banjo

The Amarok dialog box did mention the "free" codecs, but with a little red X on them, implying that you do not want to use that crappy freeware.... and there was no link on the dialog to go get those free codecs and use them. The only link was to the Fluendo site. LOL. Nice marketing. I tried gstreamer as the back end with the same results. I installed VLC, which can play my MP3 files and videos. It is a nice player with some interesting skins, but when I try to remove anything from the playlist it locks up in a DO loop and won't come out, eating 100% of my CPU. I have to kill the process to make it stop. I could not discover how to play anything but the whole playlist, which would be a downer if the playlist can only grow. The joys of software. I will investigate further, but it might be another no go. What media player do you use? Banjo (_)=='=~

Quick update to this thread. I installed VLC from the repositories. It works fine and plays my MP3 files just fine. And there is a skinnable version with skins available out at VideoLAN. VLC Skins It brings back the good old days when Winamp first came out with their skinnable player. Banjo (_)=='=~

Well I have bailed out on Amarok. I have tried both back ends, Xine and gstreamer, and all Amarok will do is pop up a dialog box saying that I do not have the proper codecs to play MP3 files and then it links me to the Fluendo site where I can buy them. That is odd since both Audacity and Kaffeine can play my MP3 files just fine with what I have loaded from the repositories. So Amarok is putting SPAM in the app now? How Windows-esque! So far, since I have installed Mandriva 2010.2 I have had to bail out on the following KDE apps: Kmail - the address book just does not work. It will not even run, posting cryptic error messages about some networking app daemon that is not hooked up right or something. I do not want to network my address book to my "friends". What are they thinking? I am now using Thunderbird, which works fine.... including the address book. Quanta Plus - which is just not there. I installed kdewebdev, and there is no Quanta in it. I have been using it for years because of the upload manager, which makes it easy to upload just the files I have added and/or changed. I am now using Bluefish, and I will write my own upload manager to replace the one in Quanta. Amarok - which does not work without dropping some additional coin at their favorite vendor site. I will just use Kaffeine, which works fine. One wonders where KDE has gone with version 4. I am starting a search to find a complete set of apps that are not integrated into KDE in any way ( or into Gnome either for that matter ) in order to break free of relying on apps that change/disappear/SPAM me/crash/stop working at random times. Banjo (_)=='=~

I am using Mandriva 2010.2 installed from the One CD. When I open an MP3 file on the web it defaults to using Amarok to play the file. No sound comes out. I have installed the phonon-xine packages, and that system is chosen as the backend in the KDE 4 desktop configuration. Audacity has no problems playing the MP3 files, and Kaffeine also plays them OK. However with Amarok there is no sound. Strange, that. Oh, and every time I run Amarok, the KDE Wallet annoyance pops up. I do not want to use the KDE Wallet, so if somebody could tell me how to rid myself of that annoyance, please..... Thanks, Banjo (_)=='=~ Edit: I changed the MP3 file association to Kaffeine, and I can now download and play MP3 files from the internet... but I am still curious about why Amarok can't play them.

I thought that I would wake up this thread one more time to report my progress on this strange issue. I think I have actually solved the problem this time. In the previous episode, I had fixed the hanging disk problem by applying clean power to the system. That also fixed the occasional crash of the computer when I touched it. Well, the crashing remained fixed, but the hanging disk drive came back big time. Ghosts, indeed. :blush: I could hardly use the computer at all it was so slow. So I figured that the hard disk was dying ( from all those years on bad power? ) and needed to be replaced. I bought a new 500 Gig Seagate from Newegg and put it in the same old box and put Mandy 2010.2 on it. That is what I am running now as I type this. So far I have got most of my stuff working again in a week. The slow disk is now truly gone because I have replace both the hardware and the software. This old computer has never been so fast. I just did a full backup of my files (about 50 Gig) in 2 minutes, and it was taking up to 45 minutes on that old disk. I think the disk was failing, and the slowness was caused by retries. I have seen a disk do that on a fnWindows machine. On the old system I was constantly up against my 2 Gig memory limit, using 1700 - 1800 Meg all the time. I think the disk spooler was eating the RAM waiting for the disk to finish retries. I am now using about 500 Meg most of the time while doing my normal activities. B) So, the bottom line for me is that if the disk is ever behaving like that again, being busy for no reason, and it is clear that there is no virus on it, assume that the disk is going bad and replace it. Life is too short to put up with that stuff. The solution cost me 40 bucks for the disk and some time to install Mandy 2010.2 BTW, I like the 2010.2 distro. Other than a dead Kmail it is working well. I understand that the reviews on Mandy 2011 beta are not very good, so I think I am going to stick with Mandy 2010.2 for a while... until I see where Mageia is headed. Thanks to all for your help and patience. Banjo (_)=='=~

OK. This is strange. Here is what I did yesterday. I plugged in the F380 and nothing happened. No dialog boxes popped up saying that the system had seen new hardware. So I went to Control Center => Hardware => Setup Printers and clicked Add Printer. It recognized the F380 so I stepped through the installation sequence and it installed a huge number of packages like foomatic and cups and hplip etc. Then I printed the test page and all was well. Then I went to Control Center => Hardware => Setup Scanner and that is where it said that it saw the "F380" and that it is not supported so please pick out one from the following list, and then presented a HUGE list of printers... which did not contain mine. That is where I chose the "Most HP Combination" devices item and jumped through the hoops and it said that I had to go through Setup Printer to set that one up. So I went back to Setup Printer and saw nothing in any of that interface that had to do with the scanner. I ran Skanlite and it said that there were no scanners found. So I shut down and went to bed. This morning, in order to answer your question accurately, I went through the steps again, Control Center => Hardware => Setup Scanner and this time it said that it had to install -task-printing-hp -libsane-hpaio1 -xsane I said "OK" and it installed the packages and the scanner works. So I am a bit confused about why it took two trips through Setup Scanner with a reboot in between to get it done. Is a reboot required between setting up printers/scanners? I am afraid that this stuff is all a black box to me. Way back in my Unix days, I touched printcap and lived to tell about it :o, but all of this is beyond my understanding now. But it does work. Thanks for the help again. Banjo (_)=='=~

I have an old HP Deskjet F380 combination printer/scanner and I am trying to install it on Mandriva 2010.2. The printer works fine, but the scanner apparently is not supported. In the scanner setup tool it told me to select a model from a list that did not include the F380, but it had a generic selection "Most HP Combination" devices, which I selected. It then told me to configure the scanner using the printer setup. The printer setup tool makes no mention of scanner setup, so I am stuck. It did have an optional box labeled "Duplex Installed", which I have not tried yet. Is that duplex printing, or something else? I don't really care about duplex printing on an old spit printer. This scanner worked fine under Mandriva 2008.1. Printers and scanners are black boxes for me, so any help on where to start looking would be appreciated. Thanks Banjo (_)=='=~

I just had an interesting experiment. Yesterday I installed a package called kdegames4. There were two of them, 4.4.3 with a release of 2mdv2010.1 and 4.4.5 with a release of 0.2mdv2010.2. I installed the later release, 4.4.5 and nothing showed up. So just on a hunch today I uninstalled that version and installed the 4.4.3 version and the games are there. Something wrong with the links? I am afraid that I do not understand the details of how the package manager works. What other empty links or empty packages are out there? Very strange. But we have our games now. Banjo (_)=='=~

I guess I assumed that if I installed 2010.2 I would get all of 2010.1 plus the upgrades. Maybe I am missing something. I did my install from the 2010.2 One live CD. I have not tried to set up my printers yet, so that could be another fiasco in the making. Banjo (_)=='=~

Yeah. Kooka is gone too. And I installed kdegames4 and got nothing. I think the 2010.2 repositories WRT KDE are not complete compared to previous releases. K3B installed OK as did Audacity. The desktop itself seems to be working OK. Banjo (_)=='=~

Thanks for that explanation. I thought that I was going nuts. I stepped through the 2010.1 tutorial out on HowToForge, and sure enough, there is Quanta Plus checked off [x] as installed by installing kdewebdev4. I guess the tutorial was a copy of a previous version without really checking all the details. No problem. Stuff happens. Those tutorials help out a lot. I think that I will stick with Bluefish for a while since I am disenchanted with the KDE tools at this point ( I gave up on Kmail and moved to Thunderbird because the Kmail address book no longer works ). I had quite a bit of time and effort invested in my Quanta project, which is now useless. Thank Goodness that I type HTML directly and did not depend on some WYSIWYG tool that would leave me with my web page in some unusable database or something. While there is always a danger of an application going away, I think I want to standardize on stand-alone, non-integrated applications. They seem to be less flakey. BTW, Kooka, the scanner interface program, also went away in KDE 4. So I have to go find another scanner tool as well. Keeps life interesting I guess. Banjo (_)=='=~

Thanks for the info. I have Bluefish and I have used it to good effect. It is a very nice editor. What I miss from Quanta Plus is the upload manager that would automatically upload the files that I have changed in the project. With Bluefish, I am using Filezilla to ftp the files after editing them. Relatively speaking, that is a pain, but I can live with it for a while. Thanks, Banjo (_)=='=~

I have found on Mandy 2010.2 that some packages appear to install and then I cannot find them. For example, I installed kdewebdev and I cannot find Quanta Plus anywhere. Anybody else having these problems? It is good to see some traffic on this forum again. Thanks, Banjo (_)=='=~

I have progressed far enough with 2010.2 to try installing some simple packages. The package manager goes through the motions of doing the installation, and then the applications are not there. I installed kdewebdev and Quanta never showed up. I installed kdegames4 and kdegames4-core and nothing showed up. I installed xcockroach, xfishtank, and xpenguins and only xpenguins showed up in the games menu.... and it does not do anything. These are not important packages, but other invisible packages are, like Quanta Plus. Anybody else having any issues with installing packages from the 2010.2 repositories? Am I looking at the wrong repositories or mirrors? I have Main, Contrib, Non-free, and PLF plus their updates enabled. Thanks, Banjo (_)=='=~

I have done this by creating copies of my maildir folders in the mbox format as described above and then copying the mbox files directly into the "Local Folders" mail folder of Thunderbird, e.g. .thunderbird/7nt8vv6t.default/Mail/Local Folders/ I was unable to put them anywhere but "Local Folders" and have it work, so I dropped them in there and then opened Thunderbird and used it to create subfolders and moved them into subfolders. Be careful when you do this. I think that the first time you create "Local Folders" it wipes out whatever is in there. A more formal import tool might be a safer bet rather than messing around under the table. If you have a lot of legacy mail folders this can take a while, but it is a one way trip for me. Banjo (_)=='=~

Sorry for the rant, but I was sorely frustrated after spending all day trying to get Kmail running. Thanks for the confirmation that I am not crazy and that it really is messed up. So I bailed on Kmail and started up Thunderbird, and an hour later I had all my accounts working and my address book back. I will have to create my one distribution list again, but that is just a drag and drop in Thunderbird. I am a convert. I still have not found Quanta Plus, so I am looking into switching over to Bluefish. The only thing I will miss in Quanta is the upload manager, which appears to be missing in Bluefish. I will use Filezilla if I have to. I edit the html directly anyway, so I don't need a fancy tool. I could not wait for Mageia because my old hard disk was dying fast and I had to get a replacement going ASAP. I didn't even get all of my files onto my backup disk before the old disk croaked. I had to download my web page using FTP to get some of the files back. And one of my backup disks seems to have failed entirely; the USB will not mount at all. .... and the mouse blinks out on occasion and I have to unplug it to reset it. It has not been a good day at the computer. Thanks for the support This is still the best Linux forum even though it is quiet. Banjo (_)=='=~

I have been using Kmail for years. All my mail contacts are in the address book, or at least they were. Since I have migrated from 2008.1 to 2010.2, KDE 4.4, I cannot get the address book to work at all. It won't even run. I get cryptic errors about nepomuk and Akonadi servers and "D-Bus session bus went down - quitting". What the heck is all of that? I have no idea what all that means or what is is for. I just want my address book back. I cannot "automatically migrate" my kmail accounts because I had to do a clean installation due to my outdated previous version. It appears that there is no other migration path available at all. I have copied config files and copied address book folders and set up accounts again manually and on and on and on. Nothing works. It just won't run. I copied ~/.kde/share/apps/kabc/ to ~/.kde4/share/apps/kabc/ and that has no effect. The Akonadi trouble shooting page says to "open the Akonadi Console", but no clue how to do that. It says, "Use krunner, Alt-F2". What the heck does that mean? It says, ""akonadiconsole" konsole". What the heck does that mean? I think that I now hate Kmail and all of the KDE apps that no longer work or run. I installed kdewebdev to get Quanta Plus back and it is not there. What have they done to KDE? Nothing works. I have no need for fancy, floating 3D widgets and cubes with pictures of desktops on them. They seem to have replaced basic functions with frills that I do not need. KDE is as bloated as fnWindows with the same disastrous results. I am looking for other tools to migrate out of KDE to something that might continue to work in the future. I think I might go to Thunderbird for email and Bluefish for web development. It will take me hours of work to move stuff over because there are no migration tools other than the manual copying of stuff. Sorry for the rant, but I have just spent two days trying to do the simple job of migrating my email from the previous Mandy to the current one, and I have failed to get it done. I am beginning to believe that it is hopeless. This ought to be easy. No wonder people are bailing out of KDE 4 in droves to run to Gnome. And from what I hear, the Gnome people are following in their footsteps with their own version of the Bloated Desktop. Ick! Thoughts, helpful hints, dopeslaps, ideas are all welcome, but I think I am done with this bloatware. There might be a Mac in my future. Banjo (_)=='=~

Greetings, I am busy finishing my setup of Mandriva 2010.2 from a One live CD. All is going well, and I really like the distro, but I still cannot find Quanta Plus. I installed kdewebdev4, but no quanta shows up on the system. Will someone please refresh my memory about how to get Quanta running again? Thanks, Banjo (_)=='=~

Thanks for the quick reply. I am skittish because the 2008.1 One CD I used last time had a crippled kernel with it that would only recognize 1 Gig of my 2 Gig of RAM. It would also not load a driver for my Nvidia card. It took hours of online research and many kernel downloads just to get the system recognizing my hardware. The rest of it went fairly well. I am currently running the crippled kernel because the other one got corrupted by my failing disk drive. I have been eyeballing the Mageia distro, but I really do need something soon because we use this computer for work, finance, etc. I would like to use the long weekend to get this thing working again. Maybe I will try to partition my new disk for a dual boot and try both. I have never done that before. What is the current wisdom for partitioning a disk? I have a 500 Gig Seagate on its way to me. B) Here is my current setup: Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda1 7.7G 2.2G 5.2G 30% / /dev/sda7 191G 68G 123G 36% /home /dev/sda5 30G 6.5G 22G 24% /usr Swap is 2 Gig on /dev/sda6 Thanks, Banjo (_)=='=~

Sorry if this is a silly question, but the Mandriva site is very vague on how the download of the PowerPack works. How is the download limited, by time or number of downloads? Can I download both the 32 and 64 bit versions. That is what they ship when they sell the DVD's. I am doing this on a computer that is slowly dieing and I need to get something working on it that is stable. Soon. I have downloaded the 2010.2 One CD, but last time I installed using the 2008.1 One CD and it took me a month to get it working having gone through 6 kernels and numerous attempts to get the Nvidia drivers working. I thought that buying a PowerPack might speed things up. Is the "Free" DVD usable in less than a month of messing around? Suggestions, tips, hints, and dopeslaps are all welcome at this point. Thanks, Banjo (_)=='=~

I will give it a go, but I want to try a Live CD first to see how it plays on my computer. I noticed that the RC 1 Live CD's are not out yet, and I cannot find the Beta ISO's anywhere. I keep getting redirected to the Download page that has only the RC on it.... sans Live CD ISO's. I guess I will just wait until they are available. Banjo (_)=='=~

Ian, Thanks for the information on the differences between the Mint distros. I am not familiar with the Debian model, but I will check into it. I did read that Debian tends to be a bit behind the times on apps upgrades, which is the price you pay for stability. John, I am interested in Mageia as well, but that looks to be a bit volatile for a while. I see that it has been climbing the popularity list at distrowatch. Banjo (_)=='=~

I have looked at Ubuntu, Fedora, and OpenSuSE, and they all look pretty much the same in different colors. I have not looked at Mint yet. I will check it out. Thanks Banjo (_)=='=~

I am looking for an upgrade distro as well. I would like to stick with Mandriva, but the last time I did an upgrade (using the 2008 One CD) it took me a month to get it working. I have about 5 kernels installed in a crapshoot trying to get drivers to work for printers, graphics card, etc. It was not fun or easy. I am thinking of just buying the 2010 PowerPack DVD set to get everything I need in one place. The first two Mandrakes I installed were from PowerPacks, and they just worked. I cannot afford a month of down time because this is our main PC at home, and we use it for work on a regular basis. But that release is getting a bit long in the tooth. I just downloaded and ran the OpenSuSE Live CD to see what it would do, and it crippled my graphics card.... which means that I would be searching for drivers again. Banjo (_)=='=~

I knew nobody would believe me. :unsure: But the ghosts are still gone after exorcising that UPS. That's good enough for me. I have put a Kill A Watt on the computer and monitor to see how much UPS this thing would require should I decide to replace that old one. So far it is peaking out at about 120 Watts... and about 165 KVA. That is way below what all the online calculators are recommending. Banjo (_)=='=~