Category Archives: IT / Computers

Foobar2000 alternatives for Linux

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I am a big fan of foobar2000 because it’s one of the most terse yet flexible package for playing music. I tried using RhythmBox that came with Linux Mint, but it’s annoying as hell. When you double click an audio file, it’ll adds to a default playlist and after it finished playing, it’ll go and play other songs you’ve previously clicked (because they were accumulated on the playlist).

Out of frustration, I tried to stick with my favorite, I found foobar2000 has a wine port available on Snap package manager. Downloaded it and realized it has a lot of work to do to make it work on linux:

  • Fonts do not scale. It’s always that tiny and not all the UI controls looks odd
  • The paths assumed windows drive letters. Sometimes if I drag and drop files from a bitlocker drive (mounted with dislocker), it’ll assume the file came from some complicated path under Z:\. WTF

Ended up downloading Clementine. It at least let me remove songs from the playlist by pressing “Del” button. But I’m not happy that it doesn’t have CDDB.

Turns out there are better options the Clementine. I found this StackExchange while searching for FreeDB options:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/541977/a-music-player-with-cd-ripping-and-cddb-lookup

Turns out DeaDBeeF (a hex pun) looks like a watered down version of foobar2000. So, Clementine, Foobar2000-Wine and RhythmBox is out.

EDIT: DeadBeef v1.82 offered on Ubuntu (Cinnamon Remix) 20.04’s repository mishandled files on an encrypted volume that’s unlocked. I went to Deadbeef’s website and downloaded DeaDBeeF 1.8.7 universal deb package amd64, installed it with dpkg -i and it worked!.

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Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Charge and USB-OTG simultaneously

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I’d like to charge my phone and use USB devices at the same time, but it seems like it requires a 64.9kOhm resistor from sensor ID pin (micro USB) to ground. Instead of melting a USB-OTG cable, I bought this adapter (schematics here)

micro USB3.0 Type B Male to USB3.0 Type A Female adapter

so that I can have direct access to the ID pin. This is a USB 3.0 give that I have a Galaxy Note 3. The same principles apply to the USB 2.0 versions for Galaxy Note 4.

According to this website, fsa9480_i2c.h has the table for the resistor ID values. Turns out 64.9kOhm is the one for both charging (slowly) and using USB devices (like mouse, network adapter, etc.).

RID_USB_OTG_MODE,	/* 0 0 0 0 0 	GND

USB OTG Mode

              */
RID_AUD_SEND_END_BTN,	/* 0 0 0 0 1 	2K		Audio Send_End Button*/
RID_AUD_REMOTE_S1_BTN,	/* 0 0 0 1 0 	2.604K		Audio Remote S1 Button */
RID_AUD_REMOTE_S2_BTN,	/* 0 0 0 1 1 	3.208K		Audio Remote S2 Button                         */
RID_AUD_REMOTE_S3_BTN,	/* 0 0 1 0 0 	4.014K		Audio Remote S3 Button */
RID_AUD_REMOTE_S4_BTN,	/* 0 0 1 0 1 	4.82K		Audio Remote S4 Button */
RID_AUD_REMOTE_S5_BTN,	/* 0 0 1 1 0 	6.03K		Audio Remote S5 Button */
RID_AUD_REMOTE_S6_BTN,	/* 0 0 1 1 1 	8.03K		Audio Remote S6 Button */
RID_AUD_REMOTE_S7_BTN,	/* 0 1 0 0 0 	10.03K		Audio Remote S7 Button */
RID_AUD_REMOTE_S8_BTN,	/* 0 1 0 0 1 	12.03K		Audio Remote S8 Button */
RID_AUD_REMOTE_S9_BTN,	/* 0 1 0 1 0 	14.46K		Audio Remote S9 Button */
RID_AUD_REMOTE_S10_BTN,	/* 0 1 0 1 1 	17.26K		Audio Remote S10 Button */
RID_AUD_REMOTE_S11_BTN,	/* 0 1 1 0 0 	20.5K		Audio Remote S11 Button */
RID_AUD_REMOTE_S12_BTN,	/* 0 1 1 0 1 	24.07K		Audio Remote S12 Button */
RID_RESERVED_1,		/* 0 1 1 1 0 	28.7K		Reserved Accessory #1 */
RID_RESERVED_2,		/* 0 1 1 1 1 	34K 		Reserved Accessory #2 */
RID_RESERVED_3,		/* 1 0 0 0 0 	40.2K		Reserved Accessory #3 */
RID_RESERVED_4,		/* 1 0 0 0 1 	49.9K		Reserved Accessory #4 */
RID_RESERVED_5,		/* 1 0 0 1 0 	64.9K		Reserved Accessory #5 */
RID_AUD_DEV_TY_2,	/* 1 0 0 1 1 	80.07K		Audio Device Type 2 */
RID_PHONE_PWD_DEV,	/* 1 0 1 0 0 	102K		Phone Powered Device */
RID_TTY_CONVERTER,	/* 1 0 1 0 1 	121K		TTY Converter */
RID_UART_CABLE,		/* 1 0 1 1 0 	150K		UART Cable */
RID_CEA936A_TY_1,	/* 1 0 1 1 1 	200K		CEA936A Type-1 Charger(1) */
RID_FM_BOOT_OFF_USB,	/* 1 1 0 0 0 	255K		Factory Mode Boot OFF-USB */
RID_FM_BOOT_ON_USB,	/* 1 1 0 0 1 	301K		Factory Mode Boot ON-USB */
RID_AUD_VDO_CABLE,	/* 1 1 0 1 0 	365K		Audio/Video Cable */
RID_CEA936A_TY_2,	/* 1 1 0 1 1 	442K		CEA936A Type-2 Charger(1) */
RID_FM_BOOT_OFF_UART,	/* 1 1 1 0 0 	523K		Factory Mode Boot OFF-UART */
RID_FM_BOOT_ON_UART,	/* 1 1 1 0 1 	619K		Factory Mode Boot ON-UART */
RID_AUD_DEV_TY_1_REMOTE,	/* 1 1 1 1 0 	1000.07K	Audio Device Type 1 with Remote(1) */
RID_AUD_DEV_TY_1_SEND = RID_AUD_DEV_TY_1_REMOTE ,		/* 1 1 1 1 0 	1002K		Audio Device Type 1 / Only Send-End(2) */
RID_USB_MODE,		/* 1 1 1 1 1 	Open		USB Mode, Dedicated Charger or Accessory Detach */

 

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Windows path length limit

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Windows has a path length limit that are typically at the order of 250 (260 for Windows 10) that’s a pain in the butt when moving files. Despite you can override it, it’s no fun when you copy a jillion files just to find out a few can’t make it because the path is too long and you have to find out which ones are not copied!

There’s a short command to check if the path exceed certain number of characters, which I recommend testing for 240 character so you can at least have a 10+ character folder on the root folder to put the files in:

powershell: cmd /c dir /s /b |? {$_.length -gt 240}

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Dual-booting: Linux and Windows fight for the system clock

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Turns out it’s a common problem when dual-booting Windows and Linux, they keep changing the hardware system clock on each other (unless you live in GMT+0 zone) because Windows assume the system time is the one at the set timezone while Linux think the system time is the UTC+0 time (and offset it afterwards).

Linux updates the time through NTP server blindly while Windows 7 check if the current time is within 1hr from the NTP server to avoid unintended time changes (I have to give Microsoft credit for that). EDIT: Windows 10 blindly updates the time like Linux too.

The easy solution is to have Linux follow Windows’ suit:

timedatectl set-local-rtc 1 --adjust-system-clock

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