Use FujiPlay To Connect Fuji MX-700 With Linux

I discovered that Fujiplay does a great job of connecting my Fuji MX-700 to my Kubuntu computer, while digiKam & gphoto2 fail miserably. Fujiplay is not KDE or Kubuntu specific, or specific to any desktop, so it should work fine with all Linux computers.

• Fujiplay
• ubuntu hardy fujiplay binaries
• ubuntu hardy fujiplay man pages

In the remainder of the blog entry, I give the details of why I tried Fujiplay, and then rant a little.

At first, I relied on digiKam and gphoto2. Unfortunately, after upgrading KDE, they stopped working properly. I highly recommend that you never use them again, until KDE begins to stabilize.

I assumed that there had to be more software packages out there, that were simple and that just did the simple job of connecting my Linux computer to my Fuji MX-700 camera. It seems that Fujiplay does just that: Fujiplay is a program to control Fujifilm digital cameras under Unix/Linux. It allows you to download pictures, upload pictures, and delete them. You can also press the shutter from the computer..

Fujiplay works wonderfully on my computer. The author does not seem to have any plans for it, other than to debug it to allow other Fuji MX cameras to use it. This means that the software should remain stable, throughout our future Linux upgrades. I highly recommend Fujiplay for all Fuji MX owners. My only problem was needing to turn the camera on and off again, every now and then. For some reason, the photos would stop downloading into my computer. I blame the camera for that, and I am happy to switch it on and off, because the solution is simple.

If you use the software, then please let somebody know what hardware you used, and whether or not it worked for you. This is so important, because it helps us to help other people. In other words, you have freely received this wonderful product that was hard to produce, and by giving feedback, you would be doing your part to ensure that you get better software in return, and your part to make it easier for other people to use it. To give feedback, just send an email to the software author. If you want, you could just simply write the feedback below, and I will send it for you. Please check back here for a response from the software author or from me.

I would like to make a small rant. I assumed that my camera would be considered legacy hardware by now, and that it probably would not work with modern hardware, because the programmers probably could not be bothered with making the modern software work with legacy hardware. I believe this to be true, because I notice that many software packages no longer work on my computer. They worked fine before, but now there are many complaints about software not working, and as far as I know, there is absolutely no response from the software developers. It is pitiful that after all these years, we are still stuck with web browsers [Opera] that still do not render fonts and HTML 4.01 properly, web browsers that are bloated, web browsers that still do not give complete control over the content and style of the entire web site, and office software [OpenOffice.org] that do not have a consistent way of doing things.