From OS X to Linux, part I.
Leaving iPhoto and iTunes
Intro
I’ve got an iMac 2007 and I like that machine a lot. I bought it in winter 2007 and I was a happy user for years.
A couple of months ago I’ve installed Maverics and it become clear to me that this won’t work anymore. The machine has got not enough horses — at least for the new OS X. So I decided to switch to Linux and picked a distro with low resource requirements and iMac compatibility (almost) out of the box: Xubuntu.
I’m outlining in this article the whole migration process in general and dealing with music and photos in particular.
Linux
In my company we run Linux on our development machines (Debian) and so do we on our OrganisedMinds servers. Linux is great and even tough I’m still a newbie to Linux I like it a lot for several reasons. I was a loyal user of the Apple platform for now more then 10 years. But the time of exclusivity is over now.
There are great Linux distros out there. I was using for instance a couple of months Linux Mint which is a great system. But at the end the fact that most of the iMac hardware worked instantly I sticked to Xubuntu. It’s leightweigt and therefore fast.
After backing up all my data on an external hard drive I made a clean cut and installed Xubuntu 13.10 as the primary and only system (later I upgraded to 14.04). Except Airport where I had to install b43-fwcutter firmware-b43-installer packages via a network cable first everything worked right out of the box.
I’ve customized my shortcuts so my workflow doesn’t differ to what I’m used and love about the Mac system. I’m using zsh in combination with oh-my-zsh for my command line adventures.
So, back up your data, install Linux and let’s migrate.
Cloud or On premise: finding software alternatives
I made a list of my favorite and frequently used Apps on OS X and came up with this.
I then started to evaluate which native apps on Linux will provide me at least similar comfort and functionality and for which apps a Cloud based approach might be a more appropriate to me. Web apps are amazingly fast becoming a great alternative to software installed on your machine. And since internet connection is available almost everywhere the synergies — like streaming your favorite playlists from everwhere — are great. Besides that thay are independent on the operating system of your current machine.
At the end only ONE app remained on my list which I’m still not able to replace with any equivalent solution yet: Zengobi’s Curio. Oh man, how much I appriciate this app! I use it to create all my wireframes and product concepts. This is a perfect starting point and there is nothing out there I’d be willing to switch to. At least not for now. But this is an another story.
Music and Photos
As first step I needed to decide how to deal with my music and photo library. I used iTunes and iPhoto for years and I know what I do and don’t like about it. After I lost my personal music rating within iTunes while I was moving the music library to a larger hard drive (which was very, very frustrating since I was rating my music for years) I wanted to go back to something simple and reliable: just folders and files. I’ve got some 80GB of music files and a photo library with 100GB.
I decided that more then anything else I want access from everywhere. In parallel I also wanted an out-of-the-box backup of my photos I’m shooting with the iPhone. So I was looking for a web based solution.
About this time Flickr introduced its 1TB for free offer for images and Google a free storage service for 20.000 tracks. I decided to give a try.
iTunes —> Google Play
Google allows you to keep up to 20.000 tracks for free in their Google Play Music service. They provide a convient way to upload your music into your online library. I did it by using a small OS X plugin from Google before I started migrating to Linux. After a couple of days all my music was uploaded. Since then I’m enjoying access to my favorite tracks, LPs and playlists from everwhere. So dealing with music was quite easy, right?
There is a little story I’d like to add. It’s about how my listening habbits changed over the time.
Google is offering a paid service for accessing its whole music library (€7.99 p.M.). This is an icredible way to discover new music or to hear what ever you want. Try their Radio feature which streams tracks based on your favorite music — a concept similar to pandora, last.fm, spotify and other services. I love getting inspired and I love when I can just listen to the newest Archive album without having to buy it :-)
iPhoto —> Flickr
Flickr is no new service to me. I signed up in 2005 and was first very enthusiastic about all those new Web 2.0 services. But the workflow stucked somehow — you had to import photos from the camera to iPhoto first in order to upload them later by using some plugin to Flickr. After some while I stopped using this service enterily. Until 2014.
It’s the combination which convinced me: large amount of webspace for free and a new mobile app allowing you to upload your photos directly from the smartphone. If you want it does it right in the moment you shoot one.
Exporting photos
Locate the originals
iPhoto stores images within the Pictures packages which on OS X appears as a file but in reality is a folder. Access its contents by opening it from the context menu of the Finder (ctrl+click and choose show contents). The Finder reveals then the underlying folder infrastructure. Within the folder Master you’ll find the originals you want to upload to Flickr.
Prepare for upload
My iPhoto library was already backed up on an external file system and was — which I wasn’t aware of — archived with read-only attributes for my Linux user. I had to change the ownership of the files by using chown first. Afterwards I was able to use folders2flickr script to start the upload process to Flickr.
I installed the script as described by using pip, then generated the ini file by copying it from template. I set my image folder within the ini file and adjusted some few settings by commenting out a few lines.
I’m running folders2flickr from my home directory. Don’t be afraid if your internet connection breaks down. The script remembers already uploaded photos by keeping a history file in your home directory. It automatically creates Sets on Flickr of every last folder found in your Flickr library if you defined so in the ini file.
Managing Photos on Flickr
It was and still is a little confusing for me how Flickr’s Sets and Collections work. But at the end it’s just a simple hiearchy: Collections can contain either other collections or sets. But not both at the same time. So you cannot have a collection containg some 3 sets and 2 other collections. This is still a little irritating to me but I got used to it.
I’m using collections for grouping other collections which then contain sets. Example: I’ve got a collection called Friends which contains collections named by my friends — for instance Jim. Within the Jim collection I’m storing sets with photos from events Jim and I joined together.
Antother example could be a collection for your vacation photos and within this sets representing particular events during this vacation. Use Flickrs Organizr for managing your photos.
That’s it for now. I hope I provided you some guidance. Feel free to comment.
Martin
