HJCotton.net

Did you know that the Amazon MP3 Downloader runs on Linux? I didn’t. Generally, when I see a note stating that additional software is required on a website, I head for the hills figuring there’s no chance it will run in Ubuntu. Today, for some reason, I clicked to find out more about the “Requires Amazon MP3 Downloader” button next to the album I was looking at. Much to my surprise, they offer Linux support. Not the “here’s the source, good luck compiling it” kind of support, but rather the “here’s a .deb package, ready to install” kind of support. I was mighty impressed… for about a minute – the 32bit package is not a straight-forward install for 64bit users. Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to make the 32bit package work.

Of course, the fact that extra software is required to download purchased audio tracks doesn’t exactly thrill me, but it sure beats trying to run iTunes in Wine. The fact of the matter is that this is bare-bones, working software that actually runs on Linux:

Whether or not it turns out that tracks you have downloaded can be spontaneously deleted remains to be seen, of course

Last night, fed up with my inability to find a program that will allow me to view the changes in a log file as they occur, (like I might do in Linux using tail -f) I installed openSUSE 10.2. As they always do in my case, the installation went flawlessly and it actually works with my wireless network card. The 3D desktop features in the latest KDE work pretty well too. Unfortunately, despite the fact that it has been given a good makeover, every single problem that has plagued Linux since the very beginning is also still evident. Today, for example, I tried to install an application called dvd::rip, which based on it’s name, probably doesn’t need a description. The problem with installing software on Linux is “dependencies” – other applications and libraries that the software you’re trying to install needs in order to run. It took me 2 hours to install dvd::rip and in the end I had to manually track down and install 33 separate programs and libraries, one at a time, just to get it to work. That is completely unacceptable! No matter how good the GUI might look or how reliable the system might be, the fact remains that installing software that your distribution didn’t come with pre-packaged is simply a nightmare.