noob

[muad]

My name's Will and I just crossed over to the dark side, LOL. Running ultimate edition (ubuntu 8.04). Love it so far. I've got a lot to learn, but am SOOO gald that there is a great alternative to windows.

As soon as I figure out how to run all of my work related programs as well as some way to talk to my Xbox 360, I'll be dumping windows for good.

Take care!

-Will

[Jonathan183]

Welcome to the forums Will

The dark side ... can't help with the Xbox but what are the work related programs?

[techieMoe]

As soon as I figure out how to run all of my work related programs as well as some way to talk to my Xbox 360, I'll be dumping windows for good.

I can't speak for the Xbox thing, but what kinds of work-related programs do you use?

[muad]

Hey guys. I'm going to try and run them under wine here in a bit when I have time. So far it's an older program called Spin Photo Object, and Thumbs Plus. I'm sure the list will grow with time, lol.

Thanks for any help.

-Will

[elija]

Thumbs Plus - that takes me back!

Have a look at fspot and see if it will do. It may already be installed under
Applications -> Graphics

[bigtomrodney]

...as well as some way to talk to my Xbox 360, I'll be dumping windows for good...

Check out ushare. It's available in the Ubuntu repositories, just fire up Synaptic and install it.

The only downside is you need to manually start the service if you are using WiFi as the connection only comes up after ushare, and ushare is not yet network aware. It's pretty cool though. Now if only it had a nice graphical config tool...

[muad]

You guys are awesome, thanks for the input! I'm sure I'll be a regular in the linux newbie section for a while.

elija, thanks I'll check that out. I'm not set on keeping the windows programs, so if a useful alternative like you suggested is available, I can switch. I just don't want to add any more time or lose any of the options/available settings I use in thumbs.

bigtom, so my xbox should be able to see ushare? I was wondering how all that is going to work since the 360 uses media center to talk to my xp pc. From my understanding the PC sees the 360 as a Media Extender.

[bigtomrodney]

Basically there's two ways of connecting. There's Media Extender and then there's connecting to a upnp device. Now I've never used the first one so I can't say if working with them is different, but with a upnp service running you can browse specified directories and play video and music or look at photos. It all works very smoothly aside from the bits I mentioned.

If you do install it you just need to edit /etc/ushare.conf. I share mine on my wifi card (ath0) and instead of naming several directories I created a hidden directory called .ushare that has links to the directories I want. It saves editing files and just generally simplified things for me. Here's my config file

# /etc/ushare.conf
# Edit this file with 'dpkg-reconfigure ushare'
# Configuration file for uShare

# uShare UPnP Friendly Name (default is 'uShare').
USHARE_NAME=btr_host

# Interface to listen to (default is eth0).
# Ex : USHARE_IFACE=eth1
USHARE_IFACE=ath0

# Port to listen to (default is random from IANA Dynamic Ports range)
# Ex : USHARE_PORT=49200
USHARE_PORT=49200

# Port to listen for Telnet connections
# Ex : USHARE_TELNET_PORT=1337
USHARE_TELNET_PORT=

# Directories to be shared (space or CSV list).
# Ex: USHARE_DIR=/dir1,/dir2
USHARE_DIR=/home/tom/.ushare

# Use to override what happens when iconv fails to parse a file name.
# The default uShare behaviour is to not add the entry in the media list
# This option overrides that behaviour and adds the non-iconv'ed string into
# the media list, with the assumption that the renderer will be able to
# handle it. Devices like Noxon 2 have no problem with strings being passed
# as is. (Umlauts for all!)
#
# Options are TRUE/YES/1 for override and anything else for default behaviour
USHARE_OVERRIDE_ICONV_ERR=

# Enable Web interface (yes/no)
ENABLE_WEB=

# Enable Telnet control interface (yes/no)
ENABLE_TELNET=

# Use XboX 360 compatibility mode (yes/no)
ENABLE_XBOX=1

# Use DLNA profile (yes/no)
# This is needed for PlayStation3 to work (among other devices)
ENABLE_DLNA=

[muad]

Nice, thanks bigtom! Both my xbox and pc are hardwired to my router. So, if I cut-n-paste your code, the fact that I'm not using wireless won't effect anything will it?

[bigtomrodney]

Well I wouldn't go cutting and pasting. For a start the shared directory is mine

I think all of the defaults should be fine for you except for the entry for shared directories

# Directories to be shared (space or CSV list).
# Ex: USHARE_DIR=/dir1,/dir2
USHARE_DIR=/home/tom/.ushare

You might want to change that either to your list or like I said, to a hidden directory with links to your intended shares. Asides from that you can change the value for USHARE_NAME to something you'd like your Xbox to display when it sees it - the default is just ushare.