Why I Really Hate Linux: Substitute Applications

On Windows, most people manage their music libraries via iTunes, the nice, user-friendly music manager that everyone knows about. But here on Linux, we're expected to use some program called Amarok that nobody's heard of. And it sucks. I mean, here are the features:

Feature	iTunes	Amarok
Tag Database	No	Yes
Lyrics Lookup	No	Yes
Artist Info Lookup	No	Yes
MP3 Player Management	iPod Only	Yes
Album Artwork Management	Yes	Yes
Collection	No	Yes
Last.fm Radio	No	Yes
Music Store	Yes	Magnatune Only
Plug-in Support	Mac Only (via Applescript)	Yes

Kidding aside (I know I'm 3 days late), Amarok seriously does have all these features. In addition, I'm running 4 scripts (911tabs, Tag Clouds, BPM Calc, and amaKode), and it still takes up less RAM than iTunes did on Windows. Plus, it has support for dynamic and static playlists like iTunes, along with a tagging system. Everything in it is very tightly integrated, as well. With version 2 (to go with KDE 4), they're going cross-platform, releasing an official Windows port.
Someone said that Amarok's iPod management is better than iTunes's. Not true. Whenever you add a song to an iPod Shuffle in Amarok, for instance, it's appended to the end of the playlist. Even if you drop it into a certain place, it will always be on the end. Maybe I'm just bitter about this because I use a Shuffle, but it's annoying enough to make me use GTKPod instead. On the other hand, Amarok can be used to submit plays from your iPod directly to Last.fm, which iTunes can't.
The context browser on the left-hand side is also undeniably cool. It has tabs for an online lyrics search, song/artist/album information via MusicBrainz, and Wikipedia-based song/artist/album lookup. Through MusicBrainz, it can even guess the ID3 tags for songs you don't know.

A word on the music store: Amarok has built-in support for the Magnatune Music Store, which sells DRM-free MP3, FLAC, or OGG files, which you can re-download later if you delete them. You can pay $5 or more per album, depending on what you feel like giving them- $5 if you're a cheapskate, $10 or more if you feel generous. Of course, there's a catch- they have a *tiny* catalog. Still, there's something for everyone- I found a great album by a metal band called Utopia Banished and paid $10 for it after hearing the full-length previews.

Of course, if you want more, there's always Amazon.com's music store, which has its own Linux client and also sells DRM-free files.
Thanks to features like tags (which can be assigned to songs), collection browsing, auto-tagging, and an automatic track-scoring system, Amarok is ideal for people with huge music collections. Windows users, when Amarok 2 comes out, try it. You probably won't ditch iTunes, but you might end up not using it for anything other than buying music, if even that.
From SimplyMEPIS 7.0,
The Distrogue.

Project Brave GNU World: Bringing Linux to school

I'm now officially sick of having to use Windows XP on a daily basis at school. The bugs and slowness are irritating me to the point of insanity, and any time I want to use a program of my own (Firefox, Gimp, NVu, etc), I have to install a portable version on the network drive and run it from there- and that's a really slow drive. Obviously, the entire school isn't going to switch to Ubuntu because of one kid, but thanks to live CD/USB technology, they don't have to. I'm planning to get a live USB ready, running SLAX 6, that can run on the desktop computers in the library, and make it work by Christmas break.
I picked SLAX for a number of reasons. For starters, it's tiny- the maximum size for the standard edition (a full KDE desktop) is 200MB, leaving me roughly 800 megs to store stuff on. It's also amazingly fast (and version 6 comes with CFS), and our computers are middle-of-the-road- 3GHZ Pentium 4s with 1GB of RAM. (There's also 60GB of hard disk space nobody will ever use, since everything's stored on network drives.) Finally, it's easy to customize, and supports persistent changes out of the box.
Some of the computers are wired to the LAN, some use a wireless connection. I've noticed that the wired computers are faster than the wireless ones, since everything's on the network (including the portable apps I have). This might be because they use 802.11b instead of g or n, but I haven't got a good look at the specs for them.
Here's the deal:
Hardware:
-CPU: Intel Pentium 4 clocked at 3 GHz
-RAM: 1GB
-Hard disk (for temp storage only!): 60GB, usually 55GB free on C:\ partition
-Screen resolution: 1280x1024 (but it's set to 1024x768 by default for reasons I don't get... Ah well, it'll be whatever I say it is on SLAX :-)
-Networking:
--Wired: Intel PRO/100 network card (supported natively under Linux :-)
--Wireless: Unknown (but I'm guessing it's ipw2100- or 2200-based, just an educated guess, and both are supported natively. This is the main problem...)
Software:
-Windows XP Professional Edition
The biggest problems are going to be wireless networking and getting the go-ahead from the IT department, but I've heard they like open source. Always good to hear. :-) (Besides, I think I saw a Debian screensaver in the network room...)
From Windows XP (but hopefully not for long!),
The Distrogue.

Startup times

Something weird just happened. I'm at school, and a lot of the laptops we use run Vista. So, I took the opportunity to clock how long it takes Vista to start up versus Linux. Here are some of the results:
PCLinuxOS 2007 (on my home laptop, a middle-of-the-road machine): 40 seconds
Mandriva 2008: 40 seconds
Xubuntu 7.10: 45 seconds
openSUSE 10.3 (clean install, OSS/KDE): about 45 seconds
Fedora 8: about 50 seconds (a huge improvement over the last few versions :-)
Windows Vista: 3 minutes 45 seconds
...What?
That's what I got after 3 consecutive reboots. Sad, isn't it? These are modern laptops, not ancient Pentium IIIs, and they run AMD Sempron 3500+s with 896MB RAM.
Sorry you have to read this, I just had to get that out.
From Windows Fista (Rubber Glove edition),
The Distrogue.

A quick tour of the Linux filesystem for Windows users

I had the question asked again. You know the one: "Where's my C:\ drive?". So, to prevent it from happening again, I'm writing a guide to the Linux filesystem for Windows users.
Basics:
The Linux filesystem is organized a bit differently than Windows's filesystem, but it still has the basics, such as folders and removable devices. Finding them is the issue. The root of the Linux filesystem (the equivalent of Windows's C:\) is /- just a forward slash. Instead of a backslash, a forward slash is also used to show directories- for instance, a Linux path could be "/usr/bin/X".
That should clear some things up. But obviously, that's not enough for most people. So, here are some summaries of what the top-level folders are, and what's in them:
/bin and /sbin
What's in it: Binary files (read: programs) that are part of the core system. /bin is for main programs, /sbin is for maintenance apps.
What it's equivalent to: C:\WINDOWS; C:\WINNT
Example of something in there: /bin/bash, /sbin/init
/boot
What's in it: Files vital to the system's boot process; stuff like the kernel and boot loader
What it's equivalent to: Nothing
Example of something found in there: /boot/vmlinuz, the Linux kernel.
/etc
What's in it: Configuration files
What it's equivalent to: C:\WINDOWS
Example of something found in there: /etc/X11/xorg.conf
/home
What's in it: User files
What it's equivalent to: C:\Documents and Settings
Example of something found in there: /home/{user name here}/Desktop, the folder that stores the files you see on your desktop
/lib
What's in it: Libraries. Note that Linux libraries do the same thing as Windows .dll files, but they have a .o or .so extension.
What it's equivalent to: C:\WINDOWS
Example of something found in there: /lib/libSegFault.so, a library that you don't want to see all that often...
/media or /mnt
What's in it: Mount points. Folders under /media or (on older distros) /mnt are where other media devices (and partitions) can be accessed.
What it's equivalent to: D:\, E:\, F:\, etc.
Example of something found in there: /media/hda2, which would be the second hard-disk partition.
/opt
What's in it: Not much. Some large programs can be installed there, for instance, Flash Player, Google Desktop and VirtualBox.
What it's equivalent to: Nothing
Example of something found in there: /opt/azureus
/proc
What's in it: Processes. /proc is used by the kernel to access processes. So don't be messing around in this folder! It also holds vital status info.
What it's equivalent to: Nothing
Example of something found in there: /proc/cpuinfo
Further reading on /proc on Linux can be found here.
/root
What's in it: The Superuser's home folder. On Linux, root is so important he gets his own root directory!
What it's equivalent to: C:\Documents and Settings\administrator. Lap of luxury, huh?
Example of something found in there: /root/stayoutofmyfreakingbusiness
/tmp
What's in it: Temporary files
What it's equivalent to: C:\temp, C:\WINDOWS\temp
Example of something found in there: /tmp/audacity1.2
/usr
What's in it: Files for non-core programs. Basically a duplicate of /, with its own /usr/bin, /usr/lib, and more.
What it's equivalent to: C:\Program Files- sort of
Example of something found in there: /usr/bin/nexuiz
/var
What's in it: Variable files that change frequently, including logs. /var/log is the equivalent of the "Event Viewer" in Windows, and the best part? It's completely searchable.
What it's equivalent to: Nothing
Example of something found in there: /var/www/html. Didn't know you had a Web site, did ya?
I hope this helps you Windows users stumblefind your collective way around Linux's filesystem. Reviews for ELive 1.0 and Wolvix 1.1.0-rc2 still coming right up!
From Xubuntu 7.04,
The DistRogue.

5 new things in Ubuntu Feisty, and why they matter

As you may have heard, Ubuntu 7.04, aka "Feisty Fawn", won't be out on schedule. The release candidate, originally scheduled for Thursday, has been delayed due to bugs with PATA handling. In the meantime, users can upgrade from version 6.10 "Edgy Eft" by using "sudo update-manager -c". It will be buggy, but it will also have an obscene amount of new features.
1. A better installer: The Ubuntu Feisty installer uses the partitioning controls from Fedora's "Anaconda" installer. They're still under development, but they are quite easy to use, replacing the old GParted interface. As if that's not enouh, there's a new "migration wizard" that lets you import settings from Windows, such as FireFox bookmarks. Scary.
2. Compiz and controls: Yes, Ubuntu Feisty will have Compiz for 3D desktop effects! It will also have a simple, button-and-two-checkboxes interface for turning effects on and off, similar to Fedora Core 6's "Desktop Effects" dialog. There are just two options (cube and wobbly windows), but hey, it's a start.
3. Beagle, Tomboy and F-Spot: Three new Mono-based apps, Beagle, Tomboy and F-Spot, have been added to the GNOME desktop. Beagle is an indexing search engine (indexing slows down your computer a bit, and can be turned off), and runs rather fast with an index. People who won't use it that often will want to turn indexing off. Tomboy is a note-taking program, accompanied by a new sticky notes program for the desktop. F-Spot is a photo-management program, comparable to Google's Picasa. These enhancements are welcome changes that will help considerably.
4. Firmware installation: In Feisty, there will be a dialog box that can install NVidia and ATI drivers, wireless card firmware (Broadcom, anyone?), and other hardware drivers automatically. Yes, built-in. Anyone who was put off by Alberto Milone's Envy script will love this...
5. Codec installation: Complementing the firmware installer will be a new approach to another common problem with Linux: codec installation. Ubuntu does not come with built-in MP3 codecs, but this little box will allow you to install them easily. It looks like scripts such as Automatix and Envy will be unnecessary by the next version, codenamed "Gutsy Gibbon"...
Ubuntu has been at the head of the pack ever since it was started, but in some ways, it's also lagged behind other distributions. With Feisty, which will include better hardware support, it will be, unquestionably, the distribution of choice for people that want a system that "Just Works". Even Windows users will be blown away.
On a related note, here's a rough changelog of what was going on in Redmond in the more than five years it took to create Vista:
-Added some shiny eye-candy. That'll get people's attention!
-Added some DRMs. We don't care what consumers want to do with their OS, we'll make them do what we want them to.
-Plan to stop selling Windows XP to computer manufacturers by the end of 2007. The "wow" will start now...
Really. By the end of 2007, all new PCs will come with Vista installed. All we need to do is inform as many people as possible about how DRMed Vista is (one computer per install! How pathetic is that?!), and a tide of people will either get a Mac or switch to Linux. You can help. Just tell all your friends about Vista's problems, and to head to ubuntu.com for a permanent bugfix.
From Ubuntu 7.04-Apt,
The DistRogue