The Life of Matt Campos

Well I have been getting asked alot if I have been able to get my Zune to sync with a Linux box. Short answer, not very easily. I use Ubuntu on all my machines at home except my Gaming rig, gotta have windows for PC gaming. Any who, You can get your Zune to sync with a Linux box provided you know how to install VMWare. Basically VMWare is a program that is installed and acts like a PC, so once you have VMWare running you then install your OS, in this case WindowsXP. I am not going to go through the installation process as that is well documented. Just google vmware and I am sure you can find some instructions.

Now with your vmware session running with winxp you should be able to install the zune software and get up and running with out any hitches, EXCEPT, vmware does not support usb 2.0, if your running usb 2.o on your linux box you will have to uninstall the usb 2.0 driver. If you don’t your windows xp vmware session will blue screen on you, or just stop responding or, may call you nasty names and act like a 5 year old who was just told they can not have candy before dinner because it will spoil their appetite. Anyway, to uninstall the driver in Ubuntu, from the console: sudo rmmod ehci_hcd .

Once that is done you should be good to go. Let me know if you have troubles and I will try and help you out.

UPDATE: With the new 2.3 Firmware this no longer works.

So I have started using my Zune again because I have been traveling more lately and I needed to re-setup my Zune to add a few movies and such so I wanted to copy everything off my Zune. I had set it up to be able to direct connect in windows but for the life of me I could not remember how. So after a few minutes of googleing i came upon Phaleux.com that gave me just the advice I needed.

1. Make sure your Zune is not plugged in and your Zune software isn’t running
2. open up regedit by going to the start menu and selecting “run”. Type regedt32 and hit “OK”
3. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\ControlSet001\Enum\USB\
4. Search for “PortableDeviceNameSpace”. This should be contained in the Vid_####&Pid_####\########_-_########_-_########_-_########\Device Parameters within the above …\USB\ The ##’s listed here will be numbers and letters specific to your Zune
5. Change the following values:
   • EnableLegacySupport to 1
   • PortableDeviceNameSpaceExcludeFromShell to 0
   • ShowInShell to 1
6. Plug in your Zune, and make sure the Zune Software starts up.
7. Hopefully at this point you can open up “My Computer” and browse your device, though it does NOT show up as a drive letter.

This does work in Vista, I just tried it.

Microsoft has released a few new patches for Vista, supposedly they are performance and compatibility enhancements ahead of Vista Sp1. From my standpoint, Vista is just a flashy version of XP. have not really seen any advantages of it over XP as of yet. I use Vista on my laptop as it came preinstalled and I wanted to give it a chance to grow on me and I also wanted to hit the bumps in the road so i could speak about them intellectuality when they came up.

That being said, vista does have issues. For one it randomly blue screens on me and when it comes back up it doesn’t tell you why. Of course it gives you its there has been a problem would you like to check for a solution….You know how many solutions I have found…. 0, thats right 0. I have stopped looking now, seems microsoft better do something with that or it will be a useless feature people will ignore. Anyway back to the Patch releases, You can find all the x64 patch releases linked in this Ars Technica article, it was useless for me as my laptop run the x86 Version.

Ars Technica

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10/02/2007 — Well Microsoft has unveiled the Zune 2 and I have to say it is impressive, I orignally bought the first gen Zune because I liked the screen size and all the features, that and I did not want to get on the apple band wagon.

Don’t get me wrong, I am NOT a microsoft fanboi, but I like some of there products, I Use windows xp for my desktop gaming rig because its the most logical choice for out of the box gaming. Linux and wine just is too much of a hassle. Apple is great for video editing and multimedia projects and I guess they make a good mp3 player, my wife and daughter like it. Linux is my choice for Server software, I run my Web Server, DB server and just about every other server i have on the web offering content off of Linux distros (Debian, Ubuntu).

Anyway enough of my preferences, back to the Zune 2. So it has an awesome new feature, wi-fi syncing, whenever you get in range of your computer you can sync or have it sync automatically. Now that is NICE, they also introduce they ability to share other media other than mp3 and removed the mp3 expiration on shared music. HOWEVER the 3 play limit is still there. They have changed the hardware and now have a Zune Pad which is a clickable touch pad for navigation. the interface has been reworked and looks snazzy.

I think the smartest and most awesome move Microsoft made in this whole ordeal is they are offering ALL of the software upgrades to the first gen Zunes. This has to be an awesome move on Microsoft’s part as its great PR and raises their standing in first gen Zune owners eyes (like me.)

So if your thinking of buying a new MP3 player, I suggest looking at the new Zune, so far it looks awesome.

From Engadget:

Hard drive Zunes

• It’s called the Zune 80 and, shockingly enough, it has 80GB of storage.
• Uses the new Zune Pad — four way touch-sensitive d-pad (with up, down, left, and right buttons).
• It will sell for $250 (with “premium” headphones).
• Available only in black (to start).
• Screen size has increased to 3.2-inches (from 3-inches). As far as we know the resolution is still QVGA.
• Dimensions are 61.1 x 108.2 x 12.9mm (2.4 x 4.25 x 0.5-inches), some 1/3rd smaller than the classic Zune.
• The classic Zune will now be known as the Zune 30 — it’s not going anywhere. More on that in a sec.

New flash Zunes

• Zune 8 and Zune 4 are the names for the 8 and 4GB flash based models.
• Also uses the Zune Pad.
• These will sell for $200 and $150 respectively.
• Both will be available in pink, green, black, and red.
• It will feature a 1.8-inch screen (compare to the nano’s 2-inch screen).
• Dimensions are 41.4 x 91.5 x 8.5mm (1.6 x 3.6 x 0.33-inches) — compare to the new iPod nano, at 69.8 x 52.3 x 6.5mm (2.75 x 2.0 x 0.26-inches).

Everything else

• New Zunes ship in November, date not yet announced.
• All Zunes (including the Zune 30) will have a new, redesigned interface and feature parity. In other words, early Zune 30 adopters will have all the same software features as new Zune 80, 8, and 4 users.
• Additional native video codecs for h.264 and MPEG-4 — users no longer need transcode those file types to WMV.
• Zune can FINALLY sync video from your Media Center PC! Jeez, took you friggin long enough, guys!
• WiFi sync to host computer! Includes moving over music, movies, photos, podcasts, etc.
• Podcast support! (Sorry, no over the air downloads — sync only.) Podcasts can also be shared via WiFi.
• The 3×3 song sharing DRM has had its three day restriction removed, but users can still only play files three times.
• There is still NO wireless music store.
• The Zune software is all new and rewritten, and is supposed to actually be more than a rebadge of WMP10 now. Friggin finally.
• The Zune music store is going DRM-free, with over 1m MP3 tracks being made available for download. Other details (like which labels, whether there is a DRM-free upgrade path is for users who’ve bought music with DRM, price differences, etc.) are not yet revealed.