Replacing Skitch

When I left Mac for Ubuntu, there were a few programs that I missed. Skitch, this really amazing screenshot app that integrates with the web and causes your colleagues to deposit copious amounts of drool on their keyboards when they see the quality of your work product, was right underneath Scrivener in the most missed category. (Funny, all the programs that I really miss seem to start with an S…) I’d sort of given up and reverted to taking screenshots and then editing them with a combination of GIMP and Inkscape. Then I found Shutter.

This little jewel does everything I need it do quickly and with a minimal of fuss. It has some nice plugins, a built in editor, and a low learning curve. Nice, eh? Here are some screenshots I took playing around. It took longer to open up the other programs than it did to figure out Shutter. So I’m in love with a computer program. So what? Look at this way, this means that next set of Knitter’s Guides, which are going much better on the new computer, won’t take nearly as long to create as the first ones did!

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My Ubuntu: What Changed and Why

As several people have reminded me, I did promise a quick run through of some of the changes I made following the Ubuntu upgrade. As I mentioned in that post, I have a black listed graphics card and an older machine, but I don’t believe I made any of these changes due to hardware issues. *Begin rant* I do enough hacking for others people. I have ZERO desire to do it on my own machine. If something doesn’t work out of the box or with only a minimum of tinkering, the chances are pretty high I’ll ditch it or never try it. This means I prefer to install all of my software from either repositories or .deb installation files. There are legitimate reasons for doing this other than ease of installation.*End rant*

Back Ups

For several years now, I’ve used Flyback for backups. I love the way it creates incremental backups that can be read on any machine with or without the Flyback software. However, Flyback is normally started from a prompt or a manual addition to the Application’s menu and the project no longer has active development, at least not anywhere I found. I swapped to Back in Time, which is like Flyback, but it installs to Applications > System Tools without any hassle and it’s automated scheduling works. (I had to use a word around to get Flyback to do this on my machine.)

Email Client

For several years, I’ve used Evolution, the default Ubuntu email client. I liked it, it worked, and it had the entire kitchen sink plus the pantry. The day after my update Evolution crashed three times. I installed Thunderbird with the Lightening extension for scheduling and tasks and didn’t look back. (You can install both of these from the repositories. System > Administration > Synaptic The only thing it doesn’t do is memos and I never used that feature anyway. I like the interface and it just plain works. (I used several extensions to integrate it with Remember the Milk. Maybe at some point, I’ll get around to writing about that, but right now my life revolves around contracted writing and the next installment in the Knitter’s Guide to Inkscape.

Code Editor

For a long time, I used Emacs, primarily for web coding. Then I began using the Firefox web development extension to code css. I’m a visual person and flipping between two programs so that I can see what the changes really look like seems a little absurd, but the extension wasn’t quite up to level I needed it to be. After a lot of thought and some exploration, I swapped to Kompozer for intricate css work (i.e. the kind that you really need to see it while you’re doing it and you’d better be looking at in something other than your head) and Bluefish for everything else. I have noticed an increase in my efficiency as a result of this change. Some of you undoubtedly believe this is sacrilege, but look at this way. At least, least I didn’t change to Vim.

Dock

(In case you’re wondering what a dock is, it’s the handy set of application icons that Mac became famous for a few years ago. Gnome-DO + Docky takes this idea and moves it up a notch. My installation started with awn, which always seemed a little sluggish to me, probably because I was permanently swapping from one of those shiny Macs, I mentioned earlier. (No, I wasn’t new to Linux. I’ve been using Linux either as dual-boot or on a separate machine since 2001, but I wasn’t enough of a Linux die-hard to give up my little mac. The mac sort of died. (It still runs, but using it takes a lot of effort and some tape.) But the damage was done. I refuse to use anything that doesn’t have a dock. The two extra clicks it takes to click applications, the category, and then program are two too many. And running them from terminal is just as much work. I’m lazy. The dock encourages my laziness in an efficient manner. Enough said. After awn, I used cairo-dock for about nine months. I was happy with it. Then a friend suggested Gnome-DO. It took me a few weeks to get used to it. Then I was hooked. Docky houses my frequently used applications and a simple windows + shift will let me run any application, search for and open any file, and, as an added bonus, it Remembers the Milk, tweets, searches my bookmarks, and it has a dictionary. I think I’m in love. Note: Gnome-DO comes with Docky, which is a Gnome-DO theme. To get to it, start Gnome-DO. Right click and go to Preferences > Appearance.

Web Browser

I still have Firefox installed and I do use it on occasion, but it is no longer my main web browser. I use Opera. It has a basic email client, bit torrent, a tea timer widget, and my daily crossword puzzle. I use it for the tea timer and the crossword. Oh, and the user agent switcher is built in, unlike Firefox which requires a plugin. While I personally despise anyone who says we only support IE and Firefox on computers running Mac and Windows, these sites are sometimes a necessary evil. I’ll lie to them in a heartbeat. 99% of the time, everything works. This does bring me to another change. Most of my blog posts were written using the ScribeFire extension. I swapped to Bilbo. (ScribeFire always seemed to make my Firefox a little unstable (probably due to a conflict with another extension). So even though I resisted this change at first, Bilbo’s working out better for me. (Bilbo is technically a KDE app, but I’ve had no problems installing and running under Gnome exactly like I would any other application. Like Back In Time, it appears to be under active development.)

VMWare to VirtualBox

I heard VirtualBox was faster. I tried it. On my machine, it is so I swapped. I use it to test sites with Internet Explorer and to run BitNami virtual stacks for an experiment I’m currently working on. I’m also toying with the idea of swapping distros (again). I’m currently working my way through Debian, but I don’t see any advantage to making the swap as of this writing. A quick note about BitNami, installing Drupal on XAMPP (the old version because the new one uses the wrong version of php) took me about 40 minutes from the time I downloaded it until I finished the basic installation. This is not including the configuration tasks that you have to do after the basic install. Using a BitNami Native LAMP stack and Drupal module. I had a working localhost Drupal installation in a little under 5 minutes. Even though I’ve since swapped to a virtual machine for this project, I’m sure you can see the why I like the concept behind BitNami. This brings me to a soapbox moment. If you’re encouraging someone to swap to Linux or are thinking about making the swap yourself, install VirtualBox on their (or your) computer and download the distro you’re thinking about using. Install it on the virtual machine and play with it for a while before you partition your hard drive or wipe out your existing operating system. Find out if you (or they) can live with the restrictions of Linux (and believe me, there are almost as many restrictions as there are freedoms). Your favorite Windows programs may run perfectly under WINE or Crossover Office, but there’s also a chance that they won’t. Find out beforehand and get some hands on experience with the alternatives. Now, before this post runs away from me, I’m stepping off the soapbox.

On Other Fronts

I have several designs that I’ve been sitting on for the past several months and I’m getting antsy as my first publication date approaches. This will probably be my last non-knitting post for a while.

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Upgrading From Ubuntu 8.04 to 9.04

I tend to bounce from one LTS version to another. It’s not that I don’t like the *.1 versions, but upgrading takes time. Unless there is a substantial performance or software package difference, I don’t upgrade. So when I decided to upgrade to 9.04 from 8.04, there was no longer an upgrade to 8.10 button on my machine. I’m now writing this in Ubuntu 9.04 which runs beautifully on my old 8.04 box. For a variety of reasons, I did not do a fresh install.

My Box:

• Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40GHz
• 1253 MiB Memory (upgraded last year)
• 2368 MiB Swap Memory
• Intel Corporation 82845G/GL [Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device

In case you haven’t noticed, this isn’t exactly the latest/greatest anything. In computer terms, I have a dinosaur. One other thing that you may have noticed (or may not, depending entirely on whether or not you ran into this issue yourself), my graphics card was blacklisted by Compiz. Compiz is normally used for compositing. It’s what allows you to run things like Cairo-Dock, Awn, and Gnome-DO Docky. Since Gnome-DO Docky is a “prize it out of my cold dead fingers” app, I must have compositing. I’ll talk about using Metacity compositing instead at the end of the post. There are ways to hack the Compiz blacklist, but a hack is a hack and there are valid performance reasons for not running Compiz on blacklisted chipsets.

Preparing for the Upgrade

You will need the following:

• Ubuntu-8.10-alternate-***.iso (Here’s a link to a torrent site that still has the iso available.)
• Ubuntu-9.04-alternate-***.iso (Ubuntu Site)

Note: Replace *** with i386, amd64, etc. Choose the one that is appropriate for your computer. See the Ubuntu download site for more information.Don’t reach for a CD to burn these images. You don’t need it.

1. Update your current system. System > Administration> Update Manager. Install all available updates.
2. Remove orphaned packages. Open terminal and type: sudo apt-get autoremove. When it asks you if you want to remove x number of packages type Y and press enter.
3. Optional: Install and Run Remastersys to backup your operating system. This basically makes a .iso image that can reinstall your existing installation. I choose to ere on the side of caution, especially because I have known graphics chip issues. I’ve done upgrades like this one several times and never needed this .iso, but that doesn’t mean I might not need it. In my opinion, the peace of mind this gives me is worth the time.
4. Backup your Home Directory (ex: /home/kcknits) and your Remastersys (home/remastersys) directory to a separate hard disk. (If you skip this step, but still ran remastersys, burn the .iso found in /home/remastersys/remastersys tp a disk.) Again this is just a precaution, but shouldn’t you be backing up your home directory regularly regardless? I used Grsync for this backup, which you can find in your Ubuntu repositories. It’s a simple, graphical interface for rsync. I don’t recommend it for frequent backups, but for a one time job, it’s a great little tool.

The First Upgrade

Note: You do have to upgrade to 8.10 before upgrading to 9.04. You don’t necessarily need the 9.04.iso, but it upgrading with the .iso is faster in my experience. (This whole procedure from beginning to end took me about 6 hours to download and install everything. I took the dog outside and played ball while it was running, did a little bit of gardening, and cast-on a sock. I returned to the computer every 30 minutes or so to click OK and left. Admittedly, my hardware was part of the reason why this upgrade was so slow. The Asus EEE 1100H upgraded from 8.10 to 9.04 in about 2.5 hours over a wireless connection with no .iso)

1. Move your .iso images into your home directory. For example, if my username is kcknits, then my home directory is /home/kcknits. (I’m using the home directory because accessing it takes less typing, which reduces your margin of error.) (You can copy and paste, cut and paste, or simply download them here to begin with.)
2. Mount the 8.10 alternate .iso. (Note: You must have the alternate .isos. If the word alternate is not in the .iso file name, you do not have the alternate .iso.)
   1. Go to Places > Home Folder.
   2. Inside your home folder, right click on the ubuntu-8.10-alternate-***.iso. Go to rename. Hit ctrl + a. (Select all.) This selects the entire file title inside the rename box. Now hit ctrl + c (copies the entire file name) and click outside the rename box to close it. (You aren’t really renaming the file. You’re just cheating a little bit.)
   3. Open Terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal). Type sudo mount -o loop ~/(Do Edit > Paste or ctrl + shift + v to insert the .iso name here) /media/cdrom0 . This should look something like sudo mount -o loop ~/ubuntu-8.10-alternate-i386.iso /media/cdrom0. You should now be able to go to your home folder or your desktop and see that a cd is mounted.
3. Run the update from the .iso. On some machines the update runs automatically. It didn’t on mine. I went back to Terminal and typed: gksu “sh /cdrom/cdromupgrade”. You can also run this command by typing Alt + F2 and typing the command above into the box that appears.
4. Answer the questions from the upgrade installer. Once the upgrade completes, restart your computer.
5. Update your 8.10 system. System > Administration> Update Manager. Install all available updates.
6. Remove orphaned packages. Open terminal and type: sudo apt-get autoremove. When it asks you if you want to remove x number of packages type Y and press enter.

The Second Upgrade

The Update Manager does have an upgrade to 9.04 button. You may use it if you wish. You may also notice a new program on your computer under System > Administration > Computer Janitor. Under NO circumstances should you run this program. It is a great concept, but it hasn’t been fully realized yet and personal experience (in a virtual computer setup solely for this experiment) says it breaks things. The Ubuntu forums also document others experiences with this program. I haven’t read about a good one yet. I’m not saying that they aren’t out there just that I haven’t heard of any good experiences with it. As I indicated earlier, I ere on the side of caution, which is why I’m saying don’t use this program at this time.

Option 1: Using the Upgrade Manager

1. Click the Upgrade button at the top beside the text “New Distribution Release…” and follow the instructions.
2. Update your 9.04 system. System > Administration> Update Manager. Install all available updates.
3. Remove orphaned packages. Open terminal and type: sudo apt-get autoremove. When it asks you if you want to remove x number of packages type Y and press enter.

Option 2: Manual Upgrade

1. Mount the 9.04 alternate .iso. (Note: You must have the alternate .isos. If the word alternate is not in the .iso file name, you do not have the alternate .iso.)
   1. Go to Places > Home Folder.
   2. Inside your home folder, right click on the ubuntu-9.04-alternate-***.iso. Go to rename. Hit ctrl + a. (Select all.) This selects the entire file title inside the rename box. Now hit ctrl + c (copies the entire file name) and click outside the rename box to close it. (You aren’t really renaming the file. You’re just cheating a little bit.)
   3. Open Terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal). Type sudo mount -o loop ~/(Do Edit > Paste or ctrl + shift + v to insert the .iso name here) /media/cdrom0 . This should look something like sudo mount -o loop ~/ubuntu-9.04-alternate-i386.iso /media/cdrom0. You should now be able to go to your home folder or your desktop and see that a cd is mounted.
2. Run the update from the .iso. On some machines the update runs automatically. It didn’t on mine. I went back to Terminal and typed: gksu “sh /cdrom/cdromupgrade”. You can also run this command by typing Alt + F2 and typing the command above into the box that appears.
3. Answer the questions from the upgrade installer. Once the upgrade completes, restart your computer.
4. Update your 8.10 system. System > Administration> Update Manager. Install all available updates.
5. Remove orphaned packages. Open terminal and type: sudo apt-get autoremove. When it asks you if you want to remove x number of packages type Y and press enter.

Upgrade Aftermath

After the upgrade, you will notice that many of the repositories from the old distribution and some of your specially installed programs, including Amarok and OpenOffice 3.1 have been uninstalled. Fix these first.

1. Go to System > Adminsitration > Software Sources and click the “Third Party Software” tab.
2. Make a list of the unchecked repositories and go to Google (or your favorite search engine) and search for the software or repository name. Delete the old repositories and add the updated ones for your new 9.04 distribution. (This step took me about thirty minutes, but I consider it well worth the effort.) Note: OpenOffice 3.1 now has a repository for Ubuntu Jaunty. For complete instructions on installing and using this repository see this Ubuntu manual post.
3. Reinstall your software.

Note: There were some changes in how Ubuntu handles the Amarok libraries. When you install Amarok, you need to install the kubuntu-restricted-extras package. (This applies to both Ubuntu Gnome and KDE.) This will get you mp3 support. (You should also be using the legal Fluendo mp3 codecs, but that’s just my personal opinion.)

Compiz Blacklisted My Graphics Card

As I mentioned earlier, I am a Gnome-DO Docky addict. I think this program beats all the other docks hands down in terms of functionality. It took me about three days after I first installed it to get used to it and now, there’s no going back. Unfortunately, Docky requires compositing and Compiz, which is what I used to use for compositing, no longer works on my graphics chipset. Fear not! Metacity now has compositing. I do like to change these settings from the commandline, but some of you are probably commandlined out after the upgrade, so I’ll use the interface.

1. Type alt + f2.
2. Inside the box that opens type gconf-editor and hit enter.
3. Inside the Configuration Editor on the far right hand side, there is a list that looks similar to a file tree view. Click apps > metacity > general. Scroll down in the right hand side window to “compositing” and check the box beside it. Close gconf-editor

Your computer screen will probably flash when the compositing turns on. You know have compositing enabled and can use your favorite dock. Note: Many have observed that Metacity compositing is not as flashy as Compiz. I haven’t noticed any difference, but as you can tell from my hardware list, I’m not exactly running the type of box that would have 3-D effects enabled. Even if I did have that sort of a box, I probably wouldn’t use them because I personally find most desktop effects highly distracting. There were some other software related decisions that I made following this upgrade, which I will detail in a future post. Most were for improved functionality, but one wasn’t. I did swap my email client from Evolution to Thunderbird (with the Lightening extension installed). I honestly do not know what happened to Evolution between 8.04 and 9.04, but Evolution on the newly upgraded machine was not stable and none of the usual fixes worked. I do run and enjoy playing with alphas and betas. I expect these programs to not be completely stable and I’m okay with that. However, that attitude does not extend to my code editor, email client, or word processor. Hence, the switch. Well, I hope you found this post useful and that it didn’t make your eyes cross too much.

Resources:

• Ubuntu Manual Upgrade to Open Office 3.1
• Ubuntu 8.10 Torrent
• Ubuntu 9.04 Alternate iso
• Official Ubuntu Upgrade Instructions
• Enable Metacity compositing in Gnome
• Compiz Hardware Blacklist

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Scrivener for Linux?

Hello, Mac Addicts have I got a deal for you! It’s secure, completely customizable, has lots of programs available… Did I mention free? Yeah, I’m once again hawking the Linux OS. Uh oh, I see you’ve decided that you love your Mac specific programs and are reaching for the back button. Hold on a second because I was once a Mac addict like you.

I do a lot of writing (both here and in my professional life) and the one program I really missed (and I mean “missed” as in got down on my knees and begged the manufacturer to use Cocotron for the next version so I could run it on my Linux) was Scrivener. Just so you know, Scrivener is a very addictive program. Once you use it, it’s really hard to go back to using a “real” word processor because Scrivener is clutter free, organization as you write. Word and Open Office just don’t cut it after that. Did you notice I said was? Yes, I have completely replaced Scrivener and I am very happy with my solution.

After trying every “writing” software trial available for Linux and Windows and still not finding something I liked, I sat back and really thought about how I used Scrivener. What was it about this one program that made it work for me? It came down to three things.

1. The pages were all organized under nodes. Children and grandchildren were grouped under a parent.
2. There was a full screen view that completely eliminated the clutter of the desktop and tool bars. For someone like me, this feature doubled my productivity. Loosing it was almost a deal breaker.
3. Each node was saved in a separate rich text file, meaning if the program crashed or a file was corrupted you still had the bulk of your work. (Writer’s Cafe is a beautiful, well-thought out program except for this one thing.)

After defining it, I realized Scrivner is a desktop wiki with a decent WYSIWYG editor. Please spare me the arguments about how clean wiki syntax is and how easy it is to learn. I will not learn another language just to take notes. End of discussion. (See Wikipedia’s Personal Wiki entry for more information on desktop wikis.) I tried different wikis to no avail and then I tried Zim.

This little jewel was a perfect fit and soon I migrated all my notes for all my different projects into Zim, which saves data as text files with a little wiki markup that you can easily edit with any text editor in a pinch. Zim runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. (Unfortunately, installing it under Mac isn’t for the faint hearted, so backup your system first and have a little fun.) Zim just works. It does everything I did with Scrivener except write in a full screen view. Since I write most of my outlines in a notebook first and then type them up, I don’t have a problem with using paper while I write or minimizing a screen on occasion so I can go back to Zim. Thus, I have multiple choices for my full screen view.

LyX and OpenOffice both have full screen views. Lotus Symphony has gorgeous tabs and gets the formatting out of my way. I personally love both LyX and Lotus Symphony. (I’m not quite an OpenSource fan girl. I will use and recommend products that aren’t free and aren’t open source. However, they must be well thought out and run on my Ubuntu 8.04 desktop. WINE is permitted.) LyX lets you open up two documents side by side, which is useful if you’re relying on an outline. Lotus Symphony and LyX both use tabs for swapping between documents, making them more user-friendly than OpenOffice. Still, these are all full-blown word processors and I prefer to write now and worry about formatting later. (Of the three, LyX is the only one that renders equations properly. It’s LATEX type setting is hard to beat.)

After experimenting with multiple clones of Write Room, I found TextRoom. Text Room is only full-screen text editor I found that allows rich text. It’s archaically simple and does everything I need without distracting me. (In theory, you can install this on a Mac, but I haven’t tried it and there aren’t Mac specific instructions.)

Scrivener Replacement

Zim + TextRoom = One Happy Writer Enjoy!

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Wacom Bamboo and Ubuntu 8.04

Following the horrendously difficult installation of my Wacom Bamboo MTE-450 on my OpenSUSE 11.0 desktop, I was a little terrified of the installation process under Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. My fears were groundless. After following these instructions, I rebooted my computer and it works perfectly.

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Installing Mac Fonts in Ubuntu

Once I found Linux compatible replacements for my favorite programs, swapping from Mac OSX to Linux was a simple transition. Then, I received a phone call from a client asking about the weird font settings in an rtf document. Up until this point, everything I sent was plain text, so font settings didn’t matter. I’m not working any website designs or print designs at the moment, so I haven’t needed any fonts that are not part of a standard Ubuntu install.

By this point, I have recovered all my old documents, pictures, ITunes purchases, etc. Any content I paid for or created, I recovered and moved to my new system. I forgot that I paid for the fonts. Some were packaged with software, the operating system, and others I purchased individually.

I pulled out the tiny hard drive which I had already removed from my Power Book, grabbed the IDE/SATA to USB cable I bought from TigerDirect for $15, and plugged the hard drive into my computer. A few hours later, my specialty fonts, including the non TrueType/OpenType fonts, are installed on my new system.

Here’s how I did it:

Requirements:

• hfsplus (source: Synaptic)
• hfsutils (source: Synaptic)
• Wine (source: Synaptic)
• CrossFont Trial (Windows software which runs under Wine) (http://www.asy.com/sharecf.htm)
• Fonty Python (source: Synaptic)

Materials:

• Original drive from the old PowerBook
• USB connector for original drive

Instructions:

1. Touch something metal (not the hard drive) and discharge static. Connect the Mac hard drive to the Ubuntu desktop. (If it doesn’t automatically mount, mount it.)
2. Click the Applications Menu (far right) and scroll down to Wine. Click Configure Wine.
3. Click the Drives tab. Under the Drives tab, click the add a new drive button. Assign it a letter. Then, click on the letter for the new drive. Map it to your USB Power Book drive (normally, /media/drive). Close Configure Wine.
4. Go to your home directory. (Normally, /home/user_name). In this directory, click View > Show Hidden Files. Right click on the .wine directory. Go to the permissions tab. Change the group to root and give root read/write privileges. Save and close.
5. Start up Nautilus as root. (Personal preference is opening terminal and typing "sudo nautilus").
6. In Nautilus, navigate to /home/your_username. Click View > Show Hidden Files. Open .wine > drive_c > Program Files > CrossFnt > CrossFnt.exe.
7. Click File > Open Folder and navigate to the entire drive. Go walk the dog while CrossFont finds all fonts installed on the drive.
8. Select which fonts you want and convert them to .otf or .ttf. Save these in a location on your main hard drive.
9. Open Fonty Python to view, organize, and install your fonts. Alternatively, you can install all the fonts following these instructions.

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Adventures in Linux Land

I recently bought a new hard drive and decided to start with a clean install of my favorite OS–OpenSUSE 11.0 with KDE 4.2. I’ve used both OpenSUSE and Ubuntu for years. OpenSUSE was my favorite up until this fresh install. There were so many dependencies errors that neither KDE nor Gnome nor XFCE were completely functional.

So I downloaded OpenSUSE 11.1, thinking that it might not have the same problems. Not only did OpenSUSE 11.1 have serious out of the box dependency issues, it was also slow as molasses. After spending six hours disabling everything from the IPv6, which it uses by default for repositories that don’t support IPv6, and downloading the graphics support for my IBM NetVista Pentium 4 (which was included in the 11.0 original install) and making numerous other tweaks, I quit and installed Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, which just works.

The only problem with Ubuntu 8.04 is it doesn’t have the latest KDE 4.2 in the repositories because it is a long term version. While I respect that decision, KDE 4.03, which reminds me of Vista in that it’s an alpha that some marketing idiot labeled final release, shouldn’t be used by anyone interested in a stable production environment. I am currently compiling the source for KDE 4.2 and crossing my fingers that my lovely KDE desktop will resurface. (Yes, I could use the latest Kubuntu. I tried it. It was missing crucial screen resolution settings…)

I hate writing about this experience and sincerely hope the lovely people in the OpenSUSE community get their act together. Linux distributions are highly competitive and breaking what was one of the best linux distributions is a sure way to kill your project.

P.S. I did post bug reports with the OpenSUSE community and discussed the very strange problems I was experiencing in the forums. The machine I did the fresh install on was an OpenSUSE 11.0 machine prior to the install and did not experience any of these problems.

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Replacing ITunes

Before reading this post, there are few things you should know…

1. You can run a working ITunes installation under Wine; provided, it’s installed properly (i.e. Wine maps your IPod and CD drives correctly and you installed QuickTime before installing ITunes).
2. Apple will most likely not create a native version of ITunes for Linux.
3. Using P2P networks to exchange copyrighted material is not okay. You should pay for multimedia content, including books, films, and music.

Why I Don’t Like ITunes

ITunes is a wonderful concept for purchasing content. Unfortunately, it locks the users into Apple’s approved file formats and to Apple devices. Both of these are problematic. By forcing users to use a particular file format, Apple is supporting one technology over another. Because of their market share, this is an anti-competitive business practice. It means that file formats, such as ogg and flac, are less supported and less competitive with other formats such as mp3. Please note, some computer companies may have financial stakes in file formats. Supporting a particular format through their online retailer is one way of obtaining market dominance for their file format. (And yes, Apple appears to be one of the companies that uses this business model. They do have a vested financial interest in .aac, .mp4, and .m4a.) As a consumer, you should be concerned by this. This company is selling you music in formats that may or may not have a higher quality than other formats. You should control the quality of your music files. Not Apple!

My ITunes/IPod Solution

I do have an IPod, and I have made purchases from ITunes. (Most of those were made before Amazon.com began selling MP3s.) My IPod is a first generation nano. It runs Rockbox. Rockbox adds support for other file formats including .ogg and .flac. Unfortunately, Apple changed their firmware. The newer IPods, IPhones, and IPod Touches all use encrypted firmware. There are ways around it, but they aren’t for the faint hearted and rockbox doesn’t work on most newer models. Here’s the trick. ITunes writes all its music into a hidden file directories with meaningless file names. Rockbox turns my IPod into a generic mp3 player. The file directories are now human readable. Adding files is a simple drag and drop. Alternatively, I can sync my music using either Amarok or Banshee. To date, I’ve tried ten different music managers, including RhythmBox, gtkpod, and SongBird. Amarok and Banshee are the only two I’ve liked. All the others were either too difficult to use, didn’t recognize my IPod as a generic MP3 player, or were too immature.

About All That Music I Bought From ITunes

When I purchase music online, the first thing I do is burn it to a playable music CD. Then, I backup the files for good measure. I simply took my ITunes music CD collection and put them in my Ubuntu box’s cd player. Then, I used Audio CD Extractor to convert my CD collection into .ogg files. Unfortunately, my pretty little .ogg files are tagless, but not for long. Using Jaikoz, I tagged most of my files. I also created a master record of my ITunes song tags. Then, I listened to the songs without tags, found them on my master list, and typed the tags in. Note: Jaikoz had no problems finding tags for popular songs. My obscure classical collection was a different matter. Overall, I’m very happy with the transition away from ITunes dependency. So far, it hasn’t been as painful as I thought it would be. There are programs available that strip DRM from ITunes purchases. I’ve tested these. In my opinion, using real CDs instead of a virtual CD burner or recording music from the sound card produces a better quality file. Plus, using real CDs is more legit. If you like any of the open source software mentioned in this post, please consider contributing to the project. There are many ways to contribute including coding, testing, documenting, and sending money.

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Recovering ITunes Purchases in Linux

Tools Used for the Below Example:

• Working Ubuntu 8.10 Installation
• HFS Plus (i.e. formatted on a Mac) IPod (also tested with NTFS (Windows formatted) IPod)

Note: Yes, you can do all of the below quickly and easily with the command line. However, many Linux users, particularly newbies, are unfamiliar with the command line. Learning the command line is a major barrier for most newbies and does turn them off Linux. For that reason, all of my guides will rely on the Synaptic Package Manager and pre-packaged installs as much as possible.(Under the Synaptic Package Manager, click Settings > Repositories. Under the Ubuntu Software tab, check all the boxes.)

Step 1: Backup the IPod.

Connect your IPod to your computer. If your IPod is formatted for Windows, it should automatically show up as a usb device. If your IPod is formatted for Mac, like mine was, your computer may or may not recognize it. The latest version of Ubuntu recognizes HFS and HFS plus formatted drives. It loaded my IPod without any problems.

Open the file manager and navigate to your IPod. Click View > Show Hidden Files. Now, open iPod_Control. Select the folders Accessories, Artwork, Device, iTunes, and Music and the file iPodPrefs. Copy these and paste them to another folder.

Congratulations! You now have backups. If, or perhaps I should say when, something goes wrong, you can restore your music.

Step 2: Install Wine and configure drives.

Follow the instructions on Wine’s website to install and configure Wine. When you configure Wine, select Windows XP under the applications tab. Then, go to the Drives tab and click autodetect. Disconnect your IPod.

Step 3: Install User Agent Switcher Firefox Plugin

Install User Agent Switcher in Firefox. Why? Apple’s website registers Linux users as Mac users. Use the plugin to trick their site into thinking you’re a PC.

Step 4: Install Quicktime (without ITunes)

Download Quicktime without ITunes for Windows XP from Apple’s website. Install it.

Step 5: Install ITunes and authorize computer.

Download an old version of ITunes for Windows XP. I use ITunes 7.0 available from CNet’s Download.com. Do not download the latest version of ITunes unless you know how to hack the install! Open ITunes and click Edit. Select Preferences. Click IPod. Under IPod, click the Music tab. Then, turn off Auto Updating.

Now, click Store and authorize the computer using your old ITunes login id and password.

Step 6: Plugin IPod.

Plug your IPod back in. ITunes should detect it.

Step 7: Consolidate Library in ITunes.

Click File > Add Folder to Library. Open iTunes_Control on your IPod. If your IPod doesn’t show up in ITunes, you can use your IPod backup for this, but you should make a spare backup first. Select the Music file and click okay. Click Advanced > Consolidate. This copies all of your music from your IPod to your computer.

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