Zune/Kubuntu issues

[Margrave]

I almost named this topic "Look, I'm the new guy!" but I refrained for the sake of my health.


At any rate, yo. I'm a new, yet happy convert from XP to the Kubuntu OS, but because I'm not up on Linux/Kubuntu trickery, I need abit of help: When I go to the zune site, it has all these instructions for Windows OS downloading, but nothing for Kubuntu. SOOO....What do I do? Is there some Wine trickery I'm not informed on, or do I just download the Zune software and not worry about it?


Help me, O Masters of the Craft, lest this poor initiate stray back to the path of XP.

[Snowhog]

Re: Zune/Kubuntu issues

Some Googleing on Zune and Ubuntu doesn't look promising. First, if you are paying a monthly fee to M$ for the right to download songs to your Zune player, that isn't (apparently) the same as 'purchasing' the songs (which M$ has an option for). I didn't find any results that said you could get *ubuntu to work with a Zune player. Pretty much, the Zune is like the iPod, in that the software that drives the device is proprietary, pretty much limiting you to using it in the realm in which it was conceived.

[Margrave]

Re: Zune/Kubuntu issues

My primary concern is that I will be able to download the Software for Zune from the site, not buying or downloading songs; hell, I can grab those from other places. My concern right now is that I get the dang thing running, and beyond that I'll just put the songs I've got on the computer on it.

[pulpfile]

Re: Zune/Kubuntu issues

Microsoft's not interested in supporting anything open source in general, and Linux in particular: they view it as a threat. If you want to know more, you should check out the infamous "Halloween documents" here:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/

Having said that, though, it's only a matter of time before the hackers figure out how to get the thing running on Amarok. Do a Google search for "amarok zune" (without quotes). Apparently, all it does right now is let you see the files on the Zune, you can't copy from it or to it.

Probably the easiest route is to download the Windows software and try to get it running on WINE. I don't know for sure if that would work, though.

[pulpfile]

Re: Zune/Kubuntu issues

OK, I also found this.

http://www.zune-online.com/news/zune...ia-vmware.html

Running Zune software, under Linux, via Windows emulation. Yikes!
I'd prefer dual-booting, myself, but if that's not an option you might want to try this out.

[Margrave]

Re: Zune/Kubuntu issues

I'll look into this. Thanks guys, I was told when I got Kubuntu that there was a supportive community out there, glad to find out that's true.