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Linux Blog – Linux Games & Banshee

I came across a new Linux Blog, Linux Revolution, that has two posts up, near and dear to my heart:

An overview of next-gen Linux games, looking at some of the lesser known games by smaller studios. Some of these I have tried (or installed), including Sauerbraten, and some more I’m definitely going to keep my eye on.

The second article of note is Rhythmbox vs. Banshee. This is an article I’ve been meaning to write myself for some time, but I”m lazy, and haven’t got to it. It’s a good overview of the two music players for GNOME, and like the author, I’m a huge Banshee fan. Banshee’s development has been fast and furious, and every release adds key features. I can’t recommend Banshee enough.

Banshee 0.10.7 out

Banshee 0.10.7 is out, and already uploaded to Ubuntu Dapper Drake. (More on my Dapper Drake experiences this weekend, I promise!)

Finally, genre is an available column (yay!) despite Aaron’s protests. 0.10.7 also makes the full time switch to gstreamer 0.10.

I’ve been playing with it, and after one hiccup on Dapper Drake, it works flawlessly. Banshee is definitely my music player of chocie.

Installfest this Saturday!

The Twin Cities Linux User’s Group (TCLUG is having an installfest this Saturday!

If you live in the cities, and always wanted to try Linux, here’s your chance. The experts will be on hand to help out, and will have various distributions to give. Hit the link to learn more and go!

Ubuntu Blog

As you should know by now, I’m a huge Ubuntu Linux fan. I’ve been using Linux off and on since 1997, starting with Red Hat, and have tried most distros in between (SUSE, Mandriva, Gentoo, Debian) but it was Ubuntu that made me switch permanently from Red Hat (and later, Fedora) when Ubuntu’s 4.10 was released.

I use Ubuntu on all three of my main machines now (except my Windows Media PC when I have to use Windows, and my Mac Mini, just to toy with Mac OS X), and made the switch to use Ubuntu full-time a year ago when I decided to give up my gaming habit.

As an Ubuntu user, I highly recommend the Ubuntu Blog, written by a Ubuntu fan, Ubuntonista, who posts daily about how to make your Ubuntu experience better. I make sure to stop by every day.

If you are already an Ubuntu Blog reader, Ubuntonista has posted on why he writes and calls for comments on what his readers want to see there. Make sure you stop by, thank him, and share your thoughts.

ET: Quake Wars to have Linux Client

From the preview over at Planetquake4:

Other features include in game voice chat, absolute Linux support (though may not be 100% done at the time of shipping), Punkbuster for anti-cheating, and stopwatch mode for tournament play.

Sweet! Enemy Territory: Quake Wars will run on the Doom3 engine, and is being developed by Splash Damage, who did the original Enemy Territory. Quake Wars pits Strogg vs. Humans as the Strogg invades Earth, and will the two sides will have entirely different classes and vehicles.

I’ve been talking this game up for a while, and I’m very excited they officially announced Linux support.

Via linuxgames.com

Second Life on Linux!

It’s here! I received the email yesterday to participate in the alpha test of Second Life’s Linux client. It’s Alpha – it has a few graphic glitches, but it’s working. It seems to run fast so far.

The client is very Mac OS-ish and very intuitive. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to play as I needed to watch Jack with my better half out shopping, but I’m really looking forward to spending some time this weekend with Second Life.

Obligatory screenshot right after I logged in:

secondlife1

iRiver H10 on Ubuntu Linux Howto

I’m pleased to announce that after looking into it off and on for the last 6 months, I’ve got my iRiver H10 5GB fully working in Linux for the first time.

The H10 comes in MTP mode – Microsoft Transfer Protocol, insead of being a UMS – USB Media Storage device. MTP is needed for Plays for Sure compatibility, so it will work with Napster-To-Go or Yahoo, for example. A UMS device, when plugged in, just shows up as a drive letter on your PC, so you can drag and drop files on to it. Sacrificing Napster-to-go (which I haven’t used in 6 months) is a small price to pay to use this on Linux – especially as no modern online music store has a Linux client yet.

The steps needed update your firmware, convert your iRiver to UMS mode, and then you need to install EasyH10 to rebuild your music database. Do this at your own risk!

How I did it, and be prepared to lose any music on your H10:

  1. I updated my firmware from 2.03 to 2.51 MTP, [version 2.51 at iRiver.com][1].
  2. Go to the [Misticriver.net H10 Wiki][2]
  3. Follow the [instructions to convert your H10 from MTP to UMS][3].
  4. Download EasyH10: [Windows or Linux tarball][4] or [Debian / Ubuntu package][5]. (I used the [i386 Debian package][6] on Ubuntu 5.10 with no problems).

  5. If installing on Ubuntu or Debian, at a terminal, type: sudo dpkg -i easyh10_1.2.1-1_i386.deb

    • Plug in your H10 to your Ubuntu box. It should mount in /media/H10 (if it didn’t, for the purpose of this, I’m going to use that going forward).

    • At a command line type:

      cd /usr/share/easyh10/model (On Ubuntu, could be /usr/local/share/easyh10/model on other distributions) and then ls

      Find your model in the list, I have a H10UMS_5GB_FW2.04-2.51.model so we’ll use that in the next step.

    • From a terminal, type in the following: cp /usr/share/easyh10/model/H10UMS_5GB_FW2.04-2.51.model /media/H10/easyh10.model (Or whichever corresponding version you have, copy it over as easyh10.model in the root directory of the H10).

      • Unmount your H10 (right click and click unmount), unplug the USB cable, let it reboot and install, and then plug it back in to your PC.
      • Copy some music in to your H10/Media/Music directory. Not Music the directory!
      • From a terminal type easyh10 -Un -on /media/H10 to rebuild your database. That should be it! However, if you run in easyh10 and see this, like I did:

      `EasyH10 [CUI] 1.2.1 Copyright (c) 2005 by Nyaochi

H10 model template: /media/H10/easyh10.model
Path to database: /media/H10/System\DATA/
Path to music: /media/H10/Media\Music/
Path to playlist: /media/H10/Media\Playlist/
Playlist extension: .plp

Enumerating music files:
236 files found.

Reading H10 model template:
H10 (UMS) 5GB firmware 2.04 - 2.51

Obtaining media information from 236 files:
236 files obtained.

Updating database

Writing H10 media database:
Failed to write the H10 database (code = 8). (That smiley face should be an 8 )
ERROR: Database update.` Per [this thread on the EasyH10 forums][7], delete all your files in the H10/System/DATA folder. Run it again, and you should see: `silwenae@shaftoe:/usr/share/easyh10/model$ easyh10 -Un -on /media/H10
EasyH10 [CUI] 1.2.1 Copyright (c) 2005 by Nyaochi

H10 model template: /media/H10/easyh10.model
Path to database: /media/H10/System\DATA/
Path to music: /media/H10/Media\Music/

Enumerating music files:
236 files found.

Reading H10 model template:
H10 (UMS) 5GB firmware 2.04 - 2.51

Obtaining media information from 236 files:
236 files obtained.

Updating database

Writing H10 media database:
100%: (H10DB.hdr)
` It’s my understanding that after every time you add music files to your H10, you need to run EasyH10 to update your database to let your H10 know that the music is there. You could choose to play songs through the Browser on the H10, but it’s easiest in Music. Unfortunately, the H10 isn’t recognized in [Banshee][8], but with how the database needs to be updated each time, I doubt it will ever work. Though this is a great start for using in Linux, as this was the last thing that required me to have a Windows box. [1]: http://iriver.com/html/support/download/sudw_view.asp?searchProductIdx=&searchCategoryIdx=&searchString=&page=1&idx=739&tmpSearchProductIdx=&tmpSearchCategoryIdx=&tmpSearchString= [2]: http://www.misticriver.net/wiki/index.php/H10 [3]: http://www.misticriver.net/wiki/index.php/H10_Firmware_Conversion:_MTP/UMS [4]: http://easyh10.sourceforge.net/download.html [5]: http://webb.ens-cachan.fr/debian/pool/main/e/easyh10/ [6]: http://webb.ens-cachan.fr/debian/pool/main/e/easyh10/easyh10_1.2.1-1_i386.deb [7]: http://easyh10.sourceforge.net/forum/index.php?topic=39.0 [8]: http://www.banshee-project.org