How to install Spotify on Ubuntu Linux

Although there's officially no Linux client, it's actually very easy to run Spotify from a Linux computer.

Spotify is a great application that allows you to stream music direct from Spotify's servers and play it on your local machine. There's a good Mac client, one for Windows, but as yet no Linux client.

However, it's actually quite quick and easy to get Spotify up and running on Linux when you know how. Spotify even provide details on how to do this on their website.

Download Spotify for Windows
First go to Spotify.com and download the Windows version of Spotify. This is a .exe executable.

Install Wine
We're going to run the Windows version of Spotify using the Wine software. Wine recreates a Windows-like environment within Linux allowing you to run Windows software relatively seamlessly. To install simply open a Terminal and paste in this command 'sudo aptitude install wine'.

Load Spotify with Wine Windows Program Loader
Find the Spotify.exe file in your Downloads folder, or wherever you saved it to, then right click it and select 'Open with Wine Windows Program Loader'.

Select install location
You can simply select the default install location when prompted. Wine doesn't save files to a place within your home directory so this doesn't really matter too much.

Login using your Spotify credentials
When the login form comes up, simply enter your Spotify username and password to login.

Play with Spotify

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Google Map Saver on Linux with Wine

About Google Map Saver

Google Map Saver is a portable software program that feels more responsive and less complicated to use. The user can enter a location or point of interest and the program will download the available data from Google Maps. Then just click on the Go! button and the map of the location will be displayed, this process takes only a few seconds on a fast Internet connection. The usual Google Maps controls are available including zooming in and out, moving around with the mouse or switching between map, satellite and terrain view. The ability to save loaded maps as images, so that you can use them offline or take them anywhere with you is really nice.

The zoom factor and map type can also be changed in pulldown menus at the top. Just select the desired map size and output format and click a button to save the map in PNG, JPG, BMP or TARGA format. Images of the maps that are displayed can be saved in various resolutions (e.g. window size, QVGA – 320×240, VGA-640×480, iPhone-320×480, PAL-768×576, NTSC-720×480, SVGA-800×600, XGA-1024×768, WXGA-1024×600, WXGA-1280×800, HD720-1280×720, HD1080-1920×1080 or custom formats up to 10000×10000. Various output formats including jpg, png, targa and bmp are available. The resulting images can be large (40+ Megabytes) if the highest resolutions are selected.

Google Map Saver is an uncomplicated program that can be used to save locations in Google Maps in a short period of time. The program is portable and available at the developer’s homepage. The watermark can be removed by clicking on the globe in the upper right corner to get to the about page and there on the Activate button which will remove the watermark.

Wine configuration

This is with a clean configuration directory.

Linux Distribution: Ubuntu 8.04
Windows version emulated: XP
Wine version tested: 1.1.35

Dependencies

Before Google Map Saver will run properly with Wine you will need to install Internet Explorer, I installed IE 7 via winetricks as this is the easiest way to install IE 7 on Wine at this time.

GMS Download

Version 1.0.2 of Google Map Saver can be downloaded from here. gms.exe is a stand alone application that doesn't need to be installed only run from Wine.

First Run

Just open a terminal and run $ wine gms.exe and the application should start and display a blank page. The default location is Karlsruhe, Germany and if you try to load it as is you will receive a error.


To work around this error just enter the name of the city or the country and then your map should start to load. You will receive two script errors once the map starts loading, jut click yes and proceed. once the map is loaded the zoom in and out will go blank but it still works. One the fist zoom in or out go to the upper left and click in or out. Once the first zoom is completed you can then use your mouse to zoom by just double clicking the map. You can also drag the map with your mouse as usual.

Here is a screenshot of GMS running on my laptop, also two maps I saved of Reykjavik Iceland the most beautiful city on our blue planet, and a satellite image of Nuuk Greenland.

B.T.W... This howto should also work on FreeBSD, OpenSolaris and Mac systems.

Has Transgaming Abandoned Cedega?

Pretty much anyone who has used Linux for at least a short while is aware of Wine technology and what it does. For many Linux users, largely Linux gamers, having properly working Wine technology is essential to their everyday computer user. The topic of commercial Wine software has been known to cause many heated discussions over the years on various Linux message boards. It appears at long last that perhaps this seemingly eternal argument may finally be coming to an end. Transgaming, the company behind Cedega, appears to be finally putting down its (some would say much controversial) Linux software.

While nothing official has been posted by the company itself, I feel it is pretty obvious Transgaming is letting Cedega die a slow death. November 13th 2009 marked the one year date since we last saw an update in Cedega's news page - The Den. While we did see a small update to the software in August - this did not add any new functionality to Cedega, it simply resolved an issue a World of Warcraft update had introduced. It is also heavily obvious that Transgaming does not check their user forums (or they really just don't care about what happens there if they do). There is now a two page thread on the boards of users simply asking for news on what is going on with the company/future of Cedega - we've gotten no official response.

Wine 1.1.35 Released

The Wine development release 1.1.35 is now available.
What's new in this release:

• Support for OLE transacted storage.
• Better certificate checking on secure connections.
• More progress on the 16-bit separation.
• Left 4 Dead 2 DRM really supported now.
• MSI performance improvements.
• 64-bit fixes in debugger support.
• Various bug fixes.

The source is available now. Binary packages are in the process of being built, and will appear soon at their respective download locations.
Bugs fixed in 1.1.35:

5908 Ability Office 4 doesn't start up?
6930 TortoiseSVN fails to install
8394 IMVU 3D Instant Messenger not visible in wine's uninstaller
8895 Circuit Design Suite 10 fails to install
9535 WinPCap 4.0.1 installer does not run at all
10950 Colin McRae Rally 04: picture shifted down by ~1/4 of height
12014 Ability installer crashes in crypt32
12418 parent window getting closed instead of a tool window in KDE
13393 closing one virtual desktop closes other(s)
14378 Issues with maps and character portrait in Morrowind
14390 Gmax 1.2: Fatal Error on Install - Ended Prematurely.
14465 NdrClientCall2 is unaware of comm_status and fault_status variables
14536 FLSynthmaker crashes FL Studio
14995 wined3d regression results in broken rendering for Age of Empires II
15176 Assassin's Creed Install crashes
15278 ApexDC++ cannot connect to users
15624 poivy crashes
15638 Adobe Photoshop CS4 installer crashes on unimplemented GetProductInfo if run in Vista mode
15711 GetHostName and GetHostByName
15940 Ethnic Cleansing crashes: mpegsplit.c assertion
16244 Installer of Age of Empires 3 crashes
16299 IMVU 3D Instant Messenger installer crashes
17666 WinARM make crashes
17911 Gothic 3: Stripe on the right part of the screen is not updated in high resolutions
18120 No text in Qt-4.5.0 and later apps when winver >= 2000
18574 Win92 Radio Scanner does not start
18648 Error unimplemented function snmpapi.dll on start bginfo program
18753 wineboot --shutdown does not close running programs
18786 Minitab doesn't run anymore
19483 crash when launching zattoo
19802 SiSoftware Sandra 2009.SP4 unhandled exception
19898 WinMX: crashes instantly upon start
20013 Exchange Server 2007 fails to start
20224 dlls/d3dx9_36/tests/math.C: Test failed: Expected matrix
20281 Adobe Photoshop CS4 installer unusable
20397 Eclipse (Europa) Welcome window is empty
20492 Adobe CS4 installer hangs in memory and has to be killed
20522 Graphic Glitcheson Game Maker games
20653 Warcraft 3 freezes after successful login into Battle.net
20684 Memory leak in CryptGenKey/CryptDestroyKey?
20727 Characters in Sacred Underworld invisible
20742 Sorted list view control always inserts at the end
20806 Civilization II crashes on startup
20823 Trackmania Nations Forever: really loud crackling / no sound
20850 Write buffer overflow in WidenPath()
20851 Read buffer overflow in CombineRgn, triggered by user32 and imm32 tests
20898 Rayman 2: wine does not render "transparent color"
20913 Multiple games crash on start
20920 Read buffer overflow in StorageImpl_Construct in many msi tests
20923 Crash in mshtml/tests/events.c when run under valgrind
20941 3DMark 2001SE crash on start
20943 Red Alert 3 fails to start
20944 Civilization IV Beyond the Sword crashes after the loading splash screen.
20949 Native d3dx9_27.dll causes crash on save load
20960 Textures missing in demoscene's demo fr-041_debris
20963 CIV4(BTS)/steam crashes at launch after upgrade wine1.2 1.1.33-0ubuntu1~ppa1 to 1.1.34-0ubuntu1
20978 Quicktime 7.1.6.200 installer fails
20991 EnumRfc1766_create return values
20992 Invalid free in oleaut32 / vartype tests in test_VarBstrFromDate
20995 Crysis Demo does not start
20999 installations that were fast in 1.1.34 are very slow now due to ole32 storage changes
21021 F1 Challenge 2007 crash
21044 Platform SDK 2003 install fails?
21045 Memory leak in SECUR32_addPackages

Stuck with Windows Because of PC Games? Make the Switch to Mac and Bring Your Games with You

There are a lot of people who would like to give Mac a try, but for those that identify themselves as PC gamers going to Mac really isn’t an option because the majority of popular games these days are made for Windows and don’t have any Mac ports. Luckily, through the magic of software, it is possible to play some of the most popular PC games on your Mac.

Enter Crossover Games for Mac by Codeweavers. Based on a free program called Wine, which allows Windows applications to be executed on Unix operating systems like Mac or Linux, Crossover Games for Mac is a $40 application which will let you play the following PC games right on your Intel-based Mac (click on the image of each game to see Codeweavers’ compatibility report on the game):

Steam game images are from the Steam Store website.
…and the list goes on.
Granted, you’ll still need a computer powerful enough to run the games of your choice, and you’ll want to check the compatibility report for the game(s) you’d like to play before you drop your coin on this software, but Crossover Games provides a solution for people who like PC games but want to go with a Mac computer. If you’d like to see Crossover Games in action take a look at this video.

Putty for Mac

$15.00