Why GNU/Linux Rocks

[devilock76]

Hey my mom wants itunes so she can continue buying music, but obviously itunes isn't going to work on Linux because Linux is the antithesis to everything apple stands for. I do not want to set it up in wine either. The question becomes, where do linux users go to download music for $.99? Is there something similar to the iTunes store that can be accessed from linux? Prefereably something that isn't just a webpage frontend, like something that will catagorize, play her music etc, plus load it onto her ipod?


Edit: Has anyone used Ubuntu One Music Store? It looks like the itunes equivalent, but I am wondering if it will run on Fedora. I am sure there is a way. If anyone has used this let me know how you liked it. I know it syncs your purchases with Rhythmbox, but I was hoping to use Amarok. Either way, I guess I could just have her buy stuff off amazon.com, but then it wouldn't automatically sync with her music player. She isn't real great on computers so simplicity is key here.

Itunes will install on linux via wine. Have done it and it works. However I use Amazon for purchasing mp3 files. Between the amazon cloud service and just abou every distro can run the amazon mp3 downloader app, you are set on linux.

Ken

[devilock76]

Lets talk about backups:

In light of everyones issues with losing data, I really need to set up an automated backup scheme, but don't know what is the best way to go about this.

Does some CLI software exist somewhere that can automatically watch certain folders I tell it to watch, and keep a copy of whatever is in those folders routinely backed up on my server? Is this what rsync does? Is there a way for it to know if a change has been made to the file, or will it just re-upload the whole thing? Can this be automated, so that it backs everything up in said folders maybe once every 5 days or something?

I have two machines which need to be backed up on one server, and I would like it to be as automated as possible. Will rsync do this?

Also, is there a way to compress the backups as a tarball or something so they dont take up as much space on the server, like a way for it to automatically compress the data and upload it after it's been compressed?

I hear is rsnapshot pretty usefull. It uses rsync to generate and store snapshots of the directories that you specify. It hardlinks files that haven't changed, so disk space isn't wasted by copying duplicate files. Is this the best solution for backing things up? And by "snapshot" do they mean like a copy of everything in any given folder? I'm not looking to back up system files, only pictures, documents etc.

rsync is defacto, I don't compress redunant data that I am not snapshotting as part of a time line. You could also just write a script to call as a cron job.

Now if you want uber backup candy solaris with zfs has features like the mac timemachine setup.

Ken

[shikitohno]

For backups, rsync will work fine, you just need to figure out exactly how you want to go about things. If you have static internal IPs for your LAN, it should be relatively easy to make it work. A simple bash script that has rsync ssh into the relevant machines and back things up could work very well. Rsync is a very nice back up tool, in my opinion. It'll take a while to run the first time, but then each time after will be substantially quicker. Rsync will check the directories you want to back up, and after the initial run, it will only grab files which have been created or modified since the last backup, rather than grabbing every single file again.

If I were in your situation and had static internal IPs as I said, this is what I would do. Set up the machine you want to back up from to use key authentication rather than password authentication. This will allow your other machine to ssh into it and use the key to log in, rather than having your password in plain-text in a bash script somewhere, which would possibly bite you in the ass if the machine running that script was compromised by someone. Bang out a simple bash script that tells rsync to connect to your Fedora machine, and specifies which directories/files to back up. Finally, add a cron job that runs the script at a specified interval. The cron job will let this task run automatically, and you can specify how often you want it to run.

The biggest issue I see with this approach is handling errors. Chief amongst those errors would be how your script would react if you went to bed and left your computer in Windows rather than Fedora, and it couldn't connect. This should be easily resolved by either including some sort of conditional statement to test whether or not it can connect, or by just making sure you always leave the computer in Fedora when the script is going to run.

Also, concerning the set up time with Linux, that is another reason I like the Arch installer. Part of the process is choosing which packages to install, and if you enable the [core], [community] and [extra] repos (the three official repos offered), you can install any packages you want from one of those three. This usually takes me about 5-10 minutes to work through depending on how distracted I am. For those 5-10 minutes of effort though, I have all my codecs, fonts, flash, irssi, tmux, vim and anything else I consider part of my essential base system installed right from the start. There's no dicking around enabling RPM-fusion, livna and adobe repos, and hunting down the various little bits and pieces that you need to have installed if you want your system to be able to handle anything you throw at it. It sacrifices Fedora's stance on not including any packages potentially wrapped up in patent issues, but it also saves you from having to spend four hours installing repos for the one package you want from them so that your computer can handle all basic media on par with a Windows machine.

I don't know if it will be an issue for your mother, but to warn you in case it applies and you haven't heard of this yet, Netflix streaming will not work for her under Linux. As for a music store, I'll throw in a vote for Google Music myself. Pricing seems generally on par with iTunes, and they've got a good catalogue. Anything you buy, you can download as a DRM-free 320kbps mp3 file. She'll also be able to stream her purchased music from any other computer via their site, and can upload any tracks she owns via the Google Music Manager (up to a 20,000 song limit), and be able to stream them as well.

If you haven't already, I'd also make sure to give her a quick crash course on how to keep her system up to date, and how to find answers to any problems she has. In other words, teach her how to google, and get her to sign up on the Fedora forums. If you can get her to learn how to take care of her machine, and teach her how to work with any problems she has, you'll save yourself a lot of headache in the future. If you don't, when things break because she hasn't updated in a year, or did something dumb that she shouldn't have, you are going to be the one who takes the blame. It doesn't matter if she's the one who decided to

sudo rm -rf /usr

, it's going to be your fault because you installed Linux on her computer, so magically you become the source of all its issues. Welcome to family tech support, and have fun.

[devilock76]

One day I want to figure out why Netflix won't work on linux, especially since it works on Droid. I know the web version is supposed to expect DirectX. But I have been able to (did this when setting up Ableton once through Wine) make a direct X install work through wine. It takes a lot of tweaking and the documentation on it is shaky but it can be done. I wonder if the same could get Netflix running.

My other idea is to actually run the android netflix app in an android emulation. A lot of hoops but that should be actually simpler than doing it with the Wine+DirectX+Browser for windows in wine setup. Of course the fail safe is to use say Virtual Box and use a windows emulation for Netflix.

Ken

[shikitohno]

The official line is that there's nothing comparable to Microsoft Silverlight for Linux that will allow them to exercise DRM so that people can't rip the streams. Without that, they claim their backers won't allow them to stream their titles to Linux machines. Presumably, Android has something like that which satisfies the movie companies.

[devilock76]

The official line is that there's nothing comparable to Microsoft Silverlight for Linux that will allow them to exercise DRM so that people can't rip the streams. Without that, they claim their backers won't allow them to stream their titles to Linux machines. Presumably, Android has something like that which satisfies the movie companies.

Where there is a will there is a way.

Ken

[shikitohno]

I saw something a short while ago that google had struck a deal to create a Netflix plugin for Chrome that would enable Linux Chrome users to stream videos. There was naturally speculation that if this panned out, someone would come up with a way to make it work with Firefox or other browsers. If not, I could always just install chrome just for using Netflix.

[sgreger1]

[QUOTE=shikitohno;461093]
If I were in your situation and had static internal IPs as I said, this is what I would do. [quote]

So if I were using an SSH proxy, it would still be cool since that IP address is static right?

Set up the machine you want to back up from to use key authentication rather than password authentication. This will allow your other machine to ssh into it and use the key to log in, rather than having your password in plain-text in a bash script somewhere

I have been wondering how to do this, will have to investiagate this weekend. I was always wondering what the purpose of keys were.

Finally, add a cron job that runs the script at a specified interval. The cron job will let this task run automatically, and you can specify how often you want it to run.

Havn't tried cronjob yet, I didn't know it even existed until yesterday. From what I understand it can be used to run scripts at pre-determined intervals, namely for things like backing up stuff like I am trying to do here?

The biggest issue I see with this approach is handling errors. Chief amongst those errors would be how your script would react if you went to bed and left your computer in Windows rather than Fedora, and it couldn't connect.

I would like to know how to tell it how to handle exceptions, but as for this particular issue I don't think it will be a problem. I almost never use Windows anymore. if I need to upload some pictures and photoshop them or something I just log in to windows to do that and then boot back to my fedora partition.


Speaking of which, is there an easy way to make certain files on my C: drive from the windows partition accessible via my Fedora prtition? Can I just mount the other drives and browse them, or is that bad?

I don't know if it will be an issue for your mother, but to warn you in case it applies and you haven't heard of this yet, Netflix streaming will not work for her under Linux.

Yah that sucks, it's because their DRM won't work. Not a big deal though, we have Roku and she usually watches Netflix on the TV.

[quote]As for a music store, I'll throw in a vote for Google Music myself. Pricing seems generally on par with iTunes, and they've got a good catalogue. Anything you buy, you can download as a DRM-free 320kbps mp3 file. She'll also be able to stream her purchased music from any other computer via their site, and can upload any tracks she owns via the Google Music Manager (up to a 20,000 song limit), and be able to stream them as well.

. Wow, this sounds awesome, especially since she already has a bunch of songs from itunes already, can you upload itunes songs to Gmusic? I am also wondering how it works, does it download the music to a predetermined folder? Can I get Amarok or Rhythmbox to automatically add anything in that folder to the library and then scrape for it's info? I want it to be a system where she clicks buy and then can just go view it on her media player, she doens't like having to do 20 steps for simple tasks.

If you haven't already, I'd also make sure to give her a quick crash course on how to keep her system up to date, and how to find answers to any problems she has. In other words, teach her how to google, and get her to sign up on the Fedora forums.

Lololololool, that's a tall order my friend. It's easier for me to just play family tech support guy than have her touch anything. She seen me using the command line once and was like "Wow it's like the matrix, how do I do that?" and I was like "No worry, you should never touch this". It will only cause more harm than good. I'd rather answer a million questions than have her touch something and fry the whole computer somehow. I can SSH into her computer and update yum etc for her routinely so not a big deal.

Speaking of which, I myself would like to clarify something regarding updates/maintenance. Is there a whole lot I need to od other than update yum every once and a while? Do I need to manually defrag it at regular intervals etc? I am unsure exactly what maintenance is required aside from updating yum.

[devilock76]

Cron is the basic and main *nix system scheduler. You can use it for many things and should learn the layout of the crontab file.

I know some admins schedule their updates, I prefer to do them manually, although a scheduled reminder might be good.

Ken

[sgreger1]

Cron is the basic and main *nix system scheduler. You can use it for many things and should learn the layout of the crontab file.

I know some admins schedule their updates, I prefer to do them manually, although a scheduled reminder might be good.

Ken

So you could use Cron to, for example, run a 'yum update' every week? Wow that's really cool, I am going to learn more about this today.

[devilock76]

So you could use Cron to, for example, run a 'yum update' every week? Wow that's really cool, I am going to learn more about this today.

You could but I would be careful with that personally, especially on a bleedin edge system like fedora. If you do choose to make sure you are keeping good logs of that update activity.

Ken

[devilock76]

There are several python script admin tools that are recommended to automate on rpm based systems used as servers.

Ken

[sgreger1]

I bought this book today (Linux Command Line), gonna read it front to back and hopefully learn more about some of these random questions I have so I don't have to bother you guys.

I've decided to rsync manually instead of automating it with Cron. That way if I delete a folder or something, it doesn't delete the backup too.

[lxskllr]

Here's my new desktop. It's all slowly coming together. E17 is very frustrating to customize. There's a shit ton of features, many of which are ambiguously named. I may have to drop it. I didn't see all the drawbacks when playing with it before, and getting things right is taking forever, and it still has crappy panels. This is Xfce. It has it's own issues, but it's alright. My biggest complaint is you can't customize colors. To change things, you have to download a whole theme. I guess I could edit the theme files, but that's a hell of a lot of work to change some colors around. Maybe some time in the future...

[sgreger1]

Hey, Conky won't run on my computer for some reason. I even used conkywizard to set it up, and then chose "Run Cony after exit", but it still won't show up. If I start it in the Bash shell it says:

~]$ conky
Conky: desktop window (1000024) is subwindow of root window (159)
Conky: window type - desktop
Conky: drawing to created window (0x2a00001)
Conky: drawing to single buffer

Edit: It seems to have created it in a second desktop. How do I get it to display on my regular desktop, the default one? (It's on the second desktop if you look tot he right on Gnome3, where you can choose between different desktop layers)