Spotify Love Continues
I have been writing this post of a number of days, which is a collection of a few extra thoughts about Spotify on Linux. My other posts about Spotify can be found here and here 
Since using Spotify, my music habits have altered. Now that I have access to all the music known to man, I am listening to things which I don't usually listen to or would not be willing to buy. Due to the cost of music, I would only buy a track I really liked. Now, with Spotify, I am listening to everything I may or may not buy. Friends are able to listen to what they want, rather than my collection. The artists page is an excellent part of the Spotify service. It pulls in all the music by a certain artists, into a nice organised list. It has allowed me to discover new music by my favourite artist. Each page also has a detailed biography about the artist and related artists, which is one of my favourite aspects. Similar artists to the artists page you were looking at will be listed here. I am able to find other artists I like and find music I have forgotten about and new music.
The Spotify client in Linux works great, possible the best experience of Spotify. However, there are still major issues. The critical bug is the dreadful CPU usage, playing a song or sitting idle, the client will bounce between 30 to 85%. If you use the Windows client, on the Windows OS or via Wine, it will stay at 1 & 2%. There are also plenty of feature requests. Support for Notify OSD (via libnotify), support for Indicator Applets, support for D-Bus, moving the buttons to the left hand side instead of right. Still alot more work to make Spotify even better. All these bugs and features have been identified in Spotify's feedback page, which has been populated with Linux users. What is great about Linux users, is their knowledge and helpfulness when coding. Spotify developers are asking/working with Linux users to improve the experience. On the D-Bus request page, I was delighted to see a Spotify Developer asking for help to implement this API, with Linux users responding. No other community will offer this much help!
On the social side, I have been continuing my need to create plenty of playlists to show off to my friends. As well as browse through my friend's playlists for new music. I have been sending and receiving music, still a feature under-used.
Hoped you enjoyed my update on my music life with Spotify. I may do a few more of these posts about Spotify, people seem to like them and it might get featured on OMGUbuntu's twitter feed again!
Getting Gamers on Linux
Continuing on with my series of posts from my articles in Full Circle Magazine. The next article is about how we can get gamers on to Linux, this is taken from Issue 22.
Linux is great! We all know that, but there are two major things I believe need resolving before we can say Linux is ready for the mainstream. The first is video editing and the second is gaming. Gaming is a very important part of the success of Linux, so there is much work to do before we can safely say that Linux is the platform of choice for gaming. In order to achieve this, I believe there are three key areas that need addressing: games, distribution, and services. Each of these areas is important for gamers, especially PC gamers.
The number and quality of games available for Linux is probably the most important area. Although it has many great games, it needs more games from major developers, such as EA or Activision. The big PC games need to be ported to Linux, such as World of Warcraft, Counter Strike, Battlefield, and Call of Duty. These are the games that all the gamers are playing. There is no point in trying to move gamers to Linux if they can not play the games they love. Linux does have ways to make it easier for people to switch from Windows to Linux, thanks to great work from the Wine team. Games like Counter Strike do work in Linux. However, the support is not perfect. I much prefer native games to games played using Wine. It's important that we try to convince developers to develop games for Linux, and to port games to Linux. Hopefully, as OpenGL gets better, it will be easier for developers to do this. We may be able to help, by making the transfer from DirectX to OpenGL as easy as possible.
So, you may be thinking, now that we have these major games for Linux, how will we get our hands on them? The best solution for Linux is digital distribution. I do not see Linux games ever being in shops. It would be far better to have a website or online store from which we can download Linux games. I believe a service like Steam is the best solution to getting games onto Linux. This solution is looking likely to happen, since Steam is apparently coming to Linux!
The final area is the services. There are many services which PC gamers use on Windows. These mainly consist of communication methods. The two major services are the gaming networks and the VOIP services. The gaming network is heavily used by gamers for talking to friends, joining games with each other, and for clans/guilds. The biggest network is Xfire, with over twelve-million users. It is important that this service is accessible for gamers on Linux. Luckily, there is a plugin for Pidgin, called Gfire (gfire.sf.net). The second major network is fairly new: Steam. This online store now provides a social networking side for gaming, which is used in a similar way to Xfire. Sadly, there is no way to use the Steam community feature yet, unless you use Wine. The VOIP services are very important for clans/guilds to use during a match. The whole team needs to be in a VOIP channel to be able to talk about tactics during a match. The two main services are Teamspeak and Ventrilo. Teamspeak has a native Linux client, but Ventrilo does not. However, Ventrilo does work very well in Wine.
If we are able to achieve success in all these areas, then we'll have a platform for Windows gamers to move to. I believe it is possible to achieve the last two areas, because we can develop these services within the Linux community. The difficult part is getting the developers on board. Apple is having a hard time trying to get the developers on board with their platform, so it is likely that Linux will have a bigger challenge.
The Spotify Effect
I have been using Spotify on Linux for 24 hours now. It has reminded me how great the service is, in the past I have only used it on and off to try out. Since the release onto Ubuntu, it has made want to try it out again. The price of entry for me was £5, the basic subscription charge. Its nice to have no ads, which became annoying after every couple of songs. The subscription is still very low, as much music as you want for £5, with no limits! Though, I still had my doubts. Spotify is using DRM, your £5/10 is only paying for access, not ownership. If you stop using Spotify or Spotify go bust (reports suggest so), you have no music from your subscription. However, the ease of the service and the limitless amounts of music, in the long run it will save me alot of money, from buying individual songs at 69p or Albums at £6 on Amazon.
Fairly quickly after starting my subscription I knew Spotify was my new way to listen to music. Music removed from both of my computers, and archived onto external Hard Drives. I was going Spotify all the way!
Discovering the social feature to Spotify added another level to this service. Linking your Spotify account with your Facebook account, pulled in all your friends who use Spotify. Very quickly I was checking out songs my friends listened too, and adding the songs to my favourites. It has a nice feature to 'send' songs to each other. This started conversations with friends about music, which I have never done. I dont usually talk about music with friends, but since Spotify makes it so easy to share songs with each other, it just sort of happens.
I am loving Spotify every time I start listening and looking for music. Its nice to pay one flat fee and have as much as I want. Its likely that I will carry on paying for the unlimited service, don't like ads! I will be hunting, sharing and talking about the music on Spotify from now on!
First look at Spotify on Linux
Spotify is a music streaming service, which currently operates in Europe. Spotify has been around since 2008, and I was part of first wave of beta invites to try the service. The client, which is used to stream and listen to music has been Windows and Mac OS X only, though the client has worked very well in Wine and Spotify has even provided instructions to get the client working in Wine. In the past few months, Spotify has been available on the iPhone OS and other mobile devices. Finally, a few days ago, Spotify comes to Linux!
Currently, to use the preview of Spotify on Linux, you need a Premium or Unlimited account, because Ads don't work yet. I decided to upgrade my account to Unlimited, to try the client and support the efforts of Spotify!
Essitially, if you have tried Spotify on Windows or Mac, its the same. This was the aim of the developers, to get the same experience cross-platform. Spotify is very easy to navigate, find the songs you want to listen to, whole albums, create playlists, see the top played songs. It has great social features to share the music your listening to with your friends.
The general look of the client is very much the Mac-look, it is more suited on a Mac desktop. I wasn't expecting the theme to be changed on Linux, this is made harder by using QT instead of GTK, which means us Gnome users will have to install the QT library. Luckly, Spotify uses Alsa, no Pulse Audio here! This may sound really small, but stood out for me, the font. Its a nice look font, which is very easy to read, and gives the whole client a great look. The client is quick and songs stream instantly. My only compliant is that the client uses high number of cpu cycles, compared to other platforms. I am using a dual core Intel Atom, while songs are playing, it hits 52%, when idle hits as high as 78%. Some serious optimisations will need doing before this client comes out of beta.
The whole Linux community are pleased we finally get a native Spotify client. It works and looks exactly what we wanted. A few minor issues at the moment, which I am sure will be fixed before release. You will have to pay a monthly fee at the moment, which is the first time I have done with Spotify, one thing I will say, its nice not having Ads!
EDIT: Just realised, the buttons are on the right hand side 
, hopefully they will switch it to the left hand side, like they have on Mac OS.
Spotify on Linux....finally!
Quick Look at Ubuntu Light
Since it is highly unlikely I will get a chance to try Ubuntu Light out in the near future, mainly because its only available to OEMs, I thought I will do a quick review of what I have seen of this latest version of Ubuntu.
Ubuntu Light was announced a few months go in Belgium, at UDS for Maverick. The initial idea purposed by Mark Shuttleworth was a version of Ubuntu, stripped down, which will be installed along side Windows. Marketed at a very fast way to get to the Internet. I was a bit reserved at the idea, for two reasons. Why do we need another version of Ubuntu, we are going to turn into the Windows way of having too many versions which confuses the user. Secondly, is it a good idea marketing a stripped down version of Ubuntu, when we should be promoting the full Desktop edition.
However, after a chat with Popey on the podcast, and watching the video above, I think I understand the idea. Its hard to get Ubuntu on OEM computers as the default, everyone (at the moment) wants Windows. However, in recent years, as our need for quick Internet access has grown, people want to be online as quick as possible, Windows does not cut it. By creating a version of Ubuntu to be installed along side Windows, for super quick access to the web, more people may choose to boot into Ubuntu Light more than Windows. Ubuntu Light, when finally released, should offer 5-10 second boot straight to the web. Advancements in boot speed, since Jaunty (9.04), stripping down Ubuntu to the bare basics for the web, creating a fast slick new UI, and choosing to use the super quick Chromium (Google Chrome). All this has allowed for fast access to the web, which seems to be what most users want these days. Why wait to boot into Windows 7 to use Internet Explorer, which could take 2minutes, when you could boot into Ubuntu which takes 10seconds!
The overall aim is to get Ubuntu into more users hands, and maybe one day, will encourage more users to make the switch!
Defcon Review
Struggling to find anything to write about, so I will continue with my series of posts from my articles in Full Circle Magazine. The next article is a review of Defcon taken from Issue 21. Also, just updated to WordPress 3.0! First post written with the landmark release of WordPress.
This month, I am reviewing one of my favourite PC games. Defcon is a cross platform RTS from UK developers, Introversion Software. The game is based around nuclear warfare. You select a nation, and fight in a nuclear war with up to 6 nations. The game is based on the film War Games. The game features both single players and multiplayers, but they are the same - except you will face AI-controlled nations, or real people controlling the nations. The game is not free: the full game costs £10/$19.50. However, the demo gives you a good idea what the game is about.
As soon as you start the game, you get a sense of bad times. The vector graphics represent a 1980's military computer, and the music of people slowly dying. As I have already said you have the choice of a single or multiplayer match. They are both the same, but in single player you can have from 2 to 5 bots in your match, whereas in multiplayer you can have up to 6 players. You select a "nation", which includes Europe, North America, South America, USSR, Asia, and Africa. A match takes about 45 minutes to 1 hour to complete, but there are also several game types, such as Speed Defcon (15 min. match), Office mode (6 hour match) and Diplomacy mode (everyone is in the same alliance, until someone attacks). However, in the demo you can play only standard Defcon.
In a match, you are presented with a world map showing all the nations and cities within. The match is separated into 5 parts. In Defcon 5 & 4, you begin by placing your units. You have 3 types of buildings, and 3 types of units to place, during this time. The buildings are Radar (to see where missiles and other units are), Silos (to defend and attack nations), and Airfield (for launching fighters and bombers). The units are Submarines (for launching missiles), battleships (for destroying other ships), and Aircraft carriers (for launching fighters and bombers). Once all your units are placed, you can move your units into position. When you reach Defcon 3 & 2 you can now start naval and air attacks. Finally, you will reach the best part of the game, Defcon 1, Nuclear warfare. Select your silos for attack, move subs into position, and launch your nukes at the cities in the enemy's nation.
It may seem simple enough, but it's all about chance, and where and when your enemies will launch their nukes. You may lose your entire fleet before Defcon 1, which can have a bad effect during Defcon 1. You may launch your nukes too soon, then you're wide open for attacks. When your silos are launching their nukes, they can not defend at the same time. You may launch your nukes too late, when your enemy's defences are strong, or you may run out of time. You may even be attacked by people in your own alliance. Anything could happen. No game is the same. This means there is no winning strategy which works every time. There are no winners in nuclear warfare; Defcon follows this belief. In order to "win", it's not about how many people you killed, it's about losing the least.
Defcon is an excellent RTS, best played online. It is simple and easy to pick up, but can be hard to find ways to win. Once you think you have cracked it, you probably haven't. The style and look of the game is everything, but it is worth trying the demo. The demo is a good way to experience both offline and online matches. The game is for Linux, but also Windows and Mac. All three operating systems can play together, so get your Windows and Mac friends to play. You can download Defcon from www.introversion.co.uk/defcon. The file is a .tar.gz file, but it's just a few lib files and a shell script which you run in the terminal -- no need to install. Defcon works perfectly on Ubuntu 7.10, 8.04 and 8.10 (haven't tried it on any other Ubuntu versions).
BYG Foot Review
To continue with my series of posts from my articles in Full Circle Magazine. The next article is a review of BYG Foot taken from Issue 20.
The soccer season is in full swing in England, with Liverpool riding high. So, this month I have decided to review an open- source soccer management game. BYGFoot is a well developed management game which features 1000s of players from all around the world. You can manage in 25 countries, as well as lead your nation to victory in the World Cup.
BYGFoot is like any other soccer management game: choose your team, select the best players and lead them to glory. The game has all the basic features to manage your team. You select your team and formation; however, it can be hard to move your players around. You choose your formation by typing in a 3 digit number that adds up to 10 (442, 443, 119). Transfers and loaning players is standard. Choosing the right offer and offering the right contract is done well. Managing finances is done very well, however it is hard to keep in the green after buying a player in your first year.
BYGFoot also has some unique features that I have not seen in other management games. You can decide how big your stadium is and how secure it is and save memorable matches. However, it is still lacking in features, which often can be seen during a match. It also doesn't have real player names, but you cannot complain too much about this, since the project will need licenses. However, you can rename the players if you wanted to.
When match day comes, you have your best team ready and your tactics perfect. The let down is that during a match, you get a basic text commentary and basic stats, but it's hard to get a real understanding of how your players are performing. There is not enough information to understand what tactics to switch to, if you're losing 2-0 at half time. Usually, I would sub two players if their fitness was low, for example.
BYGFoot is an excellent attempt to bring a soccer management game to Linux, and for the most part, it delivers. It has features that allow a manager to choose his or her team and lead them to success. However, it lacks in a few advanced features, such as player licenses and information during matches. It still offers an excellent soccer management experience on Linux. This is definitely a game that any soccer fan needs to check out. Version 2.0.1 can be found in the Ubuntu repositories.
5 Indie Games, Pay what you want!
Wolfire Games, an indepentant game developer, has set up a 7 day sale on 5 indie games. These include World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru HD and Penumbra. I only own , World of Goo, which is brilliant, but the other 4 games look excellent too. All the games come to a combined total of 480. However, the sale allows you to pay what you want for all 5 games, and some of the money goes to two charities! So you can pay as little as 1 cent (which is just wrong), and some people have paid up to $500!
The problem is I'm not sure how much to pay, I don't want to pay up to $80, since I already own one of the games and the others will be hit or miss if I enjoy them, but I'm not going all cheap skate and pay $5 or less. I'm thinking $20-$30 is a good price. I will have to decide soon, you only have 7 days! Please donate and get some great games! DRM-Free and works on Linux, Mac and Windows!
EDIT - In the end I decided to pay $30, Bargin!
SMART HDD & Utility
For many years, computer hard disc drives have had a much forgotten feature which could save you from data lost. SMART is a technology which will find on all hard drives since the 1990s. It monitors various variables on the hard drive and works out when the hard drive is likely to fail, thus saving you from data lost.
Although many hard drives use SMART, this technology is no use to the majority of computer users. In order for the hard drive to tell the user that the hard drive may fail is with the use of a utility program on the computer. Windows does not currently have a utility which will tell the user SMART information. Both Mac OS X and Linux have utilities to let the user know if the hard drive will fail.
Mac OS X has a tool called Disk Utility which will allow you to manage all your drives on your Mac, as well as view the SMART information on each drive.
Since Ubuntu 9.10, there has been a similar tool pre-installed. Palimpsest Disk Utility does a similar job, allowing you to view information about each drive, format/partition it, perform benchmarks on it and view the SMART data. It will even run in the background, and give you a notification as soon as an error has been found on a drive.
Disk Utility in Ubuntu 10.04 (click to enlarge)
My Thoughts on Ubuntu 10.04
Ubuntu 10.04 is out today! To mark the occasion, I am going to give you my thoughts of Lucid Lynx.
Ubuntu 10.04 is yet again an excellent release. This release is an Long-Term Support version (LTS) which has an aim to be a very stable release, and in most cases it does. With an aim to be stable release does not mean lack of features, it has
The All-New Ubuntu Desktop (click to enlarge)
tons of great additions. The key feature of 10.04 is the all new look to Ubuntu. Ubuntu has under gone new branding, with a new logo. Along with the new logo comes an entirely new UI to Ubuntu. The new Light theme makes Ubuntu look far more slick and professional than before. Ubuntu finally looks great! Part of the theme comes a new arrangement of the close, minimise, maximise buttons. They have moved from the right-hand side of a window to the left, like Mac OSX. It has caused complaints from many Ubuntu users, personally I like the change. Plus, it is very easy to move the buttons back to the right using Ubuntu Tweak. Along with the new theme, comes changes to the notification area. For many users the notification area, or system tray, has been filled with many different icons. In Lucid, these icons have been replaced with indicator applets, which are design to look and act similar, giving the user information about certain things going on with their computer. Such as, battery monitor, sound, network status and music playing. One of Mark Shuttleworth's own inventions has made it into 10.04, the Me Menu. This new menu which sits at the top right of your screen is used for all your social networking. It allows you to set your status (on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc) and change your status on your IM client (Available, Busy or Away). New wallpapers and the Ubuntu-Mono icon set finish off the brilliant look and fell to Lucid!
Further improvements have been seen since the last release, 9.10. An new kernel (2.6.32) provides improved hardware support, which also makes Ubuntu the first OS to support USB3.0 out of the box. The new kernel also supports the new open-source nVidia drivers, nouveau. However, I am having issues with these new drivers, causing crashing, no providing the correct resolution and no 3D support. Luckily, you can use the official nVidia drivers, which cause no problems at all.
One of Ubuntu 10.04 's main aims was to have social out of the box, making it the first OS to do so. Improvements to the Instant Messenging client, Empathy, as seen the added support of Facebook Chat from the desktop. Gwibber is a new addition to Ubuntu, which is a micro-blogging client. It allows the user to follow their friend's statuses and post their own on many services, such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, etc. The default applications in Ubuntu has been important for this release. For the first time, Ubuntu has a video editing application, Pitivi. It is a basic and easy to use video editor, which does the job well. Gimp has been dropped in favour for a more user friendly F-Spot. F-Spot has a very easy to use editing feature, with the key basic editing tools. Many games have been removed, however 5 have stayed which seem to the popular ones with many users.
Ubuntu One, which is Ubuntu's online service which was added in the last release, has seen improvements in Lucid. Improvements have been made to their cloud storage service to important the user experience. However, the service is still not stable enough in my opinion. I'm still using Dropbox, hoping Ubuntu One will be ready soon. One of the major new features in Ubuntu One has been the Ubuntu One Music Store. It works like iTunes. In the default music player in Ubuntu, Rhythmbox, there is now the Ubuntu One Music Store. You can browse the store, find your favourite tracks, buy and download. DRM-Free MP3s. The store is powered by 7-Digital, so it has a great library of Music. However, it is abit pricey compared to my favourite Amazon MP3.
Improvements to applications already Ubuntu have been made. Firefox 3.6 is faster than ever. OpenOffice 3.2 also boasts faster startup times. Gnome 2.30 provides a very stable desktop, before its jump to Gnome 3. Ubuntu also boasts improved speed, with boot up times faster than ever. Expect to me on your desktop within 15-20 seconds of pressing your power button.
Overall, Ubuntu 10.04 is an excellent release. Many improvements to the Ubuntu desktop make it the best-looking OS out. The OS is more user-centric than ever before, with applications and social networking features which will appeal to most modern day computer users. There are now ever more reasons to move away from Windows and Mac OS X!
Me!
Ed Hewitt, 19, Studying @ Derby Uni, Blogger, Ubuntu user, Columnist & Podcaster for FCM, Gamer, Admin on Gfire.- Spotify is saved. Usa by the end of the year!
- Back home from work. 2:30am, time for IT crowd!
- Half way through my shift. Time for a double expesso.
