The Adventures of a New Linux User

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Profile KSMarksPsych
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Message 11175 - Posted: 24 Jun 2007, 12:11:10 UTC
Last modified: 24 Jun 2007, 12:12:05 UTC

So I've taken the plunge. I installed Ubuntu (Feisty Fawn) on an empty partition yesterday. After a lot of trial and error (and messing up stuff) I managed to get BOINC up and running. I also discovered that Google really is your friend, followed closely by "man".

That was my major goal.

But the quiet was driving me nuts. I have all my music on a separate FAT32 partition. In the application menu, there was RhythmBox. Cool. Not.

Everything is ripped to mp3 and m4a. I got errors about the missing mp3 and m4a gstreamer plug-ins when I tried to import my library.

Used Synaptic (I think) to install the plugins. mp3s play fine now. But I still get the same error with the m4as. Sadly most of my library is ripped to m4a (stupid me forgot to change the ripper in iTunes).

I can play m4as in VLC (I tried it because I recognized the name). But when I try to import the directory with my music in it it doesn't even see the FAT32 partition. If I copy one file over to my home directory I can play it.

So can anyone help a Linux noob figure out how to get rid of the deafening silence in my apartment? My Google skills are failing me. So I'm back in Vista right now just so I can listen to my music (the stuff ripped to mp3 just isn't appealing to me right now). Or does anyone have any recommendations as to another player to try?
Kathryn :o)
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Message 11179 - Posted: 24 Jun 2007, 16:27:37 UTC - in response to Message 11175.  

So I've taken the plunge. I installed Ubuntu (Feisty Fawn) on an empty partition yesterday.

<snip>


I have all my music on a separate FAT32 partition. In the application menu, there was RhythmBox. Cool. Not.

Everything is ripped to mp3 and m4a. I got errors about the missing mp3 and m4a gstreamer plug-ins when I tried to import my library.

Used Synaptic (I think) to install the plugins. mp3s play fine now. But I still get the same error with the m4as. Sadly most of my library is ripped to m4a (stupid me forgot to change the ripper in iTunes).

I can play m4as in VLC (I tried it because I recognized the name). But when I try to import the directory with my music in it it doesn't even see the FAT32 partition. If I copy one file over to my home directory I can play it.


Hey, KSMarksPsych-- this is actually Ageless' girlfriend, motub, popping in as the resident Linux "guru" (Linux user for about 4 years now, but atm my Lin box is down due to a hardware failure... and my Win box is down due to Windows breaking a system file suddenly out of the blue :( ) in-house to help you out to the best of my ability.

First of all, congrats on your efforts, second of all, hang in there (it's worth it in the end, but sometimes climbing the mountain can be tough), and third of all, this issue is probably not either your "fault" or an indication that Linux "sucks"... it may be an indication that Ubuntu sucks, but a lot of people like it and find it easy to use (I'm not one of them), so I abstain from an opinion on the matter.

But you seem to have two issues affecting each other-- one is the need for a media player that recognizes both codecs, and the fact that the files are on a FAT32 partition, which is not necessarily easily recognizeable by any given program, depending on your settings.

Now, you obviously have the codec required, or no program would play/recognize the files. Don't know why Rhythmbox doesn't, as I've not used it. But the program that correctly recognizes the codec doesn't recognize the FAT32 partition (which is why you have to copy the files to your /home folder). Also don't know why this is, out of the many reasons it could be, without looking at the program (which possibly can't read Windows partitions, for all I know; I know VLC as an 'old'-ish app, but don't know if it's currently maintained/updated to be "migration-friendly"), and/or how Ubuntu has set up your system to make Windows-format partitions available to the system (in the /etc/fstab file, which controls the mounting/availability of the various partitions, as well as the permissions and rights users will have to the files made available once they are mounted/visible to the system).

There is also the possibility that Ubuntu is just a bit buggy/borked/a pos in this respect which is nothing that you or I can do anything much about if true. My experience with it was...not good... as soon as I tried to do anything the tiniest bit "abnormal" with it, as in, the first moment I did anything not provided for in the 'off-the-rack' installation. Which would have in and of itself not have been a problem, given that I'm normally a Gentoo user, and the necessity of fiddling around in the depths of my system to customize it for my specific needs is quite ordinary to me.... but the difference I found was that Gentoo's infrastructure expects you to go "off-script" and customize your system, and provides for that--in fact, it's structured for that eventuality-- whereas Ubuntu does not seem to be 'oddball-friendly' (and when it comes to my computer setup, I am definitely an oddball) at all, insofar as when things went bad similar to what you're experiencing, I couldn't find any kind of documentation or support to rectify the issues, because I was apparently expected to toe the line, and if I wasn't, I was on my own. This didn't sit too well with me, frankly, but then again, I'm an oddball, so I can't consider my experience 'normal' for an "average" Ubuntu user.

So what can you do? I'd say your options are to d*ck around with the system and force it to work, which I doubt you feel like being bothered with, even if I could assure you that it would work-- which I can't, it being Ubuntu and all-- or switch media players to one (or two) that do work "out of the box" under the conditions that you require, which solution has a higher probability of success, but still no guarantee (you may well still have to muck around with the system a little bit).

For alternative media players, I would suggest

mplayer which plays everything it's possible to play, video, audio, you-name-it. Just make sure you get the Win32 codec package as well, and feel free to additionally throw in the Real and Quicktime codec packages if they would be useful to you. It is virtually certain that it will play the m4a files; just don't know how/if it will allow you to add files on the FAT32 partition to your playlist, but it should, as long as the FAT32 partition is mounted/available and you're not trying to play files from another PC on the network, for example;

audacious very nice Winamp-like player that I just started using; doesn't play video afaik (unless there's an plugin that I don't know about, which is possible, as I just started using it recently and haven't explored it fully yet), but seems to have all audio types covered; it is also a GTK/GNOME application, which means that you won't have to install (m)any new libraries (or at least any major libraries) or anything to get it to run;

you might also check and see what Totem can do-- it's probably already installed, given that it is one of the default applications of the (full) GNOME desktop; however, I don't know if Ubuntu installs the full default GNOME desktop, so you might not have it. It should be available in your package manager (Synaptic), though, since it is a default component of the full GNOME. Totem is usually considered to be a video player, but it perfectly well ought to play just the audio (since both mp3 and m4a are additionally commonly the audio channel of video/dvd files; I wouldn't necessarily suggest trying ogg, ape or flac files with it, but mp3 and m4a should not be an issue), and the nice thing is that if you can see the FAT32 partition in your file manager, Nautilus, you should be able to see it in Totem (since because Totem is a default component of the GNOME desktop, it is well-integrated with the other aspects of the default GNOME desktop, of which Nautilus is the center).

If you still can't get any player to notice your FAT32 partition, all hope is not lost, but further explanation is beyond the scope of this already-terribly-long post. However, if necessary, or you're just interested, you could check out the "Sharing Partitions across OSes" section of my article Multiple Linux Distros on one drive (with or without Windows), which has more detailed information and instructions on the steps you could take to resolve the remaining issues.

Hope this helps.
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Message 11189 - Posted: 24 Jun 2007, 23:15:12 UTC

You're an angel.

I need time to digest what you wrote.

But I can say this much. My brother (CS student and all around geek) advised to create 4 partitions. 2 as NTFS (one for Vista and one for XP), 1 as ext3 and one as FAT32 for data to be shared across the OSes. Up until trying VLC I had no problems with getting programs to recognize/read/write the FAT32 partition while booted into Linux. Like I said, I tried it because I recognized the name. I'm not wedded to any one player in particular. I just want to find one that works :)

Linux is going to end up being a weekend OS for me for learning purposes. I'm comfortable enough in Vista that I can just get things done. And during the week, I'm all about getting things done. But the weekend is my play time.

BTW: I in no way, shape or form think Linux sucks. It pretty much worked right out of the box for me. It was, by far, one of the quickest and least painful OS installs I've done in ages. I was impressed that one reboot after the installer ran got me up and running. I don't even remember how many times I rebooted when I reinstalled Vista.
Kathryn :o)
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Eric Myers
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Message 11453 - Posted: 3 Jul 2007, 3:04:09 UTC

Kathryn,
I'm glad you asked this because I've just recently been wanting to get the same thing (playing mp3 and m4a's) working on my Linux boxes.

I'm surprised you would have a problem reading from a FAT32 partition. The one problem common to reading from a Windows partition is that Windows will use spaces in directory and file names, and Unix doesn't like that unless you escape the spaces or put the filepath in quotes. Unfortunately some apps (mainly scripts) don't deal with that correctly, and so copying the file to a filepath without spaces gets you around it.

In my case the answer to the question "Gnome or KDE?" is "neither", what some distros refer to as "Classic X". In fact I'd also like something which can be used via the command line interface (CLI) rather than via GUI. I wonder if motub or anybody else has suggestions? If not, or in any case, it looks like I will check out mplayer first.

-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats
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Message 11457 - Posted: 3 Jul 2007, 3:31:41 UTC

Eric.

If motub doesn't see this in a day or so, I'll email her.

This weekend might be for Adventures in Linux again. If I do, the goal is to upgrade BOINC without trashing the install like I did the last time.
Kathryn :o)
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Message 11462 - Posted: 3 Jul 2007, 11:26:36 UTC - in response to Message 11457.  

I think I've found what I need: mpg123

It just plays mp3's, not movies. It works from the command line so there is no GUI. It can play a list of files from a playlist, and there is even a shuffle flag.

It doesn't do m4a, as far as I can tell, so I'm still looking for a way to either play those or convert to mp3.

-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats
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Message 11463 - Posted: 3 Jul 2007, 12:11:25 UTC

The terminal.

**shudder**

I have this fear that I'll mistype one letter and my entire computer will turn into a small black hole.


:)


And yes. I feel the same way about doing stuff in the command window in Windows.
Kathryn :o)
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Message 11466 - Posted: 3 Jul 2007, 12:32:21 UTC - in response to Message 11463.  

The terminal.

**shudder**

I have this fear that I'll mistype one letter and my entire computer will turn into a small black hole.


:)


So you prefer the grapihcal Interface.

**shudder**

I have this fear that I'll miss a button by one point and my entire computer will turn into a small black hole.


:)
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Message 11468 - Posted: 3 Jul 2007, 13:06:26 UTC

LOL.

I never said it was a rational fear.

:o)
Kathryn :o)
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Message 11473 - Posted: 3 Jul 2007, 13:37:23 UTC - in response to Message 11463.  

KSMarks wrote:
The terminal.

**shudder**

I have this fear that I'll mistype one letter and my entire computer will turn into a small black hole.


:)


And yes. I feel the same way about doing stuff in the command window in Windows.


One important thing to keep in mind is that you should only use the 'root' account to do what it needs to do. Otherwise, use a non-privileged user account and this will protect you from such mistakes.

There are advantages to both GUI and CLI. A GUI interface with menus can step you through what you can/need to do, without having to read a lot of documentation. The down side is that you can only do what the menus let you do. With the CLI you can do much more, but of course you need to know a bit more about what you can do. As you have already mentioned, 'man' is your friend. So is 'info', and most commands now take -h or --help arguments and show you a command summary.

-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats
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Message 11475 - Posted: 3 Jul 2007, 13:49:41 UTC
Last modified: 3 Jul 2007, 13:50:58 UTC

For what I'm looking for mpg123 works fine. So Kathryn, if you want some music in your apartment quickly here is what you can do (and this should work on any Unix, not just Ubuntu/Debian).

1. Download mpg123 source from sourceforge.net or from mpg123.org. Either the .tar.gz or the .tar.bz2 file is fine, they are the same tar archive compressed with different algorithms. Put the file somewhere you can work on it (you'll delete it when you are done).[Alternatively, you can get it via SVN, which is the same way you can get the BOINC source code, but it sounds like you may not want to play with SVN yet].

2. Open a terminal window and cd to the directory where you will work, which contains the downloaded source code archive. Uncompress it with either `gunzip` (for .gz) or `bunzip2` for the .tar.bz2 file. This will result in a tar archive file mpg123-0.66.tar

3. Unpack the archive with the command `tar xf mpg123-0.66.tar`, which produces a subdirectory called mpg123-0.66. Change your current directory (`cd`) to that subdirectory.

4. Give the command `./configure` to run the configuration script. At the end you should get a summary of the configuration. All the defaults should be good.

5. Give the command `make` to build the executable.

6. Now become the 'root' user with the `su` command. Then give the command `make install` to install the executable and documentation under /usr/local. Then say `exit` to drop root privs.

This is a fairly standard procedure for a wide range of tools available for Unix boxes, so if anybody tells you "just build it from source" you'll likely just follow steps like this.

You can now delete the tarball and the subdirectory, though maybe you do so after you verify that it all works.

-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats
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Message 11476 - Posted: 3 Jul 2007, 13:52:52 UTC

You make me laugh Eric.

I swear to you the tears are streaming down my face as I type this.

I understood everything up to (and including) the first cd. After that. You could have written it in Hex for as much as I understood. Actually I understand the concepts. Just not the details.

I promise I'll be a good student and Google. But I've gotta stop laughing first.

Kathryn :o)
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Message 11478 - Posted: 3 Jul 2007, 13:58:08 UTC

Once you have mpg123 built and installed here is how to use it.

First, if you are using the same terminal window in which you built the executable, give the command `rehash` to get the executable in your command path. You only have to do this in any pre-existing window. New windows will find it without this, assuming /usr/local/bin is in your execution path (it should be).

Let's assume all your music is in one directory, say ~/music. Then cd to that directory and create a playlist of all mp3 files:

cd ~/music
ls *.mp3 > playlist

Now to play them all, in random order (shuffle mode) just give the command

mpg123 -@ playlist -Z

The -@ argument plays the files listed in the file playlist, and the -Z flag puts it in shuffle mode.

If you want to control the volume or balance you can open another terminal shell and run 'alsamixer'.

There may be GUI tools which also do the same things, but this will get you going quickly while you search for one you like, and you'll have the satisfaction of having learned how to build something from source.


-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats
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Message 11479 - Posted: 3 Jul 2007, 14:07:51 UTC

Sorry, the residence guru is watching Justice on DVD. She promised to come by later though.

Eric, what about Linamp? If Winamp can do, perhaps Linamp can do as well. And else it's mplayer, as apparently it's King.
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Message 11486 - Posted: 3 Jul 2007, 14:52:12 UTC - in response to Message 11479.  

Jord wrote:

Eric, what about Linamp? If Winamp can do, perhaps Linamp can do as well. And else it's mplayer, as apparently it's King.

I don't know Linamp. I got mplayer from SVN and will see what happens. I also was reminded of xmms, which is an audio player for X11 (doesn't require Gnome or KDE) which I've used with some success in the past. Kathryn will likely want something which has a good GUI interface, and mplayer can also play movies.

-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats
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Message 11487 - Posted: 3 Jul 2007, 14:57:11 UTC - in response to Message 11486.  

...Kathryn will likely want something which has a good GUI interface...



Kathryn wouldn't mind if it had a crappy GUI. She's extremely afraid of the terminal. And when she starts reading Linux-speak, she starts laughing uncontrollably.

:)

But I do promise to try to figure it out. Just not at midnight :D


(heading to bed)
Kathryn :o)
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Message 11488 - Posted: 3 Jul 2007, 16:01:20 UTC - in response to Message 11487.  


Kathryn wouldn't mind if it had a crappy GUI. She's extremely afraid of the terminal. And when she starts reading Linux-speak, she starts laughing uncontrollably.


Understood. But if we can find a way to talk you through those first steps, I think you will find that it's easier than you think. Don't worry too much about the terminal. Most of the ways you can screw up won't do much damage at all, contrary to some of the scary stories you have heard.

I've looked at the README file in the mplayer distribution (most source code distributions come with a file called README which tells you where to get started) and it indicates that it's a CLI tool, but there is also a separate GUI interface, with skin support. That's the best way to do it, because then you can use both as needed. So I will try building that next.
-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats
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Message 11498 - Posted: 3 Jul 2007, 21:06:42 UTC

I do want to say I was completely serious when I said I will try to learn. Any GUI is appreciated. But there will come I time (I hope) that I can read what Eric wrote and feel confident enough to try it without fearing the total destruction of Ulsan from a self-destructing computer.
Kathryn :o)
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Message 11526 - Posted: 5 Jul 2007, 17:19:07 UTC

I'm happy to report that motub is right, and mplayer is a great thing. It plays both mp3 and m4a files, and it works via the command line (there is an optional GUI to go with it which I have not tried yet).

Building it is as easy as mpg123. Get the source files (from www.mplayerhq.hu), then say configure; make; make install. Easy.

To play a song: mplayer filename.m4a

-Eric

-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats
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Message 11535 - Posted: 5 Jul 2007, 22:23:11 UTC

I'll try mplayer next time I boot into Linux. Maybe one evening next week.

Looks like this weekend is for more adventures with VS... oh yeah... and report cards.
Kathryn :o)
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