Quickies: amaroK, SUSE 9.3, Qt4Lab, Kompmgr

Friday, 25 March 2005  |  Jriddell

OSDir.com has posted some screenshots of amaroK 1.2 showing off the eye candy from this feature packed music player. *** The software behind KDE-Apps.org and KDE-Look.org has been rewritten with new features and new categories and they have gained a new sponsor. *** Novell has posted a review of SUSE 9.3 which features KDE 3.4. *** Qt4Lab Data Plotter is looking for beta testers. *** Kompmgr and KDE, window eyecandy (Google cache) has a video (mirror) of the fun you can have with KWin in KDE 3.4. *** Finally congratulations to our own Zack Rusin who will soon be working for Trolltech to "make sure that X11 is again a state of the art technology".

Comments:

AmaroK - charles - 2005-03-24

I wish had more luck with AmaroK. It always crashes on me. I do not like the aKode, aRTs or the xine engine. I'd like to use gstreamer, but it always crashes. I thought KDE3.4 would be better but there has never been any luck. I have already submitted the trace below to the developers. Sorry in advance. It's too long. Here we go: - amaroK has crashed! We're terribly sorry about this :( But, all is not lost! You could potentially help us fix the crash. amaroK has attached a backtrace that describes the crash, so just click send, or if you have time, write a brief description of how the crash happened first. Many thanks. Engine: gst-engine Build date: Mar 18 2005 CC version: 3.3.4 (pre 3.3.5 20040809) KDElibs: 3.4.0 Level "a" TagLib: 1.3.1 NDEBUG: true [Editor: backtrace has been removed, please use bugs.kde.org instead]

Re: AmaroK - Phil - 2005-03-24

I don't think this is the place to post such messages. Plz fill out a bug repport at bugs.kde.org or post it at the kde forum : www.kde-forum.org rgrds, Phil

Re: AmaroK - job - 2005-03-24

Like he mentioned, he's already filed a report to the developers. He may be a bit disappointed that he's never had any "luck" with AmaroK...kind of venting?

Re: AmaroK - Ian Monroe - 2005-03-25

For amaroK (and probably most of KDE), bugs.kde.org is a place for bugs, not general tech support. Might find more luck in #amarok or the amaroK forums. Granted, I don't see what's wrong with xine... it uses less CPU then gstreamer and has less problems. If it works use it.

Re: AmaroK - Martin - 2005-03-25

1) Though I can fully understand that it's kind of frustrating to not even be able to use Amarok properly because it always crashes - you could *at least* have filed a bug and linked to that bug instead of posting endless backtraces here. 2) Nevertheless to solve your problem you might want to consider compiling gstreamer and gst-plugins by yourself instead of using packages. Afterwards recompile Amarok. Only this way you make sure that all fits together nicely. Packages can be incompatible sometimes. Especially my experience with SuSE 9.2 RPMs for GStreamer was very bad - somewhat understandable if you know that 9.2 (and its GStreamer packages) are not a bit dated. Recompiling did solve similar GStreamer problems for me. Before compiling Amarok make sure to test GStreamer functionality with sth. like gst-launch filesrc location=/home/foo/bar.mp3 ! spider ! audioscale ! audioconvert ! osssink Make sure you run gst-register first to register all plugins after compilation! Run gst-inspect to see if everything is needed is there. I.E. Run: gst-inspect | grep mad To see if the mad-plugin is there (better make sure to compile it when "configure"-ing gst-plugins And: gst-inspect | grep osssink Dont use alsasink if you have problems - use osssink it's much more stable. You dont need to specify alsasink or osssink in Amarok - only when using the command-line. Amarok will detect this automatically. If you dont already know (some Linux users unfortunately dont know this) you should use "checkinstall" (goes with your distro) instead of "make install" to create an RPM/DEB/whatever package so you can easily remove/update this stuff. On SuSE, edit /etc/checkinstallrc to say INSTALL=1 in the last line and afterwards run checkinstall --fstrans=no instead of checkinstall. Always hit enter and gstreamer/gst-plugins will be installed as RPM. Sounds complicated, but it isnt in fact. Just follow the above steps one-by-one.

some screenies, vidcap - molnarcs - 2005-03-24

I some more Kompmgr eyecandy: Bigfile warning - 14 megs: ftp://hatvani.unideb.hu/pub/personal/screenshots/kdetransp.avi Screenshot: ftp://hatvani.unideb.hu/pub/personal/screenshots/transparency1.png Amazing work! And it is pretty stable. Only problem I have is with mplayer if kompmgr and transparency is enabled. If you know of a solution please help. One solution is to use kmplayer, which seems to work (but there are some screen redraw issues).

Re: some screenies, vidcap - cies - 2005-03-25

here some nice things Seth Nickell is working on: http://ftp.acc.umu.se/mirror/temp/seth/blog/xshots.html screenshots suck, today we need MOVIES (lots of movies behind the above link)

Re: some screenies, vidcap - molnarcs - 2005-03-25

Here's another one, now display contents while moving windows on: ftp://hatvani.unideb.hu/pub/personal/screenshots/kcompmgr1.avi I was surprised at the performance of this thing - it works just fine, without any lag or something :) (previously when I tried enabling the composite manager, it was slow and buggy, but that was with xorg 6.8.1 and fluxbox). System is athlon xp 2400+, 512RAM, GeforceFX5200 with nvidia binary drivers, FreeBSD 5.4Prerelease.

Re: some screenies, vidcap - Pope - 2005-03-25

> previously when I tried enabling the composite manager, it was slow and buggy, > but that was with xorg 6.8.1 and fluxbox. I am on XOrg CVS with xcompmgr 1.1.1 and it's still slow and buggy. Am I doing something wrong ?

Re: some screenies, vidcap - heymull - 2005-03-25

I have a very similar system as you (2400+ Athlon running at 2G native, GeForceFX5200 w/128MB) but with Gigabyte mobo and 1 GB RAM running in dual channel (gotta love Gigabyte memory management). I am now looking at a KDE desktop within a LiveCD version of PCLinuxOS. Its very neat. This OS loads up with Firefox 1.0, Flash, MPlayer, etc etc. I was able to look at these AVI files in Firefox, off this LiveCD. This is too easy. Going to try Amarak. This LiveCD includes about 15 other audio apps: aRts builder, Audacity, Grip, Juk, kaboodle, KAudioCreator, KMid, KMix, KRec, KsCD, Noatun, Rezound, ripperX, streamtuner, Sunjammer, Timidity+++, Xmmms. Want to download the OS to try it? ftp.ussg.iu.edu/linux/pclinuxos/live-cd/english/preview/ -- Heymull

about Kompmgr - Pat - 2005-03-25

I watched the Kompmgr video, looks kool. How does the user switch focus from one window to another when they are superposed? I suppose it must by by rolling the mouse wheel, right? looks kool anyway and nice to see that Zack's gonna work full time on improving X and thx to trolltec for that :)

Re: about Kompmgr - bssteph - 2005-03-25

Hi. This is the guy that made the video. If by the user you mean me specifically, it's just "Focus Follows Mouse". The windows are only partially overlapping. "Auto raise" with a slight delay is a nice effect too, IMO.

Re: about Kompmgr - Pat - 2005-03-25

what do you mean "Focus Follows Mouse"? how does kwin knows you want to focus on the window that is behind another whithout even a click or wheel roll?

Re: about Kompmgr - Dolio - 2005-03-25

"Focus Follows Mouse" means that when you move the mouse cursor over a window, it automatically brings that window into focus (possibly with a delay). That lets people focus on windows without bringing them to the front of the stack by clicking on them. There are some patches to kwin/window decorations that allow you to switch window focus by using the mouse wheel over the title bar, though. You may be able to find them on kde-look.org, though they may be too out of date to work with KDE 3.4 and the like.

Re: about Kompmgr - Pat - 2005-03-25

""Focus Follows Mouse" means that when you move the mouse cursor over a window, it automatically brings that window into focus (possibly with a delay)." thx but that still doesn't answer my question. when one window is over another, how can the focus be changed? did u watch the video? the mouse cursor is still on the other window and then focus change to the other window that is behind it. How can that be? what if the user don't want to change focus, will it change automatically?

Re: about Kompmgr - Narishma - 2005-03-25

I suppose he used a keyboard shortcut in the video. (alt+tab)

Re: about Kompmgr - John Mouse Freak - 2005-03-25

Either that or Alt + Middle Mouse Button

Re: about Kompmgr - ac - 2005-03-25

He probably set a delay

Re: about Kompmgr - bssteph - 2005-03-26

I'm not sure where the confusion is coming from here, but I didn't do anything special. I'll try to detail everything. - Konversation is on top of Konqueror - I move the mouse to Konqueror and focus changes ("Focus Follows Mouse"), but it is not raised. Konversation is still on top. - Konsole is also on top of Konqueror - I move the mouse to Konsole, same deal. Focus change. - I move the mouse back to Konqueror. I Alt-LeftClick to position the window. This is my first time clicking anywhere. Note that this does not raise the window. Konqueror is still under Konversation and Konsole. - I move back to Konversation and it is focused. Does this help? When I move the mouse to a new window, the focus changes, but nothing is raised. No magic on my part... :)

OT: Stable USB-support in SuSE 9.3 (kernel 2.6.11) - Roland - 2005-03-25

I use SuSE 9.0 to 9.2 on various computers and the only problem is USB: It's flacky, unreliable and it sometimes crashes the system. Does anybody know wether USB became better (or more stable) in more recent kernel revisions?

Re: OT: Stable USB-support in SuSE 9.3 (kernel 2.6.11) - jmk - 2005-03-25

Hardly. It's been 10 years since i bought a first PC with an USB port - and it still doesn't work properly. Give it another 10, perhaps :/

Re: OT: Stable USB-support in SuSE 9.3 (kernel 2.6.11) - t b - 2005-03-25

I use all sorts of usb devices (harddisks, mouse, hubs, ethernet to usb converter, ...) and all work flawless. I can unplug them and plug them in again, and still everything works as expected. I use gentoo though, and compile the kernel myself.

Re: OT: Stable USB-support in SuSE 9.3 (kernel 2.6.11) - superstoned - 2005-03-26

well, I don't have any problems either, and I'm using suse and debian. they worked fine. so what's the problem?

Re: OT: Stable USB-support in SuSE 9.3 (kernel 2.6.11) - jmk - 2005-03-26

Probably problems are related to hardware. I run both SUSE and vanilla kernels ( currently running 2.6.12-rc1-bk1 on x86-64 ) and seems that even with this latest kernel, sticking in USB memory stick causes machine to crawl for a few seconds. With SUSE kernel keyboard occasionally does not initialize during boot - and replugging it doesn't help.

Re: OT: Stable USB-support in SuSE 9.3 (kernel 2.6 - Brandybuck - 2005-03-28

USB works flawlessly for me in FreeBSD/KDE, but despite all the myths that it's ready for the desktop, USB is horribly flaky for me in Windows XP SP2 on a work system!!! In terms of USB mass storage, some actually freeze the machine until you yank them out. Others only freeze the machine when you try to "remove" them. And then the ones that work like to steal a mapped network drive. I've had nothing but heartache with USB under Windows.

Re: OT: Stable USB-support in SuSE 9.3 (kernel 2.6.11) - Hans - 2005-03-25

Apply those Suse-Online-Updates. USB has never made problems here (Suse 9.0, Suse 9.2) Btw.: The Suse Admin handbook has some chapters about hotplugging and udev. Worth a read.

Re: OT: Stable USB-support in SuSE 9.3 (kernel 2.6.11) - Ian - 2005-03-26

I have USB problems 50% of the time too but only when using Konqueror to copy files to or from the USB stick (freecom). It just kills the machine stone dead either when copying data or when i've selected something to copy and right click and navigate through the menus to get to "Copy to". I have no problems copying via the command line.

Re: OT: Stable USB-support in SuSE 9.3 (kernel 2.6.11) - Roland - 2005-03-27

Yeah, Konqueror seems to put a lot of stress into it, but I also had crashes with pure command-line copying (although not so often)

Re: OT: Stable USB-support in SuSE 9.3 (kernel 2.6.11) - Evan "JabberWokky" E. - 2005-03-28

Y'know, I've never had problems with SUSE and USB until tonight - about half an hour before I write this. I could not get my Palm to sync - it kept disconnecting. Turns out the power cable was not plugged all the way into the hub. Heh.

Re: OT: Stable USB-support in SuSE 9.3 (kernel 2.6 - frederic - 2006-06-01

Hi, Could you please tell me what software are you using to sync your Palm. I have a LiveDrive Palm device, PalmOS, USB connector only, and SuSe 9.0 upgraded: Linux tukey 2.4.21-297-smp4G #1 SMP Or should I upgrade to 10.0? Thanks

Re: OT: Stable USB-support in SuSE 9.3 (kernel 2.6 - Benoit Panizzon - 2005-03-31

I just found this googleing for my USB Problem. There seams to be a Serial USB - Visor / Palm support Problem in all Kernels up to 2.6.11 which sometimes manages to freeze the whole machine. I don't know any solutions for this :-( So don't sync your palm on a productive machine...

Re: OT: Stable USB-support in SuSE 9.3 (kernel 2.6 - John the Ripper - 2005-04-17

Yeah, I had problems on all my SuSE 9.1 systems *AFTER* I upgraded the kernel and the libs. Everytime I plugged ANY USB device, the system simply crashed. I'm now using SuSE 9.2 on all my systems, and everything works fine. Bottom line: upgrading is not allways a good thing.

Re: OT: Stable USB-support in SuSE 9.3 (kernel 2.6 - rsf - 2005-04-27

Never had a problem on 9.0 and 9.1. But after an upgrade to 9.3 and a hard crash during a hotsync with kpilot my usb mouse is no longer working.

Re: OT: Stable USB-support in SuSE 9.3 (kernel 2.6 - RLC - 2006-02-22

I've been searching for clues a to why my new Compaq V2000 notebook won't launch USB ports or NIC with SuSE 9.3 or SuSE 10--but works fine with SuSe 9.1. Kernel on SuSE 9.1 is 2.6.4. Any thoughts...

Re: OT: Stable USB-support in SuSE 9.3 (kernel 2.6 - al - 2006-12-16

I am also having trouble with usb on suse 10.1. I had support for usb and then did a reinstall as I needed to repartician. Since the reinstall I have been unable to get anything to work on the usb port lsusb follows. Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000 Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 2.00 bDeviceClass 9 Hub bDeviceSubClass 0 Unused bDeviceProtocol 1 Single TT bMaxPacketSize0 64 idVendor 0x0000 idProduct 0x0000 bcdDevice 2.06 iManufacturer 3 iProduct 2 iSerial 1 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 25 bNumInterfaces 1 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0xc0 Self Powered MaxPower 0mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 9 Hub bInterfaceSubClass 0 Unused bInterfaceProtocol 0 iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0002 1x 2 bytes bInterval 12 can't get hub descriptor: Operation not permitted can't get device qualifier: Operation not permitted can't get debug descriptor: Operation not permitted cannot read device status, Operation not permitted (1) Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000 Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 1.10 bDeviceClass 9 Hub bDeviceSubClass 0 Unused bDeviceProtocol 0 bMaxPacketSize0 64 idVendor 0x0000 idProduct 0x0000 bcdDevice 2.06 iManufacturer 3 iProduct 2 iSerial 1 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 25 bNumInterfaces 1 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0xc0 Self Powered MaxPower 0mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 9 Hub bInterfaceSubClass 0 Unused bInterfaceProtocol 0 iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0002 1x 2 bytes bInterval 255 can't get hub descriptor: Operation not permitted cannot read device status, Operation not permitted (1) Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000 Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 1.10 bDeviceClass 9 Hub bDeviceSubClass 0 Unused bDeviceProtocol 0 bMaxPacketSize0 64 idVendor 0x0000 idProduct 0x0000 bcdDevice 2.06 iManufacturer 3 iProduct 2 iSerial 1 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 25 bNumInterfaces 1 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0xc0 Self Powered MaxPower 0mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 9 Hub bInterfaceSubClass 0 Unused bInterfaceProtocol 0 iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0002 1x 2 bytes bInterval 255 can't get hub descriptor: Operation not permitted cannot read device status, Operation not permitted (1) Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000 Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 1.10 bDeviceClass 9 Hub bDeviceSubClass 0 Unused bDeviceProtocol 0 bMaxPacketSize0 64 idVendor 0x0000 idProduct 0x0000 bcdDevice 2.06 iManufacturer 3 iProduct 2 iSerial 1 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 25 bNumInterfaces 1 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0xc0 Self Powered MaxPower 0mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 9 Hub bInterfaceSubClass 0 Unused bInterfaceProtocol 0 iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0002 1x 2 bytes bInterval 255 can't get hub descriptor: Operation not permitted cannot read device status, Operation not permitted (1)