KDE Sunset Amarok
 

Recently, something apparently changed on my system during an update
such that Amarok 1 from KDE Sunset will no longer build with the mp4 USE
flag turned on. Since that effectively means that it would no longer be
able to play M4A files ripped from YouTube streams, that would
effectively end my interest in Amarok, so I tried upgrading to the new
QT4 version just to see if it's as awful as everybody says.


It is as awful as everybody says.

It will play MP4, but the layout is absurd. It has a tab for Internet
streams that doesn't let you add any streams the author didn't include
with it. It wants you to put your streams into playlists, but doesn't
let you give them titles. It feels slow and unresponsive, and from my
brief usage of the program, it doesn't seem to support global
(desktop-wide) hotkeys -- you have to focus its window to make it do
things like advance to the next track. It also no longer lets you do
things like delete actual files while deleting playlist items like
Amarok 1 used to (useful for those songs you've just had it with).
When playing user-added Internet streams from your playlist (the only
place they can be, thanks to the above), if anything goes wrong
connecting to them, they get removed, which is fun if they playlist you
currently have running was the only place they were saved.


So...I'd really like my Amarok 1.4 back...

Has anyone else had problems building it with MP4 support lately?


Addendum: (Also, in an unrelated note, has anyone noticed that the EAPI
warnings from the overlay have gotten really heinous lately during world
updates?)


--
+ Brent A. Busby + "We've all heard that a million monkeys
+ Sr. UNIX Systems Admin + banging on a million typewriters will
+ University of Chicago + eventually reproduce the entire works of
+ James Franck Institute + Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet,
+ Materials Research Ctr + we know this is not true." -Robert Wilensky

KDE Sunset Amarok
 

Hi!

On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 11:41:22AM -0500, Brent Busby wrote:
> So...I'd really like my Amarok 1.4 back...

My use case differs from yours, so I'm not sure it's a good advice, but if
you didn't tried media-sound/clementine yet - you probably should try it.
For me it completely replaced Amarok 1.4, I've configured it exactly like
my Amarok 1.4 was configured and use it in exactly same way (some global
hotkeys configured using my window manager (fluxbox) with help of `qdbus`).

I like Amarok 1.4 very much, but there is no sense in using it anymore -
it's too outdated, require a lot of outdated libs, and thus it will have
more and more troubles with compilation, more security issues, etc.
It's dead. This is very sad, but only way to go is try to switch to one of
replacements for Amarok 1.4 - there are about 3-4 such projects AFAIK
(which was born as replacement for Amarok 1.4), and clementine is one of them.

--
WBR, Alex.

KDE Sunset Amarok
 

On Sun, 22 Jul 2012, Alex Efros wrote:

My use case differs from yours, so I'm not sure it's a good advice,
but if you didn't tried media-sound/clementine yet - you probably
should try it. For me it completely replaced Amarok 1.4, I've
configured it exactly like my Amarok 1.4 was configured and use it in
exactly same way (some global hotkeys configured using my window
manager (fluxbox) with help of `qdbus`).


Thanks, I'll check it out..

--
+ Brent A. Busby + "We've all heard that a million monkeys
+ Sr. UNIX Systems Admin + banging on a million typewriters will
+ University of Chicago + eventually reproduce the entire works of
+ James Franck Institute + Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet,
+ Materials Research Ctr + we know this is not true." -Robert Wilensky

KDE Sunset Amarok
 

Brent Busby writes:

> Recently, something apparently changed on my system during an update
> such that Amarok 1 from KDE Sunset will no longer build with the mp4
> USE flag turned on.

I also suggest to try media-sound/clementine. I any Amarok 1 will be
fixed by anyone.

> Since that effectively means that it would no
> longer be able to play M4A files ripped from YouTube streams, that
> would effectively end my interest in Amarok, so I tried upgrading to
> the new QT4 version just to see if it's as awful as everybody says.
>
> It is as awful as everybody says.

Not me, I really like Amarok 2. For me, it is the KDE4 software I am most
happy with.

Wonko

KDE Sunset Amarok
 

Am 22.07.12 18:41, schrieb Brent Busby:
> Recently, something apparently changed on my system during an update
> such that Amarok 1 from KDE Sunset will no longer build with the mp4 USE
> flag turned on. Since that effectively means that it would no longer be
> able to play M4A files ripped from YouTube streams, that would
> effectively end my interest in Amarok, so I tried upgrading to the new
> QT4 version just to see if it's as awful as everybody says.

Hello,

this will not solve your problem with Amarok, but it could bypass it.
http://www.youtube-mp3.org/
This site will let you download the Files as MP3 if you do not want to
recode them yourself.

Norman

KDE Sunset Amarok
 

Norman Rieß writes:

> Am 22.07.12 18:41, schrieb Brent Busby:
> > Recently, something apparently changed on my system during an update
> > such that Amarok 1 from KDE Sunset will no longer build with the mp4
> > USE flag turned on. Since that effectively means that it would no
> > longer be able to play M4A files ripped from YouTube streams, that
> > would effectively end my interest in Amarok, so I tried upgrading to
> > the new QT4 version just to see if it's as awful as everybody says.

> this will not solve your problem with Amarok, but it could bypass it.
> http://www.youtube-mp3.org/
> This site will let you download the Files as MP3 if you do not want to
> recode them yourself.

I can recommend media-sound/soundkonverter for such conversion tasks.
Just drop the video into the soundKonverter window, select the desired
output format and location, and start the conversion.

http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/soundKonverter?content=29024

Wonko

KDE Sunset Amarok
 

On Sun, 22 Jul 2012 11:41:22 -0500 (CDT)
Brent Busby <brent@keycorner.org> wrote:

> Recently, something apparently changed on my system during an update
> such that Amarok 1 from KDE Sunset will no longer build with the mp4 USE
> flag turned on. Since that effectively means that it would no longer be
> able to play M4A files ripped from YouTube streams, that would
> effectively end my interest in Amarok, so I tried upgrading to the new
> QT4 version just to see if it's as awful as everybody says.
[...]
> So...I'd really like my Amarok 1.4 back...

The Trinity Project's version might work, but if you're using KDE3 as
a desktop environment, the upgrade may cause other problems.

Read http://wiki.hasnoname.de/tde:trinity-overlay_on_funtoo_gentoo
for instructions if you'd like to try it.

> Addendum: (Also, in an unrelated note, has anyone noticed that the EAPI
> warnings from the overlay have gotten really heinous lately during world
> updates?)

Yes, I'd noticed that too. If I'm interpreting the warning correctly, someone
has to go through and swap the KMNAME and EAPI lines in most of the
ebuilds to get EAPI into the first 5 lines.

KDE Sunset Amarok
 

Thanks to all, I tried Clementine and it's awesome.

--
+ Brent A. Busby + "We've all heard that a million monkeys
+ Sr. UNIX Systems Admin + banging on a million typewriters will
+ University of Chicago + eventually reproduce the entire works of
+ James Franck Institute + Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet,
+ Materials Research Ctr + we know this is not true." -Robert Wilensky

KDE Sunset Amarok
 

Alex Schuster posted on Sun, 22 Jul 2012 20:18:12 +0200 as excerpted:

> Not me, I really like Amarok 2. For me, it is the KDE4 software I am
> most happy with.

LOL! ... And you DO have your problems with kde4!

(FWIW, those who don't understand what I'm referring to, apparently
aren't regulars on the kde-linux and kde-general lists.

Both AS/Wonko and I have had our problems, tho mine at least are
reasonable solved, now, by switching to non-kde solutions for a lot of
stuff, mpd and front-ends as a music player, tho it's MUCH different than
amarok but better fits my usage tho I miss the visualizations but kde4-
amarok killed that anyway tho for all I know it's back now, claws-mail
for mail and as a feed-reader, killing with fire anything akonadi related
including kmail and akregator, my own scripts in a konsole popup
replacing kde3's multikey hotkey functionality, as it's apparently
entirely broken and unfixable in qt4 (qt5 is supposed to have the feature
again, tho, but that doesn't help with qt4/kde4), the qt4-based smplayer
and qt4-front-ended vlc replacing kaffeine, firefox replacing konqueror,
since it became very apparent with the treatment of various bugs and https
certificate handling that the kde devs don't consider konqueror any more
than a "toy" browser, or they'd not have called kde4 including konqueror
ready for ordinary users, when it was seriously bugged, including
security issues... and it's still kde4 but I switched to the yasp-
scripted and then superkaramba to replace the missing ksysguard plasmoid/
kicker applet. Meanwhile, with akonadi killed with fire, I was able to
set USE=-semantic-desktop, regardless of the semantic-desktop lead-weight
being a major bullet-point feature of kde4, and get back the performance
kde4 otherwise robs compared to kde3.

But I still like kde's general configurability, and plasma as a desktop's
actually quite good, once you add a few plasmoids from kdelook and
configure everything to your liking. kwin's also quite configurable, and
I like the available effects and kde integration. And with a decent mid-
range graphics card (radeon hd4650 on the old system, radeon hd6770 on
the new, freedomware drivers of course) it's fast and stable. I'm
actually quite happy with kde4 now, even if I had to dump about half of
it including setting USE=-semantic-desktop, to get there. Also on the
bright side, since I'm not using kde for mail, feeds or the web any
longer, only mainly the desktop/wm and games, and with kde4 since 4.5 now
much more stable (sans kdepim with its akonadification) I'm now freed of
the concerns that kept me from running pre-releases earlier, and have
been running them since 4.7-rc2, thru 4.8 betas and rcs and 4.9 betas,
and now am on 4.9-rc2, waiting 4.9.0-release in a couple weeks or so. =:^)

Umm... sorry. I got a bit carried away there. I intended that to be
only a few lines poking wonko, but then I realized some wouldn't grok the
context, and...

--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman

KDE Sunset Amarok
 

Brent Busby posted on Sun, 22 Jul 2012 12:00:42 -0500 as excerpted:

> On Sun, 22 Jul 2012, Alex Efros wrote:
>
>> My use case differs from yours, so I'm not sure it's a good advice, but
>> if you didn't tried media-sound/clementine yet - you probably should
>> try it. For me it completely replaced Amarok 1.4, I've configured it
>> exactly like my Amarok 1.4 was configured and use it in exactly same
>> way (some global hotkeys configured using my window manager (fluxbox)
>> with help of `qdbus`).
>
> Thanks, I'll check it out..

Please do. I've not used it as I found a different solution (mpd and
front-ends) worked better for my needs, but going by all the reviews and
etc I've seen, clementine really IS pretty much universally regarded as
the modern successor to kde3's amarok, what amarok for kde4 SHOULD have
been to carry on the name, while kde4's amarok is really an entirely
different application in both code and usage.

Based on all I've read, I highly doubt you'll be disappointed, and will
probably wonder why you hadn't switched sooner, saving the headaches of
maintaining your old amarok. =:^)

--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman