Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Amarok 1.4.4 on Ubuntu Dapper

A new version of Amarok, my favorite music player for Linux, has been released.

This version boasts numerous bug fixes, and an nice interface to the Magnatune music store. Magnatune is cool since the full length tracks are under a Creative Commons license and are free to listen to. If you decide to support an artist you enjoy, you can buy downloads and choose how much you wish to pay. The artist splits the profits 50:50 with Magnatune, and you get uncrippled MP3/FLAC/Ogg files, which can be re-downloaded at any time if you loose them somehow. Since Magnatune operates like an enlightened version of a traditional record label, meaning they only select "high quality" artists ... they don't push loads of dross from self promoting artists that suck like the old mp3.com (RIP) did. "Brad Sucks" is (non-exclusively) on the Magnatune label, but his music doesn't suck.

Hopefully in the future Amarok will include some generic API to interface with other enlightened music stores and repositories of Creative Commons music, so that Magnatune doesn't get accused of monopolising :). For instance, I'd like to be able to add say, ccMixter and maybe IUMA in addition to Magnatune. An open web services API for music stores would make this possible, and while I haven't looked "under the hood" of the new Amarok-Magnatune browsing feature yet, I suspect this is what they have already created.

Anyway, there doesn't seem to be a backported version of Amarok 1.4.4 in the Ubuntu / Kubuntu Dapper in the repositories (yet). There are some Edgy Eft packages, but I don't want to upgrade to Edgy at the moment.

Instead, I've compiled my own and have made some deb packages, using the official deb source packages. I haven't tested this version heavily yet, but it seems to work. I had to override one dependency, since it complained that the Dapper "Common Debian Build System" (cdbs package) was not recent enough .... hopefully this was a safe thing to do.

You can download my packaged versions here:

amarok_1.4.4-0ubuntu1_i386.deb (link fixed .. Thanks victor !!)

amarok-xine_1.4.4-0ubuntu1_i386.deb

amarok-engines_1.4.4-0ubuntu1_i386.deb

Install them by typing:

$ sudo dpkg -i amarok_1.4.4-0ubuntu1_i386.deb amarok-xine_1.4.4-0ubuntu1_i386.deb amarok-engines_1.4.4-0ubuntu1_i386.deb
Yah, I should probably GPG sign these and try to get them included in Dapper backports or something .... but no time to do the job properly at the moment.

Update - if you have trouble with some missing dependencies, this may help:

$ sudo apt-get install ruby python-qt3 kdelibs4c2a libifp4 libnjb5 libpq4 libqt3-mt libtunepimp3 libvisual-0.4-0 libxine-main1

Hopefully that catches most of the dependencies that are likely to be missing, particularly for those running Ubuntu Dapper and not Kubuntu Dapper.

14 comments:

Unknown said...

you wrote:
"An open web services API for music stores would make this possible, and while I haven't looked "under the hood" of the new Amarok-Magnatune browsing feature yet, I suspect this is what they have already created."


That's what I wrote a few months ago for Amarok (and others), which is blogged at: http://blogs.magnatune.com/buckman/2006/06/embedded_purcha.html

-john

Unknown said...

Thanks victor .. I tried to be really careful and make sure I got those links right too ... tested that they weren't dead links and everything. Must have munged it when I was making sure they went via the CoralCDN.

Anyway ... they *should* be right now.

Unknown said...

Thanks a ton! I've been looking for a way to upgrade my amarok on dapper, as I cannot install edgy for technical reasons. Worked like a charm, thanks again.

kulpret said...

Hey, just a piece of advice. You may need to run this command to solve a dependency issue first. I did on my Kubuntu Dapper install.

$ sudo apt-get install libnjb5

It bombs out without that package. This will help others install smoother. Thanks for the backport packages.

-Jon

Unknown said...

Kulpret: Thanks for the tip ... I probably already had libnjb5 installed, among other dependancies, and so didn't notice it when I did a test install ... there are probably other dependancies that aren't installed by default in (K)Ubuntu Dspper too ... dpkg / apt-get / synaptic /aptitude etc should tell you what you need.

Unknown said...

Thx a lot. That worked perfectly

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

The site the links point to, www.fileden.com.nyud.net, does not resolve. Did it go completely offline? Is there an alternative source for the packages?

Unknown said...

Just tested them, the downloads work for me .. maybe it was a temporary outage (although, technically, yes the domain www.fileden.com.nyud.net does not resolve, since it is using the CoralCDN content distribution network as a transparent caching proxy).

If you are having trouble, try using just www.fileden.com in the URL without the .nyud.net:8090 ... this will download directly from fileden rather than via the CoralCDN cache ... of course, if everybody bypasses the CoralCDN cache this way my bandwidth limit on fileden might exceed.

I'm happy for offers to host these files somewhere else (just haven't got round to contacting any Ubuntu/Amarok/Debian people yet to ask).

Unknown said...

ounds great. I'm running Ubuntu Dapper and don't want to upgrade to Edgy quite yet.

Alas, after downloading the packages and running the sudo commands, got this:

(Reading database ... 70870 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace amarok 2:1.4.4-0ubuntu1 (using amarok_1.4.4-0ubuntu1_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement amarok ...
Preparing to replace amarok-xine 2:1.4.4-0ubuntu1 (using amarok-xine_1.4.4-0ubuntu1_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement amarok-xine ...
Preparing to replace amarok-engines 2:1.4.4-0ubuntu1 (using amarok-engines_1.4.4-0ubuntu1_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement amarok-engines ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of amarok:
amarok depends on ruby; however:
Package ruby is not installed.
amarok depends on python-qt3; however:
Package python-qt3 is not installed.
amarok depends on kdelibs4c2a (>= 4:3.5.2); however:
Package kdelibs4c2a is not installed.
amarok depends on libifp4; however:
Package libifp4 is not installed.
amarok depends on libnjb5; however:
Package libnjb5 is not installed.
amarok depends on libpq4 (>= 8.1.4); however:
Version of libpq4 on system is 8.1.3-4.
amarok depends on libqt3-mt (>= 3:3.3.6); however:
Package libqt3-mt is not installed.
amarok depends on libtunepimp3 (>= 0.4.2); however:
Package libtunepimp3 is not installed.
amarok depends on libvisual-0.4-0 (>= 0.4.0); however:
Package libvisual-0.4-0 is not installed.
dpkg: error processing amarok (--install):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of amarok-xine:
amarok-xine depends on amarok (= 2:1.4.4-0ubuntu1); however:
Package amarok is not configured yet.
amarok-xine depends on amarok; however:
Package amarok is not configured yet.
amarok-xine depends on kdelibs4c2a (>= 4:3.5.2); however:
Package kdelibs4c2a is not installed.
amarok-xine depends on libxine-main1 (>= 1.1.1); however:
Package libxine-main1 is not installed.
dpkg: error processing amarok-xine (--install):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of amarok-engines:
amarok-engines depends on amarok (= 2:1.4.4-0ubuntu1); however:
Package amarok is not configured yet.
amarok-engines depends on amarok-xine; however:
Package amarok-xine is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing amarok-engines (--install):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
amarok
amarok-xine
amarok-engines

Unknown said...

Sorry for the slow replay zorgon ... looks like you are missing some dependencies .. try:

$ sudo apt-get install ruby python-qt3 kdelibs4c2a libifp4 libnjb5 libpq4 libqt3-mt libtunepimp3 libvisual-0.4-0 libxine-main1

and then try install the Amarok debs again ...

I'm no dpkg/apt/deb expert .. does anyone know how to get dpkg to automatically fetch dependencies, or alternatively get apt-get to install a locally downloaded deb package (and automatically fetch dependencies, as it usually does). This seems like functionality that should be there, but I'm just missing. I've searched for this and briefly read the docs but I haven't found an answer.

Unknown said...

Installed on Mepis 6.0 . Doesen't play flac files... It gives to me an error "no audio channel" .
Why?

mohanr said...

You have to also make sure that your sources.list includes dapper backports:

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-backports main restricted universe multiverse

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