Sam (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
l33tminion) wrote2009-05-12 08:49 pm
l33tminion) wrote2009-05-12 08:49 pm
Entry tags:
The New Box
My new laptop arrived yesterday from System 76 (a souped-up Pangolin Performance), and it's pretty much the stuff of my dreams. Running the latest Ubuntu, hardware works out of the box, look is clean, runs fast, keyboard is good, trackpad is okay (the fingerprint reader gets in the way, but maybe that will be worth it when/if I set it up so I can log in with that).
After much angst, I've finally solved my biggest problem, getting my iTunes music and metadata somehow backed up and my iPod working with Linux. All the Linux solutions for this (in the context of transitioning from iTunes) fail in one way or another: Rhythmbox, Banshee, Amarok, iTunes under Wine... Eventually, I found a winning combination of gPodder (for downloading and syncing podcasts) and gtkpod (for adding other files to my iPod and ensuring the whole thing is backed up to my hard drive). My first attempt with gtkpod was a dreadful failure, I made the mistake of choosing gtkpod-aac (since that can play Apple m4a files), but that version is horribly buggy.
Most of the configuration stuff is done, I finished cleaning out my old documents, transferred them to the new computer, did a little reorganization, and I'm running my initial backup now.
(Also, if you ever decide to turn own the download of"recommended" and "suggested" packages in apt-get for what seems like totally good reasons at the time, don't. It seems to follow those links all the way, and I'm not sure those packages even marked for autoremove if you remove the thing you originally intended to install.)
After much angst, I've finally solved my biggest problem, getting my iTunes music and metadata somehow backed up and my iPod working with Linux. All the Linux solutions for this (in the context of transitioning from iTunes) fail in one way or another: Rhythmbox, Banshee, Amarok, iTunes under Wine... Eventually, I found a winning combination of gPodder (for downloading and syncing podcasts) and gtkpod (for adding other files to my iPod and ensuring the whole thing is backed up to my hard drive). My first attempt with gtkpod was a dreadful failure, I made the mistake of choosing gtkpod-aac (since that can play Apple m4a files), but that version is horribly buggy.
Most of the configuration stuff is done, I finished cleaning out my old documents, transferred them to the new computer, did a little reorganization, and I'm running my initial backup now.
(Also, if you ever decide to turn own the download of
Re: huh?
I'll also note that most of the things I've taught you to do with Macs are things you can do as well or better on Linux.
Re: huh?