New iPod Firmware Screws Linux Users

Miguel de Icaza writes:

Yesterday after rumors that new iPods require a cryptographic checksum on the song database we confirmed that Banshee can no longer store songs on the new iPods.

The new firmware will now refuse to play any songs that you legally own unless you use Apple's iTunes (which is only supported for Windows and MacOS)

Read on...

In the meantime, I'll be sticking to my iRiver U10. (Cowon MP3 players are supposed to be pretty Linux friendly as well.)

Update: And thus begins the game of cat-and-mouse - The new iPod checksum has been cracked.

Ubuntu finally gets graphical X configuration

Almost 3 years after Ubuntu's first release, they've finally added graphical X configuration. Hopefully no more editing your /etc/X11/xorg.conf by hand...

Ubuntu 7.10 users should find it easier to change their graphics settings

Graphics card selection tab

Mark Shuttleworth on MCA Podcast

I was tipped off that the mighty Mark Shuttleworth is going to be talking about the new Ubuntu Mobile on the next Mobile Computing Authority podcast. The show will be broadcast live at 9 AM EST on August 11th, and available for download after that. More information here.

Ubuntu on one of those UMPCs... drool...

Evolution 2.11.6: A mail client smarter than I

After putting off doing a fresh install of Ubuntu for almost 2 years (it's just too easy to dist-upgrade), I did a fresh install of Gutsy Gibbon. Among other neat surprises (which I'll try to blog about), this one almost made me fall off my chair:


Being the total klutz that I am, I had forgotten to attach a file to an email I wrote before I clicked send. To my surprise, Evolution made an educated guess that I had done exactly that, and gave me a warning!

I love Evolution + GNOME.

Weekly Blog Round-up

The blogosphere's full of good reads this week:

• I found Paul Buchheit's Amazingly Bad APIs funny because it chronicles my experience with Java quite nicely. (... and man, people do love over-complicating their abstraction patterns in Java)
• Benjamin Otte's "Distros..." is another rant I can related to. It'd be nice if the libraries you relied on "upstream" always worked, but the truth is, they don't. I often wonder if we're the only ones who actually use a certain library (who's name I won't mention), because we seem to be the only ones complaining about certain issues we've had. (The solution? Fix it ourselves - we've started getting involved with the upstream guys to help them out....)
• Free Gamer's still rocking, and I was pleased to read that a Linux build of SoulFu is kicking around. (SoulFu's written by the same author(s) as Egoboo, which was a little 3D hack-and-slash game.)
• MacSlow's been working on more eye-candy goodness, this time a little video player using gstreamer, OpenGL, Cairo, and GTK+. He's hoping one day some of this stuff might end up helping beautify Totem, which I'm all for.
  

Dear Lazyweb: Software patent lawsuits?

Dear lazyweb,

A Microsoft exec recently remarked that they're "not litigating". Some people seemed to interpret that as meaning, "we're not going to sue users", although Microsoft wasn't explicit about who they weren't going to sue.

My question for anyone law-savvy is: Can Microsoft (or any other software company) sue users for using software which allegedly violates software patents?

For example, if I buy a DVD player which was manufactured and sold illegally without royalty payments to the DVD consortium (etc.), it's the manufacturer of the DVD player that violated the patents. If I bought and use the DVD player, how on Earth am I the one that broke the law?

Following that logic, how on Earth are users liable when it's the developers who allegedly violated the software patents?

Update: Interesting twist, which supports the growing evidence that Microsoft's statements were/are FUD.

Dell to ship preloaded Ubuntu

Dell announced today* that they're going to offer Ubuntu on some of their desktop and notebook models, which I think is great news for everyone. Dell's winning points (and more selling computers) with/to the Linux community, Canonical's completed another step in their plan for world domination, and there's a chance that all Linux users will benefit from better driver support.

A tiny bit more information is available on Canonical's site, and a bunch more on Dell's blog (including a video with Mark Shuttleworth). Check it out!

* I have to point out that I called this one in advance in my last post.
;)

Ubuntu 7.04 Released!

It's been a long six-month wait, but she's finally arrived. Ubuntu 7.04 was released today, and brings a slew of improvements to the popular desktop Linux distribution. Even Michael Dell's in on the buzz this time.*

Among the features that the Ubuntu team has been hard at work on are:

• Restricted Driver Manager - Allows you to easily install proprietary drivers for your hardware (like NVidia and some wifi drivers)
• Desktop-Effects - Ubuntu now has a single-click way of enabling wobbly windows!
• Easier codec installation - Suggests which package(s) you need to install in order to playback movies/audio when you don't have the right codec installed. (Hmmm, reminds me of something...)
  
  

I've been using Ubuntu 7.04 for a few weeks now, and I've found that it's much more polished than Edgy was (in terms of application stability and nice little touches). If you're going to dist-upgrade to 7.04, you probably won't notice very much difference besides the new artwork and the features I listed above. In fact, if you've already got all the right codecs installed, you'll probably never even see the easy codec installation thing (I haven't). That being said, these are still useful features because they save new users a good chunk of customization time.

Anyways, long story short: 7.04 is the best Ubuntu release since Dapper (6.06), and I think it might be finally worth giving a copy of it to your non-Linux user friends, without fear of total reject. Features like the restricted driver manager, migration assistant, and easy codec installation make Ubuntu an ever more user-friendly OS, and I think it's going to continue to impress people and make waves over the next few years.

* If you haven't been following the whole Dell/Linux thing, Dell launched this IdeaStorm site a while back to help get ideas from their users. They were totally swamped with requests for Linux and now they're trying to figure out which distro people want. Educated speculation: I'm expecting a big announcement sometime in the next few months about Dell offering Ubuntu on their laptops (which is a huge win for both Canonical and Ubuntu users, because it means we'll probably be getting better hardware support for those laptops.) Why? I just don't see them advertising that Michael Dell uses Ubuntu and then turning around and offering SUSE on their laptops.