Children of the 80s, rejoice. It’s visuals are half Robert Plant, and half The Cure, with the sound of a Halmark commercial.

I know! I haven’t written anything here in ages, and what I have, has been incredibly short, or just silly. This isn’t horribly easy, but at least I’ve made it easy for you.. and compared to doing some things in Linux, it is actually quite easy.

Entering the 20th century (in the 21st, natch), I’ve finally got XM. XM has the ability to listen to it online, but it streams as Windows Media (WMV) which is a closed format by Microsoft. You can listen to it on MacOS X with Flip4Mac, but there’s no truely native ability to listen to it in Linux due to the licensing restrictions.

If in KDE or GNUME, press Alt-F2. KDE Users, type “kdesu yast” (without the quotes), then press enter. GNOME users, type “gnomesu yast” instead.

If you’re at the terminal, you’ll already know how to adapt these instructions to do at the command line.

Depending on your configuration, it will ask for your, or the root password. Enter the appropriate one, then in YaST, select “Software” -> “Software Repositories”. If you have the Packman Repository, enable it, then skip past the next paragraph.

If you do not have one, don’t worry! Select “Add a new Repository”, Name it “Packman Repository”, “Edit Parts of the URL”, Protocol is “HTTP”, host: “packman.unixheads.com” (Please check for a local mirror), directory on server: “/pub/packman/suse/11.0/” (or 11.1), Authentication type is Anonymous.

Finally, Save and choose “Refresh now”. Open the “Software Manager” from the YaST window, and Search for “totem”. Select “totem”, and “totem-xine-plugin”. Press “Accept”, and let it install. When it finally completes, choose “Install more Packages” (Yes)

Search for, and install “w32codec-all”.
I like to also install “mplayerplug-in”, since it provides support in places that totem still has issues.

(Optionally) Select “kaffeine”, and let it install. (This is a much more robust player than the totem plugin alone).

If you want to use Kaffeine, there are a few more steps:
Start Kaffeine, “Settings” -> “xine Engine Parameters”.
Choose the “Decoder Settings”, and set both paths to “/usr/lib/win32”.
Save and exit Kaffeine.
Close any running Firefox browser.

Open Your browser, and setup your Netscape Plugins/Programs as required. I’ve provided information on how to do so for Firefox 3.x and Konqueror 3.x. I don’t use Opera, and no longer use Firefox 2.x, so I can not assist you with those.

For Firefox 3.x, choose “Edit” -> “Preferences”. Choose “Applications”, then scroll down to “Windows Media”. Choose “Use Windows Media Player Plugin”.

For Konqueror 3.x, open Konq, choose “Settings”, “Configure Konqueror”, then “Plugins” in the menu on the left side. Select “Scan for New Plugins”. Press the “Discard” button, then click the “Plugins” tab. If you see “libtotem-gmp-plugin.so”, you’re set. Click “OK”. When you load the first time, it will usually default to MPlayerplug-in, with the MPlayer library. Press the first left ‘Down Arrow’, and choose ‘xine’, rather than mplayer. Press the Play button. Viola!

Finally, go to xmradio.com. and login. The totem plugin will be loaded when you choose your channel. Give it about 10 seconds to buffer on a standard DSL/Cable line. There you go – XM in Linux!

It’s good to see that those folks who used to write Cliff’s Notes have found work – They’re now writing movie descriptions. Note that you are allowed an unlimited amount for the description – I’ve seen over 10 pages worth for a Law and Order episode. I guess poor Marie just doesn’t stack up, the next 2 pages only continue with the actor’s names, and the director.

I can’t believe I am still running a self-serving tech/nerd blog this many years later.. I’ve gone from a text based personal resume, to an Open Source system I created to share my ported software (to unpopular platforms, such as Solaris x86 and MacOS X (at the time)), then eventually opting to no longer support my tools in the ideal of making money by writing code – exporting that and moving into another system (after testing serveral others). Gee, alot happens in ten years.

In other news, I’ve been using OpenSUSE 11.0 since late June on a testing/dev system, and it is incredibly stable. Not only does it offer a newer kernel base (2.6.25.x), but it touts KDE4, KDE 3.5.9, and GNOME 2.2. Yep, you can roll your own; this isn’t Xubuntu.

The whole system is incredibly stable, and as much as I can not stand the over-engineered ‘Zypper’ system, ‘Smart’ is quite comparable to apt, and is just as fast.

Despite the Zypper hate already, it has some great new BSD-like features such as ‘dist-upgrade’, which should FINALLY offer OpenSUSE the ability to upgrade (at least between minor revisions) without doing a reformat/reinstall. Yes, SuSE users, it’s no longer 1996!

It’s incredibly stable, well-supported, and is leaps above what Ubuntu offers – and I admit that, being a Debian user for years. My laptop had the proper drivers, and could even sleep to RAM without messing around with kernel internals.

It’s about time; OpenSUSE has made Linux closer to being entirely desktop ready than even the ‘Friendly’ Ubuntu. Game’s on.