Fitting the battle of life

Well, I asked a flatmate if I could listen to some of his music earlier, and he said ‘Sure, it should be on the network through iTunes.’

I fired up Rhythmbox and, sure enough, there his name was, under ‘Shared’. I clicked on it, expecting it to show me his music and allow easy navigation to The Feeling. But oh now, it stayed stuck on ‘Retrieving music’ in the status bar.

Of course, I checked to see if it would work the other way. I quickly turned on my own sharing, and it popped up in his copy of iTunes, streaming flawlessly. (We then had ‘a good laugh’ at some of the music in my ten-gig collection, but that’s a story I’d rather not share.) So Rhythmbox -> iTunes works, but iTunes -> Rhythmbox doesn’t.

Apparently this is due to some way in which DAAP, the Apple-owned protocol that enables ‘easy’ sharing of music across a local network, changed in iTunes 7 (after working fine before that). The implementation in Rhythmbox (and other open-source, non-Apple apps) doesn’t work as a client (i.e. receiving music across a network), which is annoying.

A silly little proprietary protocol from Apple, trying to lock people into using its products. Apple basically wants me to switch to iTunes to hear music from the room across the hallway, when I run Ubuntu Linux and have no intention of going back to Windows (or onto a Mac). The simple thing to do would be to use an open protocol, so anyone could implement it perfectly. Then we’d see a real market in software, competing properly on features and aesthetics. Is it that Apple are afraid that, given half the chance, people would switch from iTunes to something else? They can’t be that unconfident in their own product, can they…?

Well, I decided a few days ago to revert to having no fancy desktop effects on my laptop, just to see how much I would miss the Compiz love. So, setting desktop effects to ‘None’, I removed the desktop cube, wobbly windows, the expose function, quick screenshots (windows button + mouse), fancy alt-tab switching, windows previews, and a fair bit more to boot. I realised that actually Compiz offers a whole load of supposed functionality that’s just not present on a basic level.

That said, you can still have more than one desktop; you just won’t be able to slide between them in as pretty a manner. Now it’s an instant switch from one set of windows to another, which is only a very minor boost to productivity, as you’re only saving about half a second.

The thing that I have noticed is far fewer problems with my computer:

• Full-screen iPlayer - and indeed flash generally - is a whole lot smoother,
• No lockups or crashes since disabling desktop effects,
• Supertuxkart works at any resolution, full-screen or windowed, without flickering, and
• Laptop runs a lot cooler and therefore quieter.

The experiment is a success. Although I do rather miss my fully transparent terminal windows, it’s no big deal. I can actually read some of what people are saying in irssi better, anyway. Desktop effects are all very well and good, but as I’m sure a lot of people have noticed, Compiz is quite buggy (and having an ATI card doesn’t help). Although the overall desktop experience is perhaps less aesthetically pleasing entertaining now, it’s a lot more stable and, importantly, functional.