Monday, September 10, 2007
Ubuntu
Finally found the Magic Words to make Ubuntu run Softsqueeze. What apain!!! No where on the web was an even halfway decent explanation of what was necessary. There were many many many dumb stupid ways to try to get the program running but NOT ONE SINGLE good explanation!!!!!
First Ubuntu has something called the "Synaptic Package Manager" which is controlled by a text list called "sources.list". There are several dozen websites that speak in great generalities about this combination BUT not ONE states it clearly that what is going on is that when you change the contents of the "source.list" you change the behavior of the "Synaptic Package Manager".
Also you must be logged in as "root" to make the changes. To login as "root" you have to follow a convoluted process because the designers of Ubuntu made it very difficult unless you know the "Magic Words" for you to login as "root". They want you to go to a command line and use "sudo" and more "Magic Words" to accomplish your task rather than pointing and clicking with a GUI to do what you want. BUT when you use the correct "Magic Words" you may enable the Gnome GUI to login as "root" and now you can get some work done as "root" using the GUI.
After altering the "sources.list" to allow the downloading and installing of the Sun Java runtime (Softsqueeze does not like the other runtimes that exist for Java, Sun has the correct "Magic Words"), you than can download the Softsqueeze ZIP file from Sourceforge, the other Linux files will NOT work with Ubuntu; Ubuntu can not read the other files even though they say Linux in the title of the file, what a crap shoot!
Getting the Softsqueeze files unzipped is a piece of cake. You point to the file, right click and tell Ubuntu to extract the files. Now comes the next pain the butt. In order for Softsqueeze to play my files the MP3 Java must be placed into the Java lib on Ubuntu. Of course Ubuntu does not place the Java directory where the other Linux distros put the directory they HAVE to reinvent the wheel to make it better. After looking at a "deployment" text file for Java runtime it was apparent what Ubuntu had done with the Java files and the MP3 Java file could be placed where it needed to be. Of course this can NOT be done as a regular Ubuntu user but must be done as "root"!
People who think that the UAC used by Micro$oft in Vista is a pain should try getting work done using Ubuntu; all the other Linux's are probably just as bad and with different rules. At least with Micro$oft the rules that you learn will work with a great many computers since the OS is so widespread. Your Ubuntu knowledge will not be of much specific help when trying to work with another Linux distro. My knowledge of how SUSE Linux works is of very little specific help with Ubuntu.
To say that Linux is the savior of the business world from Micro$oft is just so much crap. You would have to spend way too many hours learning your specific "Magic Words" which would be worthless when you moved to a different company running "Linux" since unless the company was running your specific flavor of Linux you would be out to lunch until you learned the new "Magic Words". In addition it is very difficult to find applications that are as widely available as the Windows applications.
If American business goes to Linux they will effectively shoot themselves in the foot big time. It will be worse than building an Edsel, at least with the Edsel it did take a key to start it and gasoline to run it which is way better than the mess than Linux is in, based on my observations about SUSE and Ubuntu.
However, it is very pleasant right now to be listening to XM's Escape channel playing through Softsqueeze running on my Ubuntu computer. There was a reward after the pain of learning a part of a new OS, even though my knowledge of SUSE was of general help in discovering the "Magic Words" needed (along with many of the Ubuntu websites.)
First Ubuntu has something called the "Synaptic Package Manager" which is controlled by a text list called "sources.list". There are several dozen websites that speak in great generalities about this combination BUT not ONE states it clearly that what is going on is that when you change the contents of the "source.list" you change the behavior of the "Synaptic Package Manager".
Also you must be logged in as "root" to make the changes. To login as "root" you have to follow a convoluted process because the designers of Ubuntu made it very difficult unless you know the "Magic Words" for you to login as "root". They want you to go to a command line and use "sudo" and more "Magic Words" to accomplish your task rather than pointing and clicking with a GUI to do what you want. BUT when you use the correct "Magic Words" you may enable the Gnome GUI to login as "root" and now you can get some work done as "root" using the GUI.
After altering the "sources.list" to allow the downloading and installing of the Sun Java runtime (Softsqueeze does not like the other runtimes that exist for Java, Sun has the correct "Magic Words"), you than can download the Softsqueeze ZIP file from Sourceforge, the other Linux files will NOT work with Ubuntu; Ubuntu can not read the other files even though they say Linux in the title of the file, what a crap shoot!
Getting the Softsqueeze files unzipped is a piece of cake. You point to the file, right click and tell Ubuntu to extract the files. Now comes the next pain the butt. In order for Softsqueeze to play my files the MP3 Java must be placed into the Java lib on Ubuntu. Of course Ubuntu does not place the Java directory where the other Linux distros put the directory they HAVE to reinvent the wheel to make it better. After looking at a "deployment" text file for Java runtime it was apparent what Ubuntu had done with the Java files and the MP3 Java file could be placed where it needed to be. Of course this can NOT be done as a regular Ubuntu user but must be done as "root"!
People who think that the UAC used by Micro$oft in Vista is a pain should try getting work done using Ubuntu; all the other Linux's are probably just as bad and with different rules. At least with Micro$oft the rules that you learn will work with a great many computers since the OS is so widespread. Your Ubuntu knowledge will not be of much specific help when trying to work with another Linux distro. My knowledge of how SUSE Linux works is of very little specific help with Ubuntu.
To say that Linux is the savior of the business world from Micro$oft is just so much crap. You would have to spend way too many hours learning your specific "Magic Words" which would be worthless when you moved to a different company running "Linux" since unless the company was running your specific flavor of Linux you would be out to lunch until you learned the new "Magic Words". In addition it is very difficult to find applications that are as widely available as the Windows applications.
If American business goes to Linux they will effectively shoot themselves in the foot big time. It will be worse than building an Edsel, at least with the Edsel it did take a key to start it and gasoline to run it which is way better than the mess than Linux is in, based on my observations about SUSE and Ubuntu.
However, it is very pleasant right now to be listening to XM's Escape channel playing through Softsqueeze running on my Ubuntu computer. There was a reward after the pain of learning a part of a new OS, even though my knowledge of SUSE was of general help in discovering the "Magic Words" needed (along with many of the Ubuntu websites.)
