Linux and science fiction: Parallel universes

Linucon — what a great concept: A convention focused half on science fiction and half on Linux. As a fan of both who just attended the World Science Fiction Convention in Boston last month, I see huge similarities between the two constituencies.

First, the obvious. If you blindfolded a random illiterate man on the street (illiterate, so he couldn’t read the session names, but reading is a crucial skill shared by both groups) and set him down in a corridor at either a Linux conference or a science fiction convention, the only way he’d be able to which kind of event he was at would be the presence of penguins at the Linux do and the unusual hall costumes worn by two percent of the SF fans. Physically, the two groups are the same — slightly older than average, tending toward long hair and beards (the latter only on the men).

When you sit down in a room with them to discuss relevant issues, both sets of fans are passionate. They have strongly held opinions and they’re not afraid to share them. They’re also both highly intelligent and have good memories. Linux fans can cite arcane syntax for commands they last used months ago. SF fans can cite plot points of novels they read in their teens.

Sometimes that prodigious memory works against them. Both groups have a tendency to hyperfocus on minutiae at the expense of the bigger picture. For Linux, this translates into heated arguments about the merits of individual desktop environment components, for instance, while ignoring larger usability issues. For SF? Well, at one session I attended at the Worldcon, a panelist complained that one of his pet peeves with many fantasy novels was a lack of originality. He pointed out that most fantasy stories published nowadays are set in milieus that resemble medieval Europe, where the common people are farmers and there are feudal lords and kings. The audience responded by challenging him on the need for exotic creatures in fantasies. “If you have an agrarian setting, why make up some exotic creature? Why not just use a cow?” And
they could have argued that point with the panel and among themselves for the rest of the session, missing the larger issue about a lack of originality.

Maybe that’s because fans (of both kinds) rarely get to interact in person with others who share their obsessions. Both Linux and SF tend to attract geeky individuals who don’t quite fit in with the dominant culture. You don’t see a large percentage of Linux users or science fiction readers at NASCAR events or Outkast concerts. But just because they don’t socialize well with “mundanes” doesn’t mean they don’t like to socialize. Put them together with other birds of a feather and watch them have fun. For first-time LinuxWorld or SF convention attendees, it’s a joyous revelation that there are other people who are just as weird as they, and in the same way.

I wish I were going to be in Austin this weekend for Linucon, but my colleague Joe Barr will be there, waving the NewsForge banner. I’ll be at other events, though. I’m just as happy sitting in the audience for a panel on overlooked settings for alternate history stories or roving a dealer room in search of an elusive copy of Lisa Mason’s “Pangaea” books as I am attending a panel on Linux backup alternatives or future directions in package management.

Linucon organizers, if you want a panelist for next year’s show who knows both Linux and science fiction, please call me. Note that I’m not making this offer for ego reasons. My only goal is to serve man.

Windows open source apps are music to the ears

I maintain both a Linux and a Windows machine for my own use. I like the Windows interface, but whenever possible I avoid Microsoft’s bundled applications. When the recent installation of Windows XP Service Pack 2 forced me to accept or decline Windows Media Player 9 and its digital rights management features, I declined, and found two open source alternatives I couldn’t be happier with.

My main use of Windows Media Player had been as a jukebox to randomly play my collection of MP3 files, which takes up too much space to move in toto to my Linux laptop. It’s like having a personal radio station that plays only songs I like. Sure, WMP has a whole bunch of features I not only never used but actively disliked, but it did what I wanted it to.

But wxMusik does it better. Its interface is simple — no hokey “visualizations.” The main pane is just a simple playlist of songs. You can configure which columns appear in the display. A window at the left lets you look at statistics about what you’ve played — most skipped songs, most recently added songs, and more. In the same pane is a list of Icecast and Shoutcast streaming Internet radio stations you can play through wxMusik. Having moved recently away from Boston, I used this feature to add my favorite local weekly radio show to the player, so I can listen even though I’m 1,200 miles from the station’s broadcast tower.

If, as you’re playing through songs you’ve downloaded, you come across a file with incorrect ID3 tags (which tell music players information about the music, such as artist name and album and song title), you can edit them through wxMusik without having to resort to yet another utility.

In addition to MP3 files, wxMusik plays Ogg, WAV, WMA, and other formats. There are advanced search capabilities for finding just the right tracks. And, as a final nice touch, you can set wxMusik to crossfade your songs into each other.

For video playback, I traded in WMP for VLC — VideoLAN’s open source player (originally named VideoLAN Client). VLC is an open source cross-platform media player that can handle just about any format you throw at it. In addition to playing music files, you can use it as your DVD or CD player, and it also handles UDP and RTP unicast and multicast streams; in fact, it can act as a server for these streams as well.

While VLC plays individual songs just fine, it lacks the wxMusik’s ability to continuously play random selections from a list of files. It can play random tracks if you give it a playlist file (.m3u), but its jukebox interface is terrible, requiring you to open multiple windows and make many mouse clicks.

Both applications run on both Windows and Linux, which makes it easy for users who have to work in both operating systems, or as migration tools for helping users get familiar with applications under Windows before they move to Linux.