Amarok woes after Ubuntu 9.04 > 9.10

Hi :)

After any install of Ubuntu or after an upgrade to a new release please always run through the Medibuntu worksheet to try to sort all the multimedia in 1 easy session
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/medibuntu

This goes a lot further than just installing restricted extras although that is one of the things it does.

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Hi :)

After any install of Ubuntu or after an upgrade to a new release please always run through the Medibuntu worksheet to try to sort all the multimedia in 1 easy session
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Medibuntu

This goes a lot further than just installing restricted extras although that is one of the things it does.

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Thanks for the info,
this is the first I've heard about Medibuntu.

Appreciate it,
Dave

Hi :)

It's fairly crucial. Sometimes people just do 1 or 2 parts from it, such as installing the restricted extras. I tend to avoid losing the non-free components but hopefully one day i might be able to go completely OpenSource. So far i haven't had to pay anything.

Medibuntu contains a lot of stuff that Ubuntu & Cannonical can't official endorse or allow in their systems in certain countries for copyright reasons. Medibuntu allows you to choose which bits you think you can use without running into legal problems. Err, note that i am just a volunteer here and not connected with Cannonical in any way (except i enjoy using their stuff ;) ).

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Thanks Tom, I started reading through the page
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Medibuntu

and I've done the first two steps, added the repository and issued the command that allows
the apps to appear in the Software Center. I've yet to examine it further.

Although I've had Linux installed for a couple of years, I haven't used it that often
and I've barely skimmed the surface in terms of understanding.

One thing I was considering trying was the installation of the Kubuntu Desktop.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FromUbuntuToKubuntu
The instructions seem relatively simple, can't see any downside except that it uses
a little more disk space.

I'm trying to troubleshoot another problem that appears when the recommended Nvidia driver
is installed, Playing video's in Movie Player the colors are all wrong - flesh tones are blue,etc.
Have you ever heard of this before? I posted a question in the multimedia section of the main
Ubuntu forums, but I didn't get a response yet (except from myself)
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1465052

Hi :)

Please re-post the question in here
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/amarok/+addquestion

There are quite a few official forums each attracting different people but mostly we are all volunteers. Here in Launchpad it is also not really able to cope with questions that are a few days old and still unanswered. So sometimes things do just slip through the net and need to be re-asked.

Given that different people have different expertise i would generally post to any 1 of the 3 main forums i like here, there or
http://www.linuxquestions.org
and wait a couple of days before re-posting.

If i had to repost i would probably then post to all 3. When i get the answer i just copy the link into the 2 that didn't get it. Hopefully that way we build up the knowledge base of all 3 which can only help Ubuntu spread faster :) Of course some people do volunteer on 2 or even 3 of those!

Hopefully the blue-skin issue might clear up once you have gone through the Medibuntu guide. I'm sure i did read the guide one time but usually i just copy and paste almost anything they put in coding brackets if it looks at all relevant as the wrong stuff just throws up error messages and doesn't install :) Yeh, i know it's lazy but it works :)

To install Kubuntu just try

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

You might need to logout to "Switch User" - Change Session - Pick Kubuntu - errr, and then l;og back in as yourself again.

Generally i would advise setting up a new user for Kubuntu or better still install Kubuntu onto a 5-10Gb partition on its own but sharing the same /home partition but with a different user-name. However, i'm not sure you are quite ready for all that yet! So i guess just install the kubuntu stuff and see how it goes.

Since you are into exploring it might be a very good idea to make a separate /home partition just to keep all your data&settings safer from accidents
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Partitioning/Home/Moving
Most "distro-hoppers" do this & use different user-names for different distros sharing it
http://www.distrowatch.com

Note that the new and extremely light-weight "lubuntu" is well worth trying out! It is not officially recognised as being part of Ubuntu but it's working on it :)

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Good info - thanks.
I did join Linuxquestions.org - in the end solved the problem of incorrect colors myself.
I went into the movie player preferences and hit 'reset" on the video settings.
Even though none of the adjustments had previously been adjusted, this resolved the problem.

I'm sharing a 250GB drive between two installs of XP, one of Vista, and one Ubuntu.
I'm using the Vista boot loader and it all works quite well. That's the problem with it though,
I'm a little locked in to the configuration. I've got the typical newbie setup, small swap fie
and a main Linux partition on the same - drive. I've seen others recommend the separate "home',
but I never understood the benefit. I'll read up at the link you posted and try and enlighten myself.

9.10 is behaving well, seems quite snappy, a bit more responsive compared to 9.04.

Regarding Amarok, after loading the medibuntu PPA and running the Update Manager
to do the updates, it started working. Amarok is apparently a Kubuntu program -
I used to think that meant you actually had to be running Kubuntu (Desktop) for it to work,.
but it's running fine in Gnome (Ubuntu) - isn't that a little confusing ?

Anyway, enough philosophizing for one day!
Regards,
Dave .
but it runs

Hi :)

When you install program using a package manager it tends to drag in all the packages it needs (or depends on) in order to work. By installing Amarok you probably dragged in quite a lot of KDE stuff as 'dependencies'.

The advantages of /home ...

1. Each time you install or re-install it tends to re-format the / partition which loses all the data&settings stored there. Sometimes it is possible to avoid that but generally it is better to reformat the / So having a separate /home means that you can reformat / without touching the data&settings in /home. Unlike Windows ALL the users data&setting are stored in /home, there's no photo albums or templates or other stuff scattered around weird hidden folders.

2. Upgrading to a new release of whichever operating system can also lead to daat&settings stored on the same partition as the OS potentially being wiped. This is why it is important to back-up data before upgrading. Of course Murphy's Law means that the data only goes missing if there is something crucial that you haven't backed up. So if you have reasonable back-ups then probably this wont go wrong like this.

3. The /home could use a different file-system from the / partition so in a multi-boot with Windows you could have the /home on an Ntfs partition so that Windows could easily use the same data.

4. Probably most crucially you can have the /home on a separate physical hard-drive from the / but since Windows does not handle 2nd partitions or other drives at all well you will have no idea about the benefits until you have tried using a separate /home on a separate physical hard-drive. So there's no good reason to try, until you try it and then you wish you had tried it before lol

When the /home is on a separate partition the / partition can comfortably be as small as 5Gb which means it can easily fit onto very fast drives!
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)