I saw this Ubuntu Propaganda sticker via Digg and it made me think, I need to do a update on my Linux switch over.
I'm having problems with Azureus on Ubuntu, a couple of the profile files keep screwing up after a restart (not that Ubuntu really needs that many restarts). So currently I have a duplicate profile folder which I use when Azureus borks. I can't work out what has caused the problem, except maybe my upgrade to Ubuntu 7.04 fiesty. The upgrade also caused some confusion when I found out ipodder was no longer supported. In the end I found icepodder which is exactly the same but has a couple more features and a different name.
I have still not found a audio player I'm totally happy with yet. Currently I'm using XMMS for playing podcasts. Icepodder has a nice view where it shows you the recently downloaded podcasts and you can just click and play that podcast. This is the opposite of my windows setup where ipodder would just download the files and winamp would create a recently downloaded smart playlist. So for now this works ok, but yep it would be great to organise my music and podcasts with something like winamp. Reminds me I need add last.fm plugin to xmms.
I still have Windows XP on my Dell laptop. I was talking to George and keeps wondering why I don't just upgrade to Ubuntu on my laptop too. I've been looking through my start menu trying to work out what I would miss if I upgraded. Heres a small list.
- Winamp, like it or not winamp 5 is awesome and the amount of plugins and themes is insane
- Launchy, recently installed and wow I love it. Its starting to change my default behavior now
- Particls, no linux support yet
- Decent RSS screensaver (useful for life feeds)
- Hamachi, I have it installed but for some reason linux can't communicate to windows and reverse
- Outlook 2007 with Plaxo and Activesync, I know about evolution which supports ical but what about my windows mobile phone?
- Greatnews RSS reader, I've gone through many of them and Greatnews is light, handles 400+ feeds really well and supports tags. Although I am watching the RSSOWL 2.0 alphas which will run on Linux.
- Virtual DJ, although I have yet to try out Terminator X or Mixxx
- Experiemental applications like Joost, Proto, Sailing clicker, Twingly, RSSbus, Google Gears, etc
Keepass
I know its a little unfair, but the fact is that most experimental applications are build for windows first. How to get my Windows Mobile phone working with Linux is still up in the air. If that could be solved I would gladly drop Outlook 2007. Although I would miss the Plaxo support.
There's a side to linux which I'm starting to dabble with now. The home server setup. It started when I tried to install Windows Home server on a old box up in my loft but saw the system requirements. 1ghz processor minimum! Why? Its a bloody home server, the most taxing thing it will do is server media. Anyway, it got me thinking why don't I just add the core functionality I wanted in windows home server into my current ubuntu box? So I got Samba working correctly now, I just need to add more hard drive space and add some kind of network backup service.
I found Bacula which looks really good because it has support for everything I use but I couldn't get Bacula working from the package selector in Ubuntu. So it looks like I'm going to need to install it manually. Amanda was another option but doesn't seem to as simple.
So generally, I'm quite happy with Ubuntu on the desktop but I don't have the time to invest in getting my laptop converted quite yet.