Apr 26, 2008

Install XMMS on Ubuntu ( 8.04 ) Hardy Heron

First: I'm not an Ubuntu user, but I would like to help newbies to get XMMS working on Ubuntu Hardy Heron.
Why: a) A guy entered #xmms on Freenode and wanted to install XMMS on him Ubuntu, so I tried to help him.
b) XMMS is still a good player, and if somebody wants to use it, why not help him?

We will install XMMS from source, but there are alternatives though like:
1) change your distro
2) try gutsy packages

OK, let's start

First Step:
We need to download the required packages to compile XMMS
# sudo apt-get install autotools-dev automake1.9 libtool gettext libasound2-dev libaudiofile-dev \
libgl1-mesa-dev libglib1.2-dev libgtk1.2-dev libesd0-dev libice-dev libmikmod2-dev libogg-dev \
libsm-dev libvorbis-dev libxxf86vm-dev libxml-dev libssl-dev build-essential make

Depending on your internet connection and your machine this may take some minutes.

Second Step:
Prepare the XMMS for compiling
Create a directory in your HOME directory:
# mkdir ~/build
Change the working directory to it:
# cd ~/build
Download XMMS sources:
# wget http://legacy.xmms2.org/xmms-1.2.11.tar.gz
Unpack it:
# tar xvf xmms-1.2.11.tar.gz
Change the working directory to the source directory:
# cd xmms-1.2.11/
Third Step:
Compiling it:
This generates the necessary files, and checks your system:
# ./configure --prefix=/usr
The actually compiling
# make
Fourth Step:
Install it:
# sudo make install
After install we no longer need the source directory:
# cd
# rm -rf ~/build

That's it, now we can run XMMS: press ALT+F2 write xmms there and hit enter and enjoy your music.

NOTE: many people say that XMMS is old, buggy,no UTF-8 support, etc. Yes maybe all is true, but it's an audio player not a media library organizer, so it plays music and you listen, that's all and it does that job.

UPDATE:
Flac Plugin

We need to get the build dependencies
# sudo apt-get build-dep flac

You already know what's this ;)
# mkdir ~/build
# cd ~/build

Get flac's sources
# apt-get source flac

Another well known step:)
# cd flac-1.2.1
# ./configure
# make

It's enough to copy the plugin, not to install the whole flac stuff, this is good if will be flac update, note, an update wont break the plugin.
# cp src/plugin_xmms/.libs/libxmms-flac.so ~/.xmms/Plugins
# cd
# rm -rf ~/build

UPDATE2:
Knuta's Ubuntu & Debian repo

Check out here

hardyxmms

210 comments:

  1. Very good instructions, it takes me only 10 minutes to done this.

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  2. Hey!

    Just wanted to drop by and thank you! This really saved my bacon becuase, frankly, I don't like "Media organisers/players" with to much bling bling and funktions. I want a slim mp3 player and you really made my day with this howto.

    Thanks man!

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  3. Tank's it worked as expected!
    ;-)

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  4. Muchas gracias por las instrucciones
    me fueron de mucha utilidad
    gracias :)

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  5. nice instructions (though you fail if you can't figure out how to compile something, but you also fail if you use Ubuntu, so i guess, meh), but why not just use Audacious? It fixes all the shortcomings you mentioned about XMMS, it uses GTK2 instead of GTK1 and it's actually in active development...Oh, and it adds a bunch of other nice stuff that XMMS doesn't offer.

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  6. jd:
    Listen, that's good in "linux" world, you can choose what you want to use, and please let users to choose what they use, as you noticed I have here postive feedback, so that means that users still want to use XMMS, that's why I don't agree with removal from distros, IMHO there are many packages in ubuntu (debian) which users don't use and only the developer/packager knows about them.
    XMMS will be dead when no one will use it;)

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  7. One thing I liked in Xmms was that I could click "Add", then select to add every file in a directory. Does anyone know if you can do this in Audacious. Seems like a pretty fundamental feature to me but neither Audacious or Totem support it - it seems like you have to go through and add every file individually... I'm sticking with XMMS for now.

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  8. I do not agree sartek. People who agree with you do so probably because they are tuned to xmms. Audacious is not that different. neither in quality and mem foot-print nor in look and feel. I don't see why not shift to it then be stuck on an outdated player.

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  9. hey manish
    In my experiences, Audacious is slower, eats more memory then XMMS.
    I tried many audio players, but all has problems with a huge collection when adding it as well as when searching in it.

    It's not about look-and-feel.
    Why are you saying that it's outdated?
    If you consider that 1.2.10 version was released in 2004, only minor fixes till now and it builds with newer gcc's (on new distros)...

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  10. Thank you very much.

    I can´t believe they actually removed it in the first place. Shocking...

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  11. Thanks man i will try this ;) BTW xmms rocks!!

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  12. hey, thanks a lot
    finally i can play my favorite music in HH

    matur suwun >>> javanese language

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  13. Thanx a lot for the guide. You saved the day! As an old Winamp user I have always felt comfortable with XMMS and now I can continue to feel comfortable. ;)

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  14. Great writeup, thanks!

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  15. Wow ! I was already very unhappy to miss the beautiful XMMS on Hardy.
    In my opinion it is the real and only one mp3 player.
    I used the "clone" Winamp on Windoz systems since years. - By the way still the nice Winamp 2.74 - Because I don't know why a music player should play video and all this stuff.
    Thank you again for your very good instructions. Worked perfect on the german version of Hardy.

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  16. Thank you so much for this how to. I've looked everywhere it seems to find xmms for hardy. My problem still remains though. I don't get any sound at all. The player plays but no sound comes out. I've got a sneaky suspicion that it's because I'm running 64 bit.

    Thank You!!!

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  17. I just installed Audacious which fits the bill fine. I miss xmms though. Call it nostalgia or whatever you want. Excellent How To. Just wanted to give an alternative to those struggling with Hardy 64bit and xmms.

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  18. Thank you for your great work. I was ready to remove Ubuntu 8.04 and replace it with the previous 7.10.

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  19. Thanks for the good manual, with this i got xmms working :) Thanks ~

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  20. Thanks so much! Also, surprisingly there actually is a version for hardy, and its on launchpad. https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/hardy/+source/xmms/ I got it _after_ I did this because I needed/wanted global hotkeys, but that depended on xmms-dev, which depended on xmms, which wasn't seen because it was compiled from source...

    XMMS IS STILL ALIVE!!!

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  21. Thank you very much!!! Flawless!

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  22. Thank you Sartek! I just upgraded to Heron and lo and behold, XMMS is gone. I've used XMMS since the Slackware days in the mid 90s.

    I'm going to offer one argument for those who are trying to pawn off fancier apps whether they be players like XMMS or media librarians. Little or no development has been on on XMMS for years. That's because it works. You make a playlist. It plays. Done. If I wanted to look at album art and kiss performance goodbye, I'd get a little stand and put the CD cover next to the monitor while I was playing tunes.

    Thanks again.

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  23. Its OK, but I don`t like how it works in Hardy, so please tell me how to remove xmms?Thanks...

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  24. works like a charm.. thanks a lot!

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  25. in XMMS' source folder execute:
    # make uninstall

    if you removed it, follow again the steps
    so:
    # ./configure --prefix=/usr
    # make uninstall

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  26. Thanks ! It took 10 minutes to do it. I hate XMMS2 and its crappy frontends.

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  27. Thank you, Sartek! I missed xmms within Hardy too. The compilation/installation just took me some minutes.
    I will recommend your instruction to others!!
    Thanks man!

    Regards

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  28. Xmms is THE player (as long as you tweak the equalizer ;-) )
    Big Thanks !!

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  29. THANK UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

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  30. This worked very well, and I appreciate the time you spent writing the blog. Is there a way to to skip the "alt+F2, xmms" part and create a link in the "applications > sound & video menu", or an icon on the desktop? Thanks again!

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  31. sure.
    in the source file there's a xmms/xmms.desktop
    you can copy it to your desktop or to /usr/share/applications
    and put xmms's icon (xmms_mini.xpm) to /usr/share/pixmaps
    or just click on desktop create launcher.
    / panel -> add to panel -> custom application launcher

    hth

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  32. Thanks a million. For some reason double-size (CTRL-D) crashes xmms, but other than that it works like it should.

    You rock!

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  33. Hi! Thank you very much! It was really helpful!

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  34. Yes it's a known gtk1 bug.
    Workaround:
    1)
    "export XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1"
    in a terminal and then run xmms from terminal.
    2) in the .desktop add to Exec section like: "Exec=env XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1 xmms"
    3) move the xmms binary to: e.g: xmms1
    create a bash script like:

    #!/bin/sh
    export XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1 xmms

    and put it to /usr/bin as xmms
    or check your PATH,
    # echo $PATH
    if /usr/local/bin is the first, u can put the script there, no need to rename xmms

    hth

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  35. Thanks for the guide...I always forget which GTK1 libraries XMMS depends on whenever I need to build it from source.

    As for the detractors who say XMMS is completely irrelevant, try playing Shorten files. Sometimes it'll work with FFmpeg via commandline, and if it does work, good luck getting any of the GUI frontends to not completely choke when you try playing the files. The only music player I've encountered that has consistent success with handling SHN on Linux is XMMS.

    Now some might say I ought to convert the files to some other format (WAV, FLAC, WavPack, etc.) before playback, but I like being able to play my SHN files on the fly from my data DVDs.

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  36. Thank you! I was also unhappy with the dropping of XMMS from Hardy and almost downgraded. The compiling was very easy. You can use SourceForge to add missing or more plugins. I was also able to compile with the Hardy source code as well. XMMS is an excellent straightforward player that performs great. The technology behind it is not an issue. There's a good deal of code in use that's less than new. As others have said, it just works,and works just fine. And does what it needs to do. If you want a more elaborate program that also happens to play music, you have choices. That's what Linux offers. Why should I follow someone else's taste and style over the performance and usabability I'm looking for? That's not about tech. And you can disagree with my choices over what I use and why, but that's like disagreeing with the weather.

    A LinuxChikk, Slack, Arch, Ubuntu

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  37. nice guide - well done!

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  38. That did it man! You rock!

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  39. Thank you for the instructions.
    Only xmms can add directories and only xmms has cyrillic fonts.

    I have one problem with the flacinstallation, here it is:
    cannot stat `src/plugin_xmms/.libs/libxmms-flac.so': No such file or directory

    Any idea?

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  40. Very nice to have this back. I had spent the past day or so installing xmms2 and various frontends, audacious, und so weiter... and found them all wanting. The xmms killer feature for me is that it properly supports multiple instances so I can layer tracks on one another. This is a niche use case, I know, but is very handy when roughing out a DJ set before hitting the turntables. The closest that I found was alsaplayer, but that is very rough around the edges.

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  41. E-X-C-E-L-L-E-N-T!

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  42. i'm getting the packages now.. i used xmms under gutsy, and had to switch to audacious because xmms was axed from heron. turns out audacious doesn't support oss4 (unless i recompile the plugins). xmms does, so if i'm going to recompile anything, i out to with that which works good!

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  43. I'll just add my compliments on an *excellent* set of directions.

    Until someone produces an equivalent application based on xmms2, this will have a place on my systems. Thanks for helping me get it running.

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  44. I don't get why xmms Is so critizised sure it uses gtk+ so what the only time you notice it is in settings / prefs whcih your gradma probably won't be using anyway or things could get "ugly".

    When listening to radio stations xmms will go through the playlist if the first "track" isn't working ogg 160 it will go to next track ogg 32. if that isn't working it will go to third track per se an error messege" we currently have a few problams blah blah blah"

    Audacious just freezes if there's no first track (listening to radio stations) and by the way it is slower doesn't seem to state the percentage of buffering and so on.

    By the way the latest version of XMMS was relaesed in 2007 after 3 years. (if it ain't broken). We'll have to wait till late 2010 to see if XMMS is truly dead.

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  45. most appreciated! i gave audacious a shot, and it was fine for most things, but i encountered some https streaming issues (would lock up for moments, then continue) which was lame.

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  46. i've just try audicious, seems that it quite fits the bill.
    Initially quite reluctant to try it since i saw prev comment that it can't add folder.

    However it did support support 'add folder' functionality, just simply add the folder and audacious will recognize it automatically :)

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  47. I take all my comments back. XMMS rocks, Audacious sucks. not only in terms of mem footprint but also playback quality and stability.
    -Manish

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  48. Thanks for this - I tried many different options after upgrading and nothing compared to XMMS. Audacious wasn't stable for me (Wouldn't play ALSA but all other applications can play ALSA no problem) - used your guide - installed XMMS and back in working order :)

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  49. Super Hiper MEga Thanks Bro.....!!!!!!

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  50. Thanks a lot for this very helpful instructions. i just have some problems with the volume control of xmms. it doesn't work in my ubuntu hardy system. any help with this is highly appreciated.

    Thanks again bro. Keep up the good work.

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  51. Thanks once again this is the perfect guide. Question once copying the .desktop file from source dir to /usr/share/applications how do you get gnome to recongnize its there. I've tried killing the process for the panel, and Ctrl+alt+backspace (restart X) still no go.

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  52. Thanks for the instructions.

    If you want ogg, make sure you apt-get install libvorbis-dev.

    It was not on my system by default.

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  53. Thank you soooo much for this. I'm a fan of small, simple apps that do what I want them to do without cruft that I never use.

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  54. Nice guide. This'll allow me to be able to listen to tunes on my PII Thinkpad (running Xubuntu Hardy) without having to constantly break up my coding to issue a new mpg123 path/to/track.mp3 every 3-6 minutes or bog it down to ultimate slowness with Audacious.

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  55. Wow, thats some awesome set of instructions!! Thanks a lot for them being very comprehensive too....i followed them and XMMS is up again on my machine!! Love XMMS, dont know why so many hate it so much...

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  56. Got it working, but i miss the OSD PLUGIN any tips on how making that work?

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  57. Hi,
    I was able to get XMMS deb package for my AMD64 machine from launchpad: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/hardy/+source/xmms/
    Just download the .deb package and install.
    Some UI fonts are missing, which can be fixed by setting language to US_En in System > Administration > Language support.
    Santosh,
    India

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  58. Thanks for the tutorial, i love XMMS because it is very simple and basic just enough for listen music while you are working.
    Thanks again XD

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  59. just wanted to say thanks for the instructions - i'm running a beta release of linux mint elyssa, which is based on the hardy release and these instructions worked fine and i am running XMMS now.

    even better still, i can re-install foxytunes in firefox again.

    one minor niggle - the playlist used to attach itself to the player and when you minimised the player, the playlist went as well.

    it seems now that when you minimise the player the playlist stays put and has to be closed.

    but a minor niggle - just happy to have it back. cheers.

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  60. any chance of telling us how to get the mp4 plugin working?

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  61. really cool that xmms is not ditched. however i have some issues with libs and plug ins ..its kind of chaotic..some .so are in /usr7local/lib/xmms/ and some in /usr/lib/xmms so Xmms doesn't really load plugins and effects properly. any help there? thnx anyway.

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  62. This is very helpful, thanks.
    XMMS has the best sound of all other linux audio players.

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  63. sorry guys
    this year I finish the uni so dont have much time, cant (re)install these days ubuntu,

    jason: what's the problem? you tried from source?

    medix: strange.. which plugins are in /usr/local ? try to put them in ~/.xmms/Plugins/ (till we resolve the problem) and see if it works

    thanks

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  64. sartek: i mv Plugins and Skins in .xmms/Plugins and /Skins..it all works now except i cant get zoom (ctrl+d) workaround in xmms.desktop to work..i guess i am just unlucky many who had fallen victims to Hardy upgrade..had to re-correct the whole system..eh. thanx for good tips and bringing xmms back.

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  65. so use the "bash script" way: create it and in the desktop file add it, for example:

    Exec=/home/medix/bin/xmms.sh

    dont forget to chmod +x it

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  66. Thanks a lot sartek. Very helpful and concise :o)

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  67. Hi. Everithing worked great. I got only one little problem. My volume slider doesn't work. Do you have any idea how to fix this.

    Thx.

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  68. goran: which output plugin are you using ?

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  69. thanks a lot!!!
    i am happy using xmms..

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  70. As soon as I read your response I knew waht to do..I changed it to ALSA and everything works great now. I still don't know why the took xmms out out of the respository list in 8.04. But still your post helped a lot.

    PEace.

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  71. You save my day.

    Thanks,

    Nico

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  72. sartek, i've solved my mp4 problem.

    i just converted them to mp3 :o)

    i'm getting used to the playlist being a seperate entity though, so it's all good.

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  73. Works perfekt for me - Thank You !

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  74. Excellent! Thank you very much for the detailed instructions. This was step-by-step, clear and concise. No issues, and worked great on my Hardy Heron install running under VMWare on OSX 10.5.3.

    Listening to the great libraries of online music as I write this...

    Thanks, again!

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  75. I've used XMMS player for years in a professional broadcasting environment. After switching from Fedora over to Hardy Heron, imagine my disappointment when I couldn't install XMMS via apt-get. THANK YOU so much for this instruction! I can now continue to broadcast with the Linux player that gets the job done the way I want it without all the frills. :)

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  76. thanx a lot... i hate those big multimedia centers, which are always analyzing your whole music library... xmms is maybe buggy, but still great and this helped me a lot

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  77. Thanks a million! Your instructions worked flawlessly! I had xmms in Gutsy, and I was sure missing it in Hardy!

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  78. Your guide works, thanks. Reading all the previous post, it is obvious that this tool is highly respected and needed. What it needs is someone to take charge and start supporting it (based on old QT Libraries?). I don't have the skills to do so myself but am willing to do whatever I can to help.

    The XMMS2 effort may eventually be the solution but at some point this install will no longer work, then what? Something to consider.

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  79. Thank you very much... finally I got it through!

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  80. Thanks so much, being a relatively new user of linux guides that work perfectly first time like this help enormously, I and many others greatly appreciate the time people like you take to help educate us away from the global domination of MS.

    :-)

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  81. cool!

    thanks for this recipie.
    worked like a charm.
    i use xmms and pyxmms a lot and did not quite understood yet why they threw it out from hardy.

    again thanks!

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  82. Thanks a lot !!!!

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  83. Thanks a lot! But there are no captions on the buttons. Please provide for a solution.

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  84. Appreciate the walk through. Great instructions, works perfectly.

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  85. Thanks!

    I always liked xmms due to it being simple and effective.

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  86. sartek,ur great,thx 4 the great job!best wishes from romania.

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  87. Got my .deb file from here.
    https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/hardy/amd64/xmms/1:1.2.10+20070601-1 Listening to my music for a few hours. Did not have to re-create all my playlist files.

    Thanks for all the comments on it's functionality in Heron....
    Nice work all, keep it free....
    Not into those programs that want to organize my music. XMMS has allways been my favourite.

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  88. I'm Isaboubou,

    You have brightened my day!

    You're great ! I love you ! Thanks a lot !

    Peace out !

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  89. This is great. XMMS has always been my favorite player in Linux. haloroundmyhead is absolutely right, this is the only decent player for shn. Myself, I don't want itunes - I want a simple player that that plays my all my music files. XMMS is it for me. Thanks so much for this!

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  90. Hello, my friend!
    I love you!
    You saved the day!
    I translated your post in Bulgarian and put it in my blog / with links to your blog offcoarse/, so my friends here in Bulgaria could know that you and this good solution exist!
    I like XMMS and I can not afford to trade it even for the so colorful Banshees and so on ...
    I really Really Really THANK YOU!!!
    May your cats be always purring and well fed!

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  91. Guys, please help!
    When I'm trying to play mp3 with xmms, is says "no output plugin been selected".
    But there's nothing to select. Which output plugin I should download and how I should do it. Sorry, I'm newbe to Ubuntu.

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  92. Nevermind, I figured I didn't install it :)). It works!
    Many thanks, that's really great instruction for dummies!!! :)

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  93. I have put together a simple debian package of xmms (1) compiled for AMD64 (x86_64) systems. You can download it (sometimes) from: http://superkuh.ath.cx/~superkuh/xmms_1.2.11-1_amd64.deb (2.188 MB)

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  94. Yeah man, great Ifea to do it like this and to post it, thx a lot

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  95. Yeah man, great Idea to do it like this and to post it, thx a lot

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  96. thanxx!! noiicee. just wondering. it would be alot more convenient to place an icon on the applications>sound and video menu. how do you put one though?

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  97. 1. place this:
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/bbandyka/2609451328/sizes/o/
    icon in /usr/share/pixmaps
    and check your xmms.desktop file (in /usr/share/applications)
    you need somthing like "Icon=xmms"
    here is mine: http://sartek.net/~sartek/xmms.desktop

    hth

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  98. thank you.
    you are awesome

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  99. Man thanks!
    This is a much better solution than grabbing from the gutsy repo's.

    I have no idea why they'd drop the best audio player available from the repos.

    Thanks again,
    ~Starcannon

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  100. Thanks ! It took 10 minutes to do it. I hate XMMS2 and its crappy frontends. [2]

    \o/

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  101. I've used your instructions and checkinstall to make an installable package. :)

    http://www.ungab.com/content/xmms-ubuntu-804-hardy-heron

    I'd like people to give it a test.

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  102. Phillip, your installable package works like a champ! Many thanks!

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  103. No problem. Glad I could help someone. :)

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  104. Brilliant instructions! Just have to copy and paste into a terminal. Well done.

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  105. Audacious is very buggy compared to xmms.

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  106. Dude,

    Great work! My favorite Music application of all time is Streamtuner.

    I could not have gotten this (Streamtuner) to work without your post. Recently I tried out most of the new Linux distros, and settled on Ubuntu 64-bit.

    Thanks! Now I'm off to find new XMMS skins.

    JJMacey
    Phoenix, Arizona

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  107. hi,

    i have small difficulties with installing xmms, for some reason it gives me an error and wont pass compling stage after i enter the make command. error goes af follows:

    ir.c:19: error: static declaration of 'keepGoing' follows non-static declaration
    ir.h:53: error: previous declaration of 'keepGoing' was here
    ir.c:22: error: static declaration of 'irapp_thread' follows non-static declaration
    ir.h:52: error: previous declaration of 'irapp_thread' was here
    make[3]: *** [ir.lo] Error 1
    make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/mahlberg/build/xmms/General/ir'
    make[2]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
    make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/mahlberg/build/xmms/General'
    make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
    make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/mahlberg/build/xmms'
    make: *** [all] Error 2

    what should i do?

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  108. Thanks again and again!! All I want to do is listen to my music not organize it, so I can't stand those bloated music organizers. XMMS is great!

    Thanks

    emk

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  109. like the most of the others i just wanted to say thank you so much.
    and it's right, xmms is doing the job.

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  110. Thanks very much for your effort.

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  111. I created a repository for XMMS packages in June, but forgot to mention it here. Check out http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~knuta/xmms/ :-)

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  112. Thanks a lot. v.v. good instruction and great work. really really appreciated. Hope to get this type of instruction in future also.

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  113. yay, I have my xmms back - thanks so much :)

    I just want something simple to run digital radio .pls streams when I click them. why do all multimedia apps nowadays make simple things so complicated?

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  114. Thanks man, beautiful! Long live XMMS!

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  115. Thanks very much for having done this. I was going to install xmms myself, but you certainly saved me a lot of headaches and time, and your instructions were superbly written. I was extremely pleased and happy when I came across this information from you! THANKS!!!

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  116. For those looking to play shn files in Hardy the options are limited. Luckily XMMS comes to the rescue.

    I wrote a tutorial for installing shn on xmms- extending these instructions from Sartek.
    http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=833164&highlight=shn

    Could never have done this without this great tutorial -

    thanks Sartek

    ReplyDelete
  117. This is some good work. I am a noob at this ubuntu stuff, but if all the instructions are this good, I will be a pro in no time. ;-)

    Thanks for taking the time out to write these instructions.

    ReplyDelete
  118. Thank you very much Sartek. I really appreciate your work.

    ReplyDelete
  119. The discussions around the removal of XMMS reveal two serious issues for the Free Software community:

    Firstly, there has been no proper consultation with the user community carried out by the Ubuntu project (and if there indeed has been such consultation it only makes things worse) since it is clear that XMMS is still in wide use. For good reasons we well.

    Secondly, the advocacy of people *against* the use of XMMS simply because it is build on an outdated platform is some weird, blind form of technofetishism (bigger, harder, faster, more) overriding considered reason: XMMS remains the only player on the GNU/Linux platform that can handle huge collections - and in these days of a networked sharing culture of media, who would want something like Amarok or Banshee, which can do all kinds of fancy things - but ONLY _as long as_ your collection is no more than a few thousand tracks?

    It is clear that XMMS is an old thing, but it is also the player that works best in the new context of huge collections - so once again we see that less is more!

    To Mark Shuttleworth & Co: please listen to the people on which your distribution depends and put XMMS with ALL available plugins back into the repos for Intrepid Ibex.

    ReplyDelete
  120. -- and thanks a lot for the how-to, which might be complemented by the discussions here:
    http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-765609.html

    ReplyDelete
  121. Thank you. I was looking for a while for xmms for ubuntu. Now found. Great instructions.

    ReplyDelete
  122. I still get the damn GTK+ >= 1.2.2 not installed - please install first error

    hardy heron


    outdated or not will always be my favorite best skins and minimal is better

    ReplyDelete
  123. you have installed 'libgtk1.2-dev' ?

    ReplyDelete
  124. Yippee...thanks bro, I was freaking out thinking about life without xmms, until I ran across this page. Precise instructions!

    ReplyDelete
  125. You are a golden god for this.

    ReplyDelete
  126. It's sad that we have to 'pirate' Free Open Source Software because some self-proclaimed deity decides not to carry XMMS in the repository. I hope that idiot who locked XMMS out gets his game music collection confiscated for six months.

    ReplyDelete
  127. ...at last I've found real instructions to install it.All other places seem to require hours of reading before doing it.Thanks!!Linux needs more "do it without thinking" tutorials.

    ReplyDelete
  128. Fabulous, thanks.
    I never understood why they took it out of the package list, and none the other players I have tried really come close.

    ReplyDelete
  129. I'm so glad to find this page... thanks for the instructions.
    XMMS does everything I need and nothing I don't.
    How much space could it possibly take up on the repos? I'm sure there's tons of stuff there that I don't use but I wouldn't recommend removing them.

    Hey Ubuntu devs, BRING XMMS BACK!

    ReplyDelete
  130. thank you Sooo much!
    I missed this program and now
    I have it again!

    ReplyDelete
  131. I am an XMMS luver... Thanks for article...

    ReplyDelete
  132. I just did a scratch re-install of Xubuntu HH and was forced to revisit installing XMMS. I was pleasantly surprised to find an i386 package that installed flawlessly at. https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xmms/1:1.2.10+20070601-1build2/+build/484643

    ReplyDelete
  133. This guide is great! :D
    Big THANX!!

    ReplyDelete
  134. I love xmms too! thankyou so much! this is perfect for newbies like me! :D

    ReplyDelete
  135. Thank you VERY much!

    This helped me a lot!

    Great guide! *claps*

    ReplyDelete
  136. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  137. Hey, I think it's great to see support (and more importantly development) for XMMS. I don't want a media library application. I just want a simple mp3/music player and xmms does the job. Sure it's using GTK1, *shrug*. still works. I'm still going to use it.

    Thanks for the simple directions. Glad to see someone took the time to write this up.

    ReplyDelete
  138. Thanks Sartek

    Audacious doesn't allow for multiple instances. XMMS does. I'd like it even better if Audacious could open multiple instances or at least multiple playlist viewers with the ability to preview on headphones. As you might have guessed: Very handy for DJ stuff!

    Thanx again!

    ReplyDelete
  139. Thank you very much! Worked fine for me. I need XMMS, I would switch to Audacious, but Audacious is still just too buggy.

    ReplyDelete
  140. Thanks buddy, that is ŕeally a nice instruction. Took me some time, cause I am setting up an old Compaq Armada M700, but works perfectly.

    ReplyDelete
  141. thanks a lot, that is really a fine tutorial. first I had some trouble assigning the correct audio device. normally, I use amarok, which I find awesome, but the good'ol'xmms is always worth using anyway. my hardy heron refused to work with xmms or even retrieving the software packages. but there is one little thing left... could anybody give me some advice on how to list it in my application list? I can't see any icon, I just start it with the command line.

    ReplyDelete
  142. koszonom szepen,ezer koszonet devarol,romania

    ReplyDelete
  143. BRING XMMS BACK!!!!
    CANONICAL,DEVELOPERS,CAN YOU HEAR ME????????????????????????????????
    WE WANT XMMS BACK!!!!!!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  144. 5star for sartek,and wish in the next distro will see Xmms

    ReplyDelete
  145. worked also with 'Ibex


    -anv

    ReplyDelete
  146. for 8.10 I had to install some extra packages/renamed - it did compile at least.. i did not try any newer versions.. Just the one shown above

    I also had to install

    libxml2-dev
    libglib2.0-dev
    libglib1.2-dev
    libglib2.0-dev
    libgtk1.2-dev

    ReplyDelete
  147. HI Thank you Sartek just did amazing job. Though, some time ago got no problem but the last part as said someone sai above...

    cannot stat `src/plugin_xmms/.libs/libxmms-flac.so': No such file or directory

    looking for at the build/flac-1.2.1/plugin_xmms... no solution...

    Can help?

    ReplyDelete
  148. xmms: error while loading shared libraries: libxmms.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

    ReplyDelete
  149. thanks a lot
    i tried lots of audio player but never find as good as winamp 5
    so i prefer return to my good old xmms

    for a french page about how to install xmms since ubuntu 8.04 check : http://www.taltan.fr/post/2008/05/04/Pour-les-nostalgiques-de-XMMS-1XX-sous-Ubuntu-Hardy-Heron-804

    ReplyDelete
  150. I have added xmms in my ppa repository (intrepid)

    https://edge.launchpad.net/~mapopa

    I will try to add other plugins and related apps

    https://edge.launchpad.net/~mapopa/+archive/+index?field.name_filter=xmms&field.status_filter=published

    ReplyDelete
  151. also i have added xmms-wma

    and i will work on the flac issues

    ReplyDelete
  152. I get an error:

    checking for glib-config... no
    checking for GLIB - version >= 1.2.2... no
    *** The glib-config script installed by GLIB could not be found
    *** If GLIB was installed in PREFIX, make sure PREFIX/bin is in
    *** your path, or set the GLIB_CONFIG environment variable to the
    *** full path to glib-config.
    configure: error: *** GLIB >= 1.2.2 not installed - please install first ***

    how do I get the GLIB?

    gychang

    ReplyDelete
  153. gychang:
    http://packages.ubuntu.com is your friend
    you need: libtag1-dev

    ReplyDelete
  154. Thanks, holy xmms...

    ReplyDelete
  155. Thanks Marius for the deb packages.

    I noticed the building the flac plugin from source does not compile in Intrepid. I however was lucky enough to have my hardy installation on hard drive still available.

    (probably not the best thing) but I just copied the plugin file and still works.

    I can upload/email or something if anyone wants.

    I installed the deb packages for xmms and xmms-wma from the personal packages section from https://edge.launchpad.net/~mapopa as mentioned above by Mariuz


    Thanks once again

    ReplyDelete
  156. Very Good Article...

    ReplyDelete
  157. Thanks!!!Love to have it back.
    http://users.lmi.net/subjazz/ftp/xmms.png

    ReplyDelete
  158. I totally have to agree with colonus' comments above in that the recent so-called "upgrades" from Ubuntu/Canonical (which leak out to the various other distros like LinuxMint, which I use,) are based on "some weird, blind form of technofetishism" and not on usability as things properly aught to be addressed in the Debian/Ubuntu community.

    As a community, it behooves us all to let our voices be heard >>LOUD AND CLEAR<< in the Ubuntu forums.

    And: Excellent howto!!! Kudos!

    ReplyDelete
  159. I run XMMS on openSuSE 11.0 very well.

    After all the difficulties that I had with the last 2 versions of both Ubuntu, and Linux Mint, I went back to .rpm distros.

    BTW, I did follow this "how-to" at one time, and it worked great. BUT, after Ubuntu dropped XMMS.

    Not a good thing!

    ReplyDelete
  160. John, i'd use xmms from packman on suse
    http://packman.links2linux.org/package/xmms

    ReplyDelete
  161. sartek,

    I have been using the Packman repositories for a long, long time on my SuSE or openSuSE systems.

    ReplyDelete
  162. Thank you for such a detailed and correct information.

    ReplyDelete
  163. Fantastic! Thank you so very much for this simple explanation.
    Oldschool ist best school.

    ReplyDelete
  164. Excellent. Thank so much. I Just follow the steps and now hearing my favorite music in a few minutes.

    ReplyDelete
  165. Great! Thank you very much, Sartek. The right info, made easy, to obtain exactly what I was looking for.

    ReplyDelete
  166. Thank you soo much,Sartek. Very good. But would you like to tell about how to install real player 11 on Ubuntu 8.10

    ReplyDelete
  167. Thanks very much, Sartek! Saved me all the trouble of learning a new, more complicated player.

    ReplyDelete
  168. Sartek, you are freaking awesome! Wohoooooeeooeooooo!

    Wohoooooooooooo!

    ReplyDelete
  169. Under Ubuntu 8.10, I get this error upon installation:

    checking for GLIB - version >= 1.2.2... no
    *** The glib-config script installed by GLIB could not be found
    *** If GLIB was installed in PREFIX, make sure PREFIX/bin is in
    *** your path, or set the GLIB_CONFIG environment variable to the
    *** full path to glib-config.
    configure: error: *** GLIB >= 1.2.2 not installed - please install first ***

    Apparently libglib1.2 has been replaced with libglib1.2lbdl, which prevents libglib1.2 from installing....

    any workaround found???

    ReplyDelete
  170. Sartek, wondering will this procedure also work with Kubuntu? I don't get why it cannot be grabbed any longer by adept, but this seems to be the case. If you can advise how to make it go in Kunbuntu, that would be great.

    Star Cat

    ReplyDelete
  171. Star Cat: it should be the same.

    @all if you managed to install on the new ubuntu please post the required modification(s) here

    ReplyDelete
  172. Thanks, will try.

    SC

    ReplyDelete
  173. I have 8.10 installed on my box and i had to install libglib1.2-dev and libgtk1.2-dev first to get xmms the above instruction to work

    ReplyDelete
  174. Okay, here's what you need to do to get XMMS working on Intrepid.

    You may have noticed that libxml-dev isn't in the repositories for Intrepid. I tried to install XMMS without this package, installation appeared to go flawlessly, but then if you tried to run XMMS, it'd complain about not being able to find/execute libxmms.so.1, even though that file exists and has proper permissions.

    However, after finding the Hardy versions of libxml and libxml-dev off Launchpad and installing the necessary deb files for my processor architecture (amd64, in my case), XMMS suddenly worked.

    ReplyDelete
  175. "New, improved" media players can't beat XMMS for low CPU usage. I compared XMMS to various other media apps and it's simply the fastest. Uses almost nothing, zip, nada, zero. Less CPU than mpg123, I still don't understand that one, mpg123 is just a command-line command with a text interface.

    "New" isn't better in the computer world, the oldest thing that still does the job is usually the most efficient. I still use ICEWM for the same reason.

    ReplyDelete
  176. Great tutorial! Just a comment for fellows sharing my case: although the make of flac failed with

    "main.cpp:75: error: ‘memcmp’ was not declared in this scope"

    I just followed the instructions to the end, ignoring the error, copied the plugin library to the necessary location and it worked despite the error.

    ReplyDelete
  177. Hello there,

    I've got following problem: I already had xmms installed from a .deb. I configured (no fail) and ran "make" on the Flac sources, all went just fine, but I can't find any libxmms-flac in " src/plugin_xmms" folder, it's just scratch there. Would be greatfull for help.

    ReplyDelete
  178. Thank you very much this was very helpful and I learned a lot :-)

    Also discovered If you get the error "Couldn't find package libxml-dev" then simply try again changing libxml-dev to libxml2.dev.

    Hope this helps anyone with the same problem

    ReplyDelete
  179. with other programs like amarok and vlc, I expecienced that the beats sometimes were falling over each other. with xmms2 not, but the graphical interface of xmms is obviously much better than xmms!

    ReplyDelete
  180. yeah thanx dude works perfectly for me on ubuntu 8.04 your a legend :)

    ReplyDelete
  181. hi sartek,
    thx fr the tute
    i really wanted to go the apt-get way to get this baby
    but yeah it's fun to do it thu the source
    in fact this is the way to do it,
    now a days whn ppl. hv gt yum n apt-get dependency hell is bcomin outdated :)
    gud thing
    bt doing it the source way makes me feel geeky and the show off factor is an added piece of chocolate

    thanks again...

    ReplyDelete
  182. hehe ... i luv xmms .. i've tryed many other players but i'm sticking with xmms for now ...

    ReplyDelete
  183. Trying to remove installation in the course of troubleshooting audacity audio issues and thinking the only strange thing I've done to my computer (aside from tweaking xorg.conf) is install XMMS per the instructions on this page, which are very thorough.

    However, instructions for removal (see below) are very sparse. I had to locate the XMMS folder (usr/lib/xmms) then once I was in that folder (cd /usr/lib/xmms/) I typed the instructions "make uninstall" and got the following:

    make: *** No rule to make target `uninstall'. Stop.

    O great and mighty Sartek! I beg of you: Would you expand on instructions for complete removal of your XMMS installation?

    And before well meaning persons who are NOT the Great and Highly Esteemed Sartek begin responding that my Audacity audio issues have nothing to do with my XMMS installation: Even if they don't, I still think we should have a REVERSE in case we want to get back where we were before we followed these instructions.

    Thank you.

    Jerit

    Anonymous said...

    Its OK, but I don`t like how it works in Hardy, so please tell me how to remove xmms?Thanks...
    May 2, 2008 9:25 PM

    sartek said...

    in XMMS' source folder execute:
    # make uninstall

    if you removed it, follow again the steps
    so:
    # ./configure --prefix=/usr
    # make uninstall
    May 2, 2008 10:13 PM

    ReplyDelete
  184. you can easily pack it into a deb package. there's a good utility called checkinstall. in order to make a deb package you download the sources, run ./configure with whatever parameters you want, and then 'checkinstall make install', answer a few questions (or rather fill in a few lines), and voilà, you have a fresh .deb. no need to keep the sources any longer, even if you wanted to uninstall it later. it can be uninstalled with 'dpkg --purge xmms' or through synaptic (or other front-end).

    ReplyDelete
  185. Thanks for your blog , very useful

    ReplyDelete
  186. Thank you very much! I had been in a world where xmms was not bad for too long (FreeBSD). So when did you have to have a iTunes clone to play mp3s? Upp ummm "Media files".
    XMMS does what it is supposed to do: PLAY MUSIC!

    Thanks again -
    Cheers!

    ReplyDelete
  187. For sharing thank you very much good very beautiful work
    http://www.ciceksepetiniz.com

    ReplyDelete
  188. Also thank you so much, audacious is a kludge it crashes all the time, runs away with cpu on nearly a daily basis, every time i add lots of new songs to the playlist takes like 10 mins while it parses thru the id3 tags and just hangs everything in the meantime, freaks out occasionally and adds a few thousand versions of the same playlist, etc etc. the ONLY thing going for it is that it handles UTF-8..

    I srsly wanna slappa whoever thought it a good idea to take out the lovely perfectly working XMMS and force this piece of crud apon Ubuntu users. Have been head desking over this for a year, already manually installed xmms on my lappy, and now gonna uninstall audacious with a vengance... wth ppl, srsly...

    Just now i accidently cleared the playlist and spent 30 mins trying to get it to readd my 80,000 or so mp3s to audacious only to have it crash repetedly... xmms handled those fine. >_<

    ReplyDelete
  189. Too bad GTK 1.2 is not avalible in Karmic (9.10).

    ReplyDelete
  190. I added Dapper Drake repo and installed xmms 1.2.10, so I've many plugins which are standardly: xmms-arts, xmms-crossfade ... etc., but is still one problem. I can't find compiled visualistation plugin vumeter (last tar.gz version 0.92). I tried to convert through Package Converter .rpm package from Fedora to .deb, but this package doesn't work. The installation path is /usr/local/bin..., usr/local/share... . I attempted compile from sources vumeter and I wrote apt-get build-dep vumeter, no result. When I was in catalogue root@s
    desktop:/home/s/Pulpit/vumeter-0.9.2# I wrote ./configure and console returned error: checking for XMMS - version >= 1.2.9... no
    *** The xmms-config script installed by XMMS could not be found.
    *** If XMMS was installed in PREFIX, make sure PREFIX/bin is in
    *** your path, or set the XMMS_CONFIG environment variable to the
    *** full path to xmms-config.
    configure: error: *** XMMS >= 1.2.9 not installed - please install first ***. But xmms is installed in system with all the dependencies. Vumeter plugin .deb is also for audacious, but not intagrated with program (precisely program windows). I've attempted to copy vumeter.so and vumeter.la from /usr/local/lib/xmms/Visualisation to /usr/lib/xmms/Visualisation. Xmms > Visualisation > Visualisation plugins and Analogue VU meter plugin exist, but not enabled - turned off. Has anybody compiled package with path /usr/share... , /usr/lib/ ... , /usr/bin ... good package for amd64 architecture? I'm looking for in Google, but still without good solution.

    ReplyDelete
  191. It's all great, but you really shouldn't run
    $ sudo make install
    on a system that has a package management (unless you install kernel modules, maybe, but even then...)
    It just defeats the purpose, and can easily brake things down without telling you what exactly is being broken.
    There are different ways to build xmms (or other software) from sources and pack it into a .deb or .rpm of what have you. dh_make is the best way to do it, but checkinstall is somewhat easier.

    ReplyDelete
  192. anonymous vumeter

    try: PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH ./configure

    ReplyDelete

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