Abstract

Launchcast is not supported under Linux. This is a problem for those who need to run Linux exclusively but enjoy listening to Launchcast. This paper explores solutions to this problem. Currently, no free solution has been found. It is unlikely that a free solution will be found in the near future because of Launchcast's dependence on ActiveX. It is hoped that, through community collaboration, a free solution will be found in the future.

Introduction

Yahoo currently exclusively supports Internet Explorer 5.0 and up under Windows. Previously, they listed Netscape 4.7 as a supported web browser under Windows. Netscape 4.5-4.7 are supported under the Macintosh.

Technologies Launchcast uses include: Macromedia Flash Version 6 or above (for the ratings tool), Windows Media Player, and ActiveX.

Kudos to Jesse Pangburn, who alerted me to the fact that Launchcast uses ActiveX. His claim is supported by Launchcast's on-line documentation. While Macromedia Flash is supported under Linux, and windows media player can be emulated with Mplayer, I know of no work-around to successfully display ActiveX controls under Linux. This will be the single largest roadblock to implementing a free solution to Launchcast over Linux. Currently, the only known solutions involve setting up an emulation environment and running Microsoft software on top of it.

The rest of this paper details the non-free and free solutions other people and I have pursued.

Non-Free Solutions

The following are possible non-free solutions:
  • Wine. The solution closest to free that may actually work is running Internet Explorer 6 under Wine. This solution should be "free" in the monetary sense since Wine is freely available and Internet Explorer 6 can be installed from the internet free of charge. Of course, "free as in freedom" software purists should eschew this option. Also, as this website points out, by running IE over Wine you may be technically violating Microsoft's EULA.

    That said, running IE on Linux via Wine seems relatively common and there is actually quite a bit of information on how to do it. I, however, have not tried this yet and simply present links to the information for now. Wine is continually under development, so there is no guarantee Launchcast is going to work bug-free (or at all) under Wine.

    Here are some useful links pertaining to running IE over Wine.

  • Cross-Over Office has worked for some. Cross-over office is a commercial version of Wine and comes in various forms. The most relevant form is the Crossover plugin which allows Linux web browsers to support various Windows formats (including Windows Media Player).

    Kyle Howen writes in and says that the trial version of Crossover plugin has worked for him, but is buggy. Specifically, he has experienced freezing and crashing issues and high loading times.

  • Win4Lin. Win4Lin appears to be an emulation environment in which an instance of MS Windows can run (much like VMWare). Win4Lin claims to have good sound and ActiveX support.

    Win4Lin has worked for some. It may be worth a try, if you are willing to shell out the bucks.

  • VMWare. Similar to Win4Lin, it runs an instance of Windows over emulated hardware. While it should work just as well as Win4Lin, I have heard from one of my friends that VMWare has traditionally had bad sound card support - which is no good for Launchcast!

Free Solutions

As stated previously, there appears to be no free way to use Launchcast under Linux. However, I will still recount my previous efforts in this section on the chance that they will be useful to somebody.

Previous Work

Currently, if I log into the Launchcast website and attempt to listen to my station, a window pops up and an "undefined" message takes the place of where the player would be.

Using Mozilla 1.5

I first attempted to fool Launchcast into thinking I am running netscape 4.0. This is easy to do. Editing "$HOME/.mozilla/$USER/somename/user.js" to contain a line like this:

user_pref("general.useragent.override", "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0; T312461)");

Does the trick.

This trick causes Launchcast to eliminate the "undefined" screen and replaces it with the a blank window of the correct Launchcast color scheme. However, no player appears.

This was disappointing, since I know that Flash has been properly installed for Mozilla under Linux. What may be missing is the mplayer plugin for mozilla. The Mplayer plugin may be able to fool Launchcast into thinking I have windows media player installed. I need to do more work to investigate this option.

Using Netscape 4.77

I downloaded Netscape 4.77 from netscape's website. With Netscape 4.77, Launchcast pops up a window much like the one Mozilla 1.5 gets when it is pretending to be Netscape 4. However, in addition to this, a message is displayed, saying I need a plugin for type "application/x-mplayer2".

This is encouraging, since it appears to actually want to display something. I downloaded the mplayer plug-in, compiled it from source, and dropped mplayerplug-in.so into the netscape plugin directory. Netscape immediately complained about requiring the libxpcom.so library in order to load the mplayer plug-in correctly. Mozilla 1.5 had this library, so I dropped it into /usr/lib and tried again. This time Netscape appears to load the plug-in correctly, but then experiences a segmentation fault when loading the window.

This is as far as I have gotten with this solution. Perhaps I should try finding an alternative source of libxpcom.so instead of dropping Mozilla's version of it into /usr/lib. I imagine it is likely that the new and old code are incompatible with each other. If anyone tries this out, please let me know.

Other Solutions

If you strictly want to watch music videos available on Launchcast, Kyle Howen points out this interesting hack written in perl that allows mplayer to do just that. A more detailed description of the reverse engineering process that went into writing the script can be found here. I have not tried it myself, but it certainly sounds fun! I wonder if the music streams can be accessed in a similar manner?

Another idea is to give Yahoo your feedback and say how spiffy it would be if Launchcast ran under Linux. There is also an on-line petition you can sign. Yahoo is a business, after all, and will offer Launchcast for Linux if they think it will make them money. It will make them money if enough Linux users listen to the station and their advertisements.

Failing everything else, there is always using XMMS to stream mp3 music from sources such as shoutcast. Of course, such audio broadcasts are a one-way medium, and lose the interactivity of Launchcast.

Conclusion

It is sad that there appears to be no free way to run Launchcast under Linux. Doubly sad is the fact that the closest-to-free solution, IE6 under Wine, will likely be time-consuming to set up and buggy. With good Windows emulation software in the $80 price range or so, it almost makes more sense to keep around a windows machine as a dedicated Launchcast box. However, as Linux enthusiasts, that would certainly be a blow to the old pride, eh?

If anyone would like to pick up one of my solutions where I left off, please contact me. I will continue working on it in my spare time, but progress is slow.

You can find my contact information on my home page.

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