I knew they would get around to having a native linux client. Installing it is very simple. Just hit up Google Music, click on “Add Music” and then download the right package (32 bit .deb or 64 bit – whichever your system is). Then install. Worked perfectly for me.
Thanks for the heads up, OMG Ubuntu!
Well, tomorrow Ubuntu 10.10 comes out. In preparation, I always like to post up a list of all the programs I am presently using regularly. It’s actually a pretty small list this time:
That’s all the main ones! I’m planning on posting up a quick installation guide which will include installing these apps, so keep an eye out for that!
I’ve been keeping my eyes on Lubuntu, the newest version of Ubuntu built ground up to run on older, less able machines (supposedly has a much, much smaller RAM footprint than Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or even Xubuntu). OMG Ubuntu noted that they decided to change to a new music player for their 10.10 release in the fall. They chose DeaDBeeF.
Weird name if you ask me.
If you want to check it out, use these commands to add the repo and then install (for 9.10 and 10.04):
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:alexy-smirnov/deadbeef
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install deadbeef
yep, check it out and lemme know what you think! I think I’ll stick with Guayadeque as my player of choice, but this isn’t too shabby…
Ubuntu Geek pointed this program out to me. I haven’t tried it with my iPod, but if I like the way it works with that, I may have found myself a new media player. The player itself is pretty slick, I enjoyed the layout, though I think some people might find it too busy or overwhelming. It runs off Java, so it is actually compatible with any system that can run Java (if I understand it correctly)
You can download an installation file here. If you want to install it in Ubuntu, grab the ‘Deb Package’. As a warning, my installation failed because I hadn’t installed Java in my system, so I would suggest using Synaptic or the Ubuntu Software Center to install Java first and then try to install the Deb Package.
The only drawback I can find in the player is that, (I believe) since it runs in Java, it really doesn’t interact with the OS, so any widgets which might allow you to view/control any media you might be playing won’t detect it. Overall, though, very nice player.
Okay, I’m just slightly addicted to music. I started collecting CDs as a young teenager (while I am not old – and am not telling my age here…I’ve spent more of my life collecting music than I have not….), and my present collection weighs in at just over 22 Gb. To make that amount of music a little more understandable: I could listen to my library for a little over two weeks and two days without repeating a single song. While Banshee and Rhythmbox and Exaile and Amarok are great music players, they all get a little slow working with all that music. And slow gets me a little frustrated.
But then I discovered Guayadeque. Wacky name but awesome, awesome little player. It is really light on the resources. And when I’m doing a search for an artist or an album it is freaky, freaky fast. I do highly suggest this player. Unfortunately it doesn’t have iPod support at this time, which means I’m stuck using Banshee for the time being – which isn’t bad, because Banshee is a pretty solid player. But I just love how Guayadeque works. It’s just stinking awesome.
It does do Last.fm scrobbling, which I like to use. And it’s lyric search function is pretty solid, though I’ve been unsuccessful writing those lyrics to the files of the mp3s, for the present time at least.
Anyways, to install:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:anonbeat/guayadeque
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install guayadeque
And that’s it! Enjoy – and let me know what you think!
(originally discovered here)
Minitube is pretty cool, the idea to provide a more tv-like interaction with YouTube.
To get it first you’ve gotta add the repo, so in Karmic all you have to do is type:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:neversfelde/ppa
then reload your repos:
sudo apt-get update
And finally install:
sudo apt-get install minitube
Enjoy!
My laptop is pretty crappy as far as specs go, so finding a lightweight music player is essential if I want to enjoy some tunes while I do…anything…on it. Muine is about as simple as you can get. I think it scanned my entire 15GB collection in mere minutes. Then all I did was point it to an album and tell it to start playing. Nothing fancy, but it works!
to install:
sudo apt-get install muine
yep, that’s it! enjoy!
I’ve been ripping CDs onto my computer for the last six years. That said, when I started coverart was unheard of (at least for me…) – I was just amazed that it could figure out the CD and track names after I first put the CD in. Well, years later and multiple backups and installs after the fact, I finally have gotten sick of not always having coverart for my music. I read about a Windows program which could embed the artwork right into the mp3 file, and I knew that there had to be a Linux version.
Yep, there is. Actually there are several, but this is the most powerful – albeit with a few limitations.It’s in the repos, so just open up a a terminal and type:
sudo apt-get install easytag
yep, there ya go. Fire her up and find your music on your hard-drive. The only irritation is that you have the download the coverart for yourself and store it on your hard-drive and then retrieve it in the program. I heard of a program called albumart-qt (or something like that) which supposedly could download and embed the coverart all at once, but it apparently doesn’t always work consistently and the install seemed a little involved. That said, I like the ability to really dig into the tags assigned to my mp3s and decide specifically what coverart to embed in each file.
The only real irritation is that you can’t embed an image on multiple files at once – you have to select each mp3 individually and tell it to use a specific image. Irritating, but it does the job in the end – just don’t forget to tell it to save your changes!
I found this little program while reading the documentation for FreeNote. Checked out the website and downloaded a .deb installation package here. When installing, it gave me a message saying that there was an older version available in the archives – but I went ahead and installed the latest one. You can probably install the older one thusly:
sudo apt-get install mtpaint
The program itself fired up really quickly and resized a pic pretty easily. This one might have the most features for the smallest footprint (as far as system resources)
Well, managed to snag myself a used iPod after Christmas. I could only afford a 5th gen 30 Gb model, but I figured it would do for a few years – my music collection is only at about 17.5 Gb so far.
When it came in the mail, I was all excited – until I plugged it into my Ubuntu (Intrepid) laptop and was only able to read (not write) the iPod. After an hours worth of searching online I figured out that my iPod had originally been initialized on a Mac, and thusly it’s file system was of the HFS+ format with journaling enabled – and that linux can only read a file system set up thusly.
Well, what to do? In the course of my research, I thought of a simple solution: plug the iPod into a Windows machine and fire up iTunes. Hopefully it would detect the file system discrepancy (HFS+ is not compatible with Windows, to my knowledge) and reformat or re-initialize it so it would work with Windows, which would make it able to work with Linux.
And it worked.
Now, after plugging it into the laptop, Intrepid recognized it perfectly. I fired up Amarok. It wouldn’t detect it automatically (though I have a feeling if I had been booted up in Kubuntu (KDE) it would have). But if you go under Settings -> Configure Amarok, choose the “Media Devices” section (on left).
I used the “Add Device” button, filling in the appropriate information as follows:
Plugin -> Apple iPod Media Device
Name for Device -> [whatever you want to name it]
Mount point -> /media/IPOD
that last one will be wherever the mount point for your iPod is. The “/media/” folder is where Ubuntu mounts most of your USB devices, and “IPOD” should be replaced with the name of your iPod (whatever it shows up on your desktop as being called).
After filling in the information, click OK. Some sort of confirmation dialogue should pop up in Amarok, and you can close out the Settings dialogue box. Under the devices tag in Amarok you should now be able to choose the ipod as a device. Click “Connect” and you should be good to go.
By right-clicking on any artist, album, or song in your collection you can add them to the device upload queue. When you’ve picked all you want, you just hit “transfer” and they should be uploaded.
I’m considering attempting to install Rockbox on the iPod, and I’ll post that adventure if I decide to undertake it. But for now, Amarok seems to be able to meet most of my iPod management needs.
One note: I have had a few problems reconnecting to the iPod. But all I’ve done is delete the old device configuration and basically redo it. It does pop up an error message stating something about a file named [something]lock, asking if you want to delete it. I did, and it then connected with no problem, without losing any data or anything.
