gmusicbrowser on Debian bullseye

gmusicbrowser is not longer available as a package to install to Debian Linux. It was removed in 2019, due to lack of maintenance and Debian bug 912882. The root cause was that gmusicbrowser depended on libgtk2-perl, which was being dropped.

gmusicbrowser issue 57 tracks progress to migrate to gtk3 since 2013. The 1.1.99.1 release is the first based on gtk3 but there has been a year of development since then, as yet unreleased.

Fortunately, it is easy to install the gtk3 based gmusicbrowser on Debian bullseye with xfce4 desktop. It is probably as easy to install with any other desktops, but I haven't tried any of them.

$ git clone https://github.com/squentin/gmusicbrowser.git
$ cd gmusicbrowser
$ sudo make install

I didn't have to install any packages beyond what were already installed.

I haven't tested it extensively, but I haven't had any problems. If you too like gmusicbrowser, you can install it to current Debian system easily this way, and probably many other systems.

Preparing to configure Windows

 I bought a new laptop - a dynabook tecra. It came pre-installed with Windows 10. Completing the Windows 10 setup was easy but for the next few days, every time I reboot it installs more updates.

This time, it has been displaying 'Preparing to configure Windows' for over 20 minutes with no indication of progress or when it might finish. 

The Windows Club has a page on this. They recommend waiting for 2 hours before giving up and trying anything other than waiting.

TWO HOURS! For an update. Not even a full install.

I can complete an update of Linux in about 2 minutes, typically.

What is Microsoft thinking, to make such an obtuse update process? It's not like they are beginners, without experience. They have been doing this for years.

It is because of nonsense like this that I prefer Linux. I never have such problems with Linux.

I would just abort the Windows update but, being conservative, I want to backup the Windows partitions before I wipe them and install Linux and I don't want the backups corrupted by an incomplete update. I am having to reboot a few times to confirm I have all the Linux issues sorted (modules and firmware for all the essential hardware). It is extremely annoying having to deal with Windows again.

Eventually it had completed its update and now I am unable to access the BIOS setup or boot menu. It boots straight to Windows every time, restart or shutdown and boot. Fucking Windows update - it was working normally until the fucking update.