Another Opinion Among Many

Look out, Skye, this is a geeky post!  :lol:  I thought that I’d share a few nice things that have happened to me regarding my experience with Linux.

First, as many know, I have been using a Creative Muvo V100 as my MP3 player lately.  I still really like this player.  It does what its supposed to without any really amount of effort on my part.  This is a good thing.  Since my hard drive dies on the Windows machine, I’ve not installed the software that came with my MP3 player on it.  That’s because I have been using it with my Linux machine.

At first, it was just a drag and drop experience, but now its a bit more interactive. I’ve found a way to ensure that I can at least “see” my player in Rhythmbox, and am downloading Amarok and Exail as I write this.  So, I may have more good news as far as this player goes.

The secret is to put a small hidden file, known as a “dot” file under *nix, on the player itself.  The dot-fil0 is empty. as the name is the only important descriptor.  So, if you have a Creative Muvo V100 1GB MP3 player and its not recognized by your favorite music manager, try placing a file on the player itself called .is_audio_player and you’ll be pleasantly surprised that it is then recognized as a device when you plug it in!

Also, I have to advise that I have been successful in printing to my Epson CX1500 from my Linux machine to the printer hosted by a Windows XP machine.  To ensure that you have this type of success, ensure that you have enabled unix printing support on your XP box and configured your /etc/samba/smb.conf file to use “share” under “security” so that you can print to your printer without having to enter a silly password.

In addition to the list of podcasts that I’ve gotten used to listening to, I have discovered The Jak Attack, with “Jon Watson and Kelly Penguin Girl coming atcha!”  Its got a bit of tech, linux, and Nova Scotia all mixed in a serious but goofy-enough package.  I like it!

I’ve had my ups and downs with the two Radeon cards that I’ve used. One, a 9500 Pro AGP 128MB, has the R300 chipset, which has “experimental” support. The other (in my machine now) is a Radeon 9550 AGP 256MB and it runs on the RV350 chipset. There is excellent support for the R200 and below and there is great support (soon to get better thanks to the opening of the specs - thanks ATI). However, anything above a 9250 and below the 9800 doesn’t have great support via x.org or even the proprietary Linux driver that ATI provides.

Ubuntu has been doing well at getting around this. I hadn’t really experienced much in the way of trouble with the cards until the release of Feisty Fawn (which got corrected as it approached “final” release) and after Gutsy Gibbon (7.10), which I installed to see where its at. I’m back to the hard locks, which don’t seem to have any specific type of trigger at all with the free x.org driver and seem to occur when I try anything 3-D, with the proprietary driver, which sucks, because I wanted to try playing “America’s Army” and the Western mod for Quake 3 (on OpenArena).

Oh well. Ironic post after the last flurry of comments, I am sure.

Sometimes I wonder why I bother playing around, as I just go back to the old standard, for the most part.  Okay, that’s not really true.  I’ve installed the network install version of Debian 4.0R1 (Etch).  I also don’t know why I did it this way, as I just downloaded a few metapackages and ended up with a reasonably full system anyways.  Interestingly, there is no GUI instant messenger client installed, though.  When I searched for it (looking first for Pidgen, as the “Desktop” metapackage installed Gnome), I found Gaim, which has since been renamed to get AOL off their backs.

I guess that this isn’t that important, as I’ll probably hose this install anyways when my 80G drive arrives.  I thought that I’d see what was up with the “base” for alll those popular distros out there, since I hadn’t kept up with it for quite some time.   I do notice one thing so far that I really don’t like and that’s the fonts in Epiphany, the Gnome browser.  They’re terrible.  Maybe it’ll be back to Ubuntu again after all.

A while after I won my Sony NW-E403, I discovered podcasts.  I hadn’t really downloaded and listened to very many of them, though.  My usual internet downloads would be the weekly show from UnwelcomeGuests.net and Jeremy’s LQRadio podcast.  I began to sporadically add to these, occasionally having to convert some of the low bitrate files to play on the Sony.  After getting the Creative Muvo V100, that I referred to here, with its 1GB capacity and expanded file playability, I began to search around for other podcasts to listen to regularly.

It turns out that I may listen all week without hearing any music now! So, for those who have been interested in trying out this thing called Linux but need a bit more reinforcement, some of these podcasts might be useful to you.  There are more out there, but I’m just getting into the swing of things.

Here’s the list:

• Linux Reality - I like Ches’s subject matter ranging from newb to experienced
• Lottalinuxlinks - Dave’s chat about Linux - usually from his car it seems
• LQ Radio - Jeremy’s sporadic show about all things Linux
• The Linux Action Show - Bryan and Chris are just zany enough to make them my fave
• Going Linux - Advice for those who just want to use their operating system
• The Linux Install Podcast - Ed Labonte and Ben Cheever install linux and describe what they are doing
• Linux News Log - a new one for me - packed with stuff

I hope that someone finds this to be useful.   I founhd all of these by googling the term “Linux Podcast” and checking the results.  Podcast Alley is a great place to get lost, as is the Lottalinuxlinks page.