. To experience your music web 2.0 style, load your library, then select Tag Cloud from the View menu. Click the tags to toggle the filtering on and off.

 

 

 

Improved Filter Picker
Genre, Artist, and Album aren’t the only useful ways to filter your music collection. We’ve streamlined the filter picker list and fixed a few bugs that make it easier than ever to navigate your collection.

 

 

 

 

 

New List Background
After several requests from our community we’ve made our Library and Playlist backgrounds easier on your eyes. Keep sending us your ideas, suggestions, and requests, your feedback helps us improve the ‘bird!

And much, much more. I personally recommend giving Songbird a try, it’s come a very long way in the past couple of months.

Read the full release announcement.

Wal-Mart Ends Test of Linux in Stores

NEW YORK (AP) — Computers that run the Linux operating system instead of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows didn’t attract enough attention from Wal-Mart customers, and the chain has stopped selling them in stores, a spokeswoman said Monday.

Wal-Mart sold out the in-store gPC inventory but decided not to restock, O’Brien said. The company does not reveal sales figures for individual items.

Read the full story.

Amazon Releases MP3 Downloader for Linux Users

As part of Amazon’s latest MP3 download music offerings, the online retail giant is now offering its DRM (Digital Rights Management) free tunes for purchase to Linux users. Amazon is doing this by offering a new program, Amazon MP3 Downloader for Linux users.

Amazon is offering the program in both Debian’s DEB and the RPM format. To make it easier to install, Amazon is including versions for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora and openSUSE.

Now Linux users can legally download entire DRM free albums.