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Frequently Asked Questions |
Is Lsongs open source?
Yes, Lsongs is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).
Is Lsongs only for Linspire?
No, absolutely not! Lsongs can be used on any recent
GNU/Linux distribution as long as its dependencies have been met.
Linspire does sponsor the development of Lsongs and also preinstalls it
with their operating system. Any distribution that wishes to
redistribute Lsongs is welcome to do so in accordance with the rules of
the GPL.
I heard that Lsongs costs money. Is
that true?
No. Lsongs is totally free (as in "speech" and "beer"). The source
code is free to download, install, and use by anyone using any version
of Linux.
Why are there installation packages
for only a few distributions?
We have provided links to all of the packages we know about. If you
are aware of more, please contact us and we'll add the links. If you
have built a package for some distribution not listed and have no place
to host it, please contact us.
Why are the
packages for other distros so old?
These are the packages we know about, and many have not been
regularly maintained with the current revision of Lsongs. In some
cases, the distributions may not have kept up with one or more of the
many dependencies on which Lsongs relies.
What
audio formats does Lsongs support?
As of this writing (June 2005) Lsongs supports import and playback of
MP3, M4A, Ogg, WAV, and Sun au formats. It will rip CDs to either MP3
or Ogg. It will burn CDs from MP3, Ogg, WAV and M4A.
Can Lsongs play music purchased from iTunes Music Store,
Napster, or other online music stores?
Not in general. Those music files are protected by Digital Rights
Managment (DRM) systems which are not supported in Linux. In the case
of iTunes, you can burn the tracks to a CD and rip the CD in Lsongs.
However, Lsongs has built-in support for the MP3tunes
music store, which sells independent music without DRM.
Does Lsongs support MP3 players?
Lsongs directly supports the Creative Nomad and Dell Digital Jukebox
line of players, except for the ones labelled "Plays For Sure".
Does Lsongs support the Apple iPod?
Yes. Lsongs supports the Apple iPod. You can browse the iPod and
copy tracks to and from the iPod into Lsongs. Lsongs has been directly
tested with the Photo iPod, the iPod Shuffle, the 3G iPod, and the iPod
Mini, though it should work with others. Video iPods have not been
tested at this time.
Does Lsongs support
network sharing, like with iTunes?
Lsongs can show up as a shared source of music within iTunes, and
Lsongs can share music with other copies of Lsongs on the same network.
Lsongs uses the same discovery protocol (Zeroconf/Rendezvous/Bonjour)
as iTunes. Lsongs also supports syncing of music libraries between two
copies of Lsongs.
How can I help with the
development of Lsongs?
You are welcome to download and modify the source code. If you have
made some changes that you think should be included in the main
distribution, send a diff to lsongs-dev@linspire.com.
We will set up a public CVS or Arch archive if demand requires.
Is there a support forum for Lsongs?
At the moment, we recommend visiting the Linspire
Support Forums for help. We may set up a separate forum as demand
requires.
Is it true that Lsongs is a ripoff
of $(SOMETHING_ELSE)?
Lsongs has been written from scratch and is not derived from another
program. The best evidence of this is that Lsongs is written in Python,
while most music players are written in either C or C++.
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