Review: RockBox

January 12, 2010 by Linerd · 4 Comments
Filed under: Distro Review, gadget, linux, mp3, review 

RockBox is a free and open source firmware available for several different digital music players. Stable releases are available for the following music players:

  • Apple: iPod 1g through 5.5g, iPod Mini and iPod Nano 1g
  • Archos: Jukebox 5000, 6000, Studio, Recorder, FM Recorder, Recorder V2 and Ondio
  • Cowon: iAudio X5, X5V, X5L, M5, M5L, M3 and M3L
  • iriver: iHP100 series, H100 series, H300 series and H10 series
  • Olympus: M:Robe 100
  • SanDisk: Sansa c200 series, e200 series and e200R series
  • Toshiba: Gigabeat X and F series

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Ubuntu 9.10 Post Installation To-Do List

November 10, 2009 by Linerd · 13 Comments
Filed under: HowTo, Ubuntu, linux 

Install video drivers

If required/desired, install hardware specific video drivers (nVidia or ATI). Go to System→Administration→Hardware Drivers and enable the drivers for your video card. You will need to reboot to make this take affect. Read more

Tagging mp3 Files in Linux with EasyTAG

November 7, 2008 by Linerd · Leave a Comment
Filed under: HowTo, Ubuntu, linux, mp3 

I did a post on the Ubuntu Forums a while back on how to update mp3 file tags with a program called EasyTAG. I've tried a few different tag editors and found that EasyTAG best meets my needs. It's available in the Universe repositories in Ubuntu. Read more

Split mp3 Files With mp3splt

October 23, 2008 by Linerd · 4 Comments
Filed under: HowTo, Ubuntu, linux, mp3 

Mp3splt is a Linux program that can break mp3 files into smaller pieces without re-encoding. This is nice for long mp3 files like e-books or for putting language learning CDs onto your mp3 player. Sometimes you only have a few minutes to listen to your language lesson and you'd rather not start at the beginning of a half hour lesson every time. I'm going to show an example of how to use mp3splt to split a 30 minute mp3 into 5 minute pieces. Read more

How to resample MP3 audio files on Linux using LAME

August 10, 2008 by Linerd · 5 Comments
Filed under: HowTo, Ubuntu, bash, lame, linux, mp3 

If you're like me, you're not willing to shell out several hundred dollars to buy an 80GB iPOD to carry and store your music collection. In my case, I chose the 4GB Sansa e260 as my music player. Having ripped my music at high bitrates for improved quality, I soon became dissatisfied with the capacity of my player. At that point, I decided to do some experimenting with LAME's different encoding options in order to determine what settings gave me the minimum file size while providing acceptable sound quality. For me, LAME's variable bit rate preset 5 provides a good compromise between sound quality and file size. Read more