Could that be silwenae.net making a return? With the music server?
I have proof:
And it’s streaming music as we speak.
There’s some kinks to work out, so if you had access to the old music server, I have some things to fix first. But progress is being made!
I’ve upgraded 3 of my main machines to Ubuntu 5.04, aka the Hoary Hedgehog release. The laptop went flawlessly, as did my gaming machine, which is installed on a second hard drive. Most impressively, the ATI binary drivers, with the change to X.org, stayed and worked on my gaming box automagically. OpenGL is beautiful, the fonts are beautiful, and I’ve switched to the Clearlooks theme from Industrial.
My two major complaints are the Industrial theme disappearing and they’ve changed Nautilus’ spatial nature. Clearlooks is acceptable as a replacement, but I don’t understand why they’ve had to go and screw with Nautilus. Gnome’s default behavior for Nautilus is to open every window in a new window. I like it that way. Ubuntu, being a Gnome-centric distribution, and dedicated to releasing after every major Gnome release, should follow that direction. I can understand why some people don’t like it, but it strikes me as odd they’ve made this change.
Only the server is left to upgrade, and based on the 3 upgrades I’ve done from Warty to Hoary, should go flawless. Then it’s a matter of getting the server up on the network, which is a different story after my network rebuild last weekend.
Ubuntu Linux 5.04 (Hoary Hedgehog release) is out!
Go download it!
Ubuntu has, by far, become my favorite linux distribution. Releasing stable version of Debian every 6 months, with the latest version of the Gnome desktop, an awesome user community, and a great selection of software.
The Hoary Hedgehog release adds X.org for the xserver, faster boot process, much better laptop support, and what I think may be a first for a Linux distribution, automated package manager download and installer to upgrade the OS. Check it:
Ubuntu 5.04 includes two new packages to help you keep your computer up to date: update-manager and upgrade-notifier. The Synaptic package manager also now includes support to upgrade your Ubuntu Distribution.
update-manager is a package that allows you to quickly and efficiently upgrade your software in the background. The process is simple but without the fine-grained choices offered with the Synaptic package manager. The package is good for people who like the simplicity of a one-click upgrade, similar to that available in other operating systems.
I know what I’ll be doing this weekend: Upgrading 5 machines to Hoary, including my server. (My original plan was to get the server back up on the DMZ and get Jinzora working. Ack).
Slyck.com Interviews Jon Lech Johansen, famous (or infamous if you work for Big Media) of DeCSS fame, and *Musique fame. Interesting follow-up to last week’s post about Digital Music on Linux.
Miguel de Icaza, of Gnome & Mono fame, recently reached out to Jon to create a pyMusique port to GTK# resulting in SharpeMusique.
It’s on my t0do list to download and try out. I’d give Apple’s iTMS a shot if it works. I’m hoping it shows up soon in the Ubuntu universe (I haven’t checked yet). I have Mono running, with a few apps (I love Muine) and I miss Tomboy (Tomboy isn’t working in Hoary for me, no idea why, it was fine in Warty).
So Apple has been in the news all week, as their DRM has been stripped – but what hasn’t necessarily been said is that is hasn’t been stripped, as as much as the Apple iTunes solution implemented on Linux doesn’t apply the DRM. Technically, it’s almost impossible to apply the DRM at the server level, and when pyMusique downloads a song on a Linux box, the DRM isn’t applied as it’s not a native iTMS client like on Windows or Mac.
I whole heartedly agree with this interview with Cody Brocious, one of the 3 developers of pyMusique (along with DVD Jon) on Linux. It’s not the DRM issue – it’s the fact, as a Linux user, I don’t have any options today to buy digital music on the platform I choose to use.
I’d accept their DRM if they supported Linux. No question.
I’ve used Napster and MusicNow – I’ve bought over 20 albums in the last 6 months online. We need a commerical Linux solution for digital music.
I’ve raved plenty in the past about Ubuntu, but finally had ran into a downer.
About 2 weeks ago, I did my normal apt-get upgrades to make sure Ubuntu had the latest and greatest updates, and the nvidia drivers were updated, but the kernel source didn’t map to the nvidia drivers as they should. Upon my first reboot a few days later after a power outage, the X server puked all over and wouldn’t load, so I was dropped to a command line.
Edited the X server configuration, turned off the Nvidia drivers and just had the 2d drivers loaded, everything seemed ok, but it was kinda ugly. You get used to the prettiness of binary drivers after a while, especially screen savers.
Being the daring person I am, I decided to upgrade from Ubuntu Warty (stable) to Ubuntu Hoary, which will be released in April. Changed my apt sources list, apt-get, and voila – Hoary! Gnome 2.92, and a whole bunch of new updated applications. There were a few bugs, but nothing I couldn’t manage. The industrial theme was gone from gnome-themes-extras, mouse icons were old-school Gnome icons, not the pretty updated Ubuntu ones, and a few other things. A few days later, I apt-get update to patch to the latest, and reboot and the system pukes all over everything – can’t even get into the OS.
I swallowed hard, bit the bullet, and reformatted the drive. This time I used Hoary Array 4 to install, and was up and running. Installed Thunderbird instead of Evolution (different story there), and everything was very similar to how it was.
This morning I apt-get upgrade again, and rebooted accidentally (hit the power button instead of the CD-ROM open button, oops) and I get kernel panics.
Swearing in my head, I download the brand spanking new Hoary disc that came out one day after I downloaded the other, this one is an actual preview of the upcoming Hoary release, supposedly more stable than an actual testing release. The just released Gnome 2.10, a new background, bittorrent clients and other goodness. So far so good – it looks more polished than the last 2 test releases I had installed, the new system updater as a front-end to apt seperate from Synaptic works well.
Once again, I’m impressed. A few weeks to the actual stable release, let’s see if I can keep this one running this time.
Obligatory desktop screenshot running gnome-blog!
Now I need to find a new background. Boring brown.
Just because I mentioned it in my last post. Had to be done!
I installed Ubuntu on another computer today – my gaming box.
Threw in a 20 gig HD I had laying around, threw in the install disc, and 20 minutes later had a fully functioning dual-boot system.
This will enable me to get back to one of my goals – learning PHP and dedicating 2 nights a week to it. Pulled up synaptic, installed screem & bluefish, and I’m ready to go!
I even installed gnome-blog so I can blog to my hearts content right from my desktop.
In 20 minutes I had a fully functioning linux install, up to date with all security fixes, and patches necessary. Apt-get a few things, had MP3 working and I was surfing away.
My only 2 complaints: This brown theme does nothing for me, thoguh I love Gnome’s Industrial theme. And ran into my first major Ubuntu bug. I’m running an Intel 865 chipset board, using the onboard sound. Sound works in Gnome, but a few of the games I installed have no sound. Must be an ALSA / OSS thing. I tried installing a few ALSA plugins, but no luck yet. I’ll have to throw Doom3 or UT2k4 on here and see how it fares.
The New York Times has a decent article up about MythTV, the Broadcast Flag, and Filesharing up. While it’s fairly high level, and some parts are wrong (Bittorrent letting you download a 1 hour show in minutes for example: I’ve downloaded plenty of TV shows and it’s not that fast, trust me) it’s not a bad article.
Even mentions the EFF and how they’re going to fight the Broadcast Flag, which may or may not put a stop to some of the filesharing. I agree with parts – I own Alias, 24, Sports Night, and every season of the Simpsons available on DVD. Purchased them and everything. I don’t mind buying TV I love (though it drives my wife crazy why I buy TV shows on DVD for shows I’ve already seen). But the government regulating even more the TV that comes over the air on what I can record, and how long it stays recorded for I start to have issues. It’s one thing if we’re talking about pay TV, say the Sopranos. But when I miss a week or two of 24, what is the issue if I download it?
If I miss an episode of 24, and I can’t download it, there is a good chance I am done watching for the season. Especially with serial shows like Lost, 24, Alias, and Desperate Housewives. Is it worth it to Big Media to not allow me to download and lose me as a customer for the entire season? I don’t think they always see the forest for the trees.
I’ll be buying a pcHDTV card for my MythTV box prior to July 1st when the Broadcast Flag goes in to effect. Maybe even two since hard drives are cheap now.
I want to dedicate two nights a week to programming / web development. Unfortunately, with the 3 machines I have here at my desk, my Windows box is the only one really set up for any type of long term typing.
The problem is I’m used to Bluefish on linux, and recently I also tried Screem, which was equally impressive. Jedit on Windows is just plain ugly, and feature lacking, and there really aren’t any other good open source alternatives I’ve found. I need to get off my butt, get my server sorted out so I know how many hard drives I really have (and work), and pop one in my gaming box so I can dual boot.
So much work to do, so little time.
In other news, Matt came over this weekend, and we’re 90% done with the electrical wiring. Get the ceiling boxed out, fnish the wiring, get the insulation in and we’re ready for the drywall! I need to keep the momentum going with the basement, so I don’t stall anymore.
