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Hi!

On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 11:41:22AM -0500, Brent Busby wrote:
> So...I'd really like my Amarok 1.4 back...

My use case differs from yours, so I'm not sure it's a good advice, but if
you didn't tried media-sound/clementine yet - you probably should try it.
For me it completely replaced Amarok 1.4, I've configured it exactly like
my Amarok 1.4 was configured and use it in exactly same way (some global
hotkeys configured using my window manager (fluxbox) with help of `qdbus`).

I like Amarok 1.4 very much, but there is no sense in using it anymore -
it's too outdated, require a lot of outdated libs, and thus it will have
more and more troubles with compilation, more security issues, etc.
It's dead. This is very sad, but only way to go is try to switch to one of
replacements for Amarok 1.4 - there are about 3-4 such projects AFAIK
(which was born as replacement for Amarok 1.4), and clementine is one of them.

--
WBR, Alex.

On Sun, 22 Jul 2012, Alex Efros wrote:

> My use case differs from yours, so I'm not sure it's a good advice,
> but if you didn't tried media-sound/clementine yet - you probably
> should try it. For me it completely replaced Amarok 1.4, I've
> configured it exactly like my Amarok 1.4 was configured and use it in
> exactly same way (some global hotkeys configured using my window
> manager (fluxbox) with help of `qdbus`).

Thanks, I'll check it out..

--
+ Brent A. Busby + "We've all heard that a million monkeys
+ Sr. UNIX Systems Admin + banging on a million typewriters will
+ University of Chicago + eventually reproduce the entire works of
+ James Franck Institute + Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet,
+ Materials Research Ctr + we know this is not true." -Robert Wilensky

Brent Busby writes:

> Recently, something apparently changed on my system during an update
> such that Amarok 1 from KDE Sunset will no longer build with the mp4
> USE flag turned on.

I also suggest to try media-sound/clementine. I any Amarok 1 will be
fixed by anyone.

> Since that effectively means that it would no
> longer be able to play M4A files ripped from YouTube streams, that
> would effectively end my interest in Amarok, so I tried upgrading to
> the new QT4 version just to see if it's as awful as everybody says.
>
> It is as awful as everybody says.

Not me, I really like Amarok 2. For me, it is the KDE4 software I am most
happy with.

Wonko

Am 22.07.12 18:41, schrieb Brent Busby:
> Recently, something apparently changed on my system during an update
> such that Amarok 1 from KDE Sunset will no longer build with the mp4 USE
> flag turned on. Since that effectively means that it would no longer be
> able to play M4A files ripped from YouTube streams, that would
> effectively end my interest in Amarok, so I tried upgrading to the new
> QT4 version just to see if it's as awful as everybody says.

Hello,

this will not solve your problem with Amarok, but it could bypass it.
http://www.youtube-mp3.org/
This site will let you download the Files as MP3 if you do not want to
recode them yourself.

Norman

Norman Rieß writes:

> Am 22.07.12 18:41, schrieb Brent Busby:
> > Recently, something apparently changed on my system during an update
> > such that Amarok 1 from KDE Sunset will no longer build with the mp4
> > USE flag turned on. Since that effectively means that it would no
> > longer be able to play M4A files ripped from YouTube streams, that
> > would effectively end my interest in Amarok, so I tried upgrading to
> > the new QT4 version just to see if it's as awful as everybody says.

> this will not solve your problem with Amarok, but it could bypass it.
> http://www.youtube-mp3.org/
> This site will let you download the Files as MP3 if you do not want to
> recode them yourself.

I can recommend media-sound/soundkonverter for such conversion tasks.
Just drop the video into the soundKonverter window, select the desired
output format and location, and start the conversion.

http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/soundKonverter?content=29024

Wonko

On Sun, 22 Jul 2012 11:41:22 -0500 (CDT)
Brent Busby <brent@keycorner.org> wrote:

> Recently, something apparently changed on my system during an update
> such that Amarok 1 from KDE Sunset will no longer build with the mp4 USE
> flag turned on. Since that effectively means that it would no longer be
> able to play M4A files ripped from YouTube streams, that would
> effectively end my interest in Amarok, so I tried upgrading to the new
> QT4 version just to see if it's as awful as everybody says.
[...]
> So...I'd really like my Amarok 1.4 back...

The Trinity Project's version might work, but if you're using KDE3 as
a desktop environment, the upgrade may cause other problems.

Read http://wiki.hasnoname.de/tde:trinity-overlay_on_funtoo_gentoo
for instructions if you'd like to try it.

> Addendum: (Also, in an unrelated note, has anyone noticed that the EAPI
> warnings from the overlay have gotten really heinous lately during world
> updates?)

Yes, I'd noticed that too. If I'm interpreting the warning correctly, someone
has to go through and swap the KMNAME and EAPI lines in most of the
ebuilds to get EAPI into the first 5 lines.

Thanks to all, I tried Clementine and it's awesome.

--
+ Brent A. Busby + "We've all heard that a million monkeys
+ Sr. UNIX Systems Admin + banging on a million typewriters will
+ University of Chicago + eventually reproduce the entire works of
+ James Franck Institute + Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet,
+ Materials Research Ctr + we know this is not true." -Robert Wilensky

Alex Schuster posted on Sun, 22 Jul 2012 20:18:12 +0200 as excerpted:

> Not me, I really like Amarok 2. For me, it is the KDE4 software I am
> most happy with.

LOL! ... And you DO have your problems with kde4!

(FWIW, those who don't understand what I'm referring to, apparently
aren't regulars on the kde-linux and kde-general lists.

Both AS/Wonko and I have had our problems, tho mine at least are
reasonable solved, now, by switching to non-kde solutions for a lot of
stuff, mpd and front-ends as a music player, tho it's MUCH different than
amarok but better fits my usage tho I miss the visualizations but kde4-
amarok killed that anyway tho for all I know it's back now, claws-mail
for mail and as a feed-reader, killing with fire anything akonadi related
including kmail and akregator, my own scripts in a konsole popup
replacing kde3's multikey hotkey functionality, as it's apparently
entirely broken and unfixable in qt4 (qt5 is supposed to have the feature
again, tho, but that doesn't help with qt4/kde4), the qt4-based smplayer
and qt4-front-ended vlc replacing kaffeine, firefox replacing konqueror,
since it became very apparent with the treatment of various bugs and https
certificate handling that the kde devs don't consider konqueror any more
than a "toy" browser, or they'd not have called kde4 including konqueror
ready for ordinary users, when it was seriously bugged, including
security issues... and it's still kde4 but I switched to the yasp-
scripted and then superkaramba to replace the missing ksysguard plasmoid/
kicker applet. Meanwhile, with akonadi killed with fire, I was able to
set USE=-semantic-desktop, regardless of the semantic-desktop lead-weight
being a major bullet-point feature of kde4, and get back the performance
kde4 otherwise robs compared to kde3.

But I still like kde's general configurability, and plasma as a desktop's
actually quite good, once you add a few plasmoids from kdelook and
configure everything to your liking. kwin's also quite configurable, and
I like the available effects and kde integration. And with a decent mid-
range graphics card (radeon hd4650 on the old system, radeon hd6770 on
the new, freedomware drivers of course) it's fast and stable. I'm
actually quite happy with kde4 now, even if I had to dump about half of
it including setting USE=-semantic-desktop, to get there. Also on the
bright side, since I'm not using kde for mail, feeds or the web any
longer, only mainly the desktop/wm and games, and with kde4 since 4.5 now
much more stable (sans kdepim with its akonadification) I'm now freed of
the concerns that kept me from running pre-releases earlier, and have
been running them since 4.7-rc2, thru 4.8 betas and rcs and 4.9 betas,
and now am on 4.9-rc2, waiting 4.9.0-release in a couple weeks or so. =:^)

Umm... sorry. I got a bit carried away there. I intended that to be
only a few lines poking wonko, but then I realized some wouldn't grok the
context, and...

--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman

Brent Busby posted on Sun, 22 Jul 2012 12:00:42 -0500 as excerpted:

> On Sun, 22 Jul 2012, Alex Efros wrote:
>
>> My use case differs from yours, so I'm not sure it's a good advice, but
>> if you didn't tried media-sound/clementine yet - you probably should
>> try it. For me it completely replaced Amarok 1.4, I've configured it
>> exactly like my Amarok 1.4 was configured and use it in exactly same
>> way (some global hotkeys configured using my window manager (fluxbox)
>> with help of `qdbus`).
>
> Thanks, I'll check it out..

Please do. I've not used it as I found a different solution (mpd and
front-ends) worked better for my needs, but going by all the reviews and
etc I've seen, clementine really IS pretty much universally regarded as
the modern successor to kde3's amarok, what amarok for kde4 SHOULD have
been to carry on the name, while kde4's amarok is really an entirely
different application in both code and usage.

Based on all I've read, I highly doubt you'll be disappointed, and will
probably wonder why you hadn't switched sooner, saving the headaches of
maintaining your old amarok. =:^)

--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman

Brent Busby posted on Sun, 22 Jul 2012 11:41:22 -0500 as excerpted:

> [amarok for kde4] feels slow and unresponsive, and from my brief usage
> of the program, it doesn't seem to support global (desktop-wide) hotkeys
> -- you have to focus its window to make it do things like advance to
> the next track.

While I'd guess clementine (as already discussed in another subthread) is
what you're really looking for, this point hadn't been addressed yet...

As I said in other subthreads, I found another solution (mpd and front-
ends) for me, but I do run kde4, and AFAIK amarok has native global hotkey
support there. It's simply configured in kde(4) settings, as one might
expect for global kde4 desktop settings if one thinks about it, instead
of in the app itself. With kde4-amarok installed, if you look in kde4
settings, common appearance and behavior, shortcuts and gestures, global
keyboard shortcuts, in the kde component dropdown there should be an
entry for amarok. Select it, and you should get the usual global hotkey
configuration options, for amarok.

If you're not using kde4 as your desktop, then as elsewhere mentioned, it
should still be configurable using whatever global hotkey app's generic
hotkey configuration mechanism and command-line or dbus calls.

--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman

Duncan writes:

> Alex Schuster posted on Sun, 22 Jul 2012 20:18:12 +0200 as excerpted:
>
> > Not me, I really like Amarok 2. For me, it is the KDE4 software I am
> > most happy with.
>
> LOL! ... And you DO have your problems with kde4!

Yes, I still do. It gets better, partially because it REALLY GET BETTER,
and partially because I avoid to do things that I learnt are giving
troubles. Or because I know what to do in case of a problem, like which
file I have to replace with a backup when plasma AGAIN messed up all my
plasmoids, or does not start up, or whatever.

> (FWIW, those who don't understand what I'm referring to, apparently
> aren't regulars on the kde-linux and kde-general lists.
>
> Both AS/Wonko and I have had our problems, tho mine at least are
> reasonable solved, now, by switching to non-kde solutions for a lot of
> stuff, mpd and front-ends as a music player, tho it's MUCH different
> than amarok but better fits my usage tho I miss the visualizations but
> kde4- amarok killed that anyway tho for all I know it's back now,
> claws-mail for mail and as a feed-reader, killing with fire anything
> akonadi related including kmail and akregator, my own scripts in a
> konsole popup replacing kde3's multikey hotkey functionality, as it's
> apparently entirely broken and unfixable in qt4 (qt5 is supposed to
> have the feature again, tho, but that doesn't help with qt4/kde4), the
> qt4-based smplayer and qt4-front-ended vlc replacing kaffeine, firefox
> replacing konqueror, since it became very apparent with the treatment
> of various bugs and https certificate handling that the kde devs don't
> consider konqueror any more than a "toy" browser, or they'd not have
> called kde4 including konqueror ready for ordinary users, when it was
> seriously bugged, including security issues... and it's still kde4 but
> I switched to the yasp- scripted and then superkaramba to replace the
> missing ksysguard plasmoid/ kicker applet. Meanwhile, with akonadi
> killed with fire, I was able to set USE=-semantic-desktop, regardless
> of the semantic-desktop lead-weight being a major bullet-point feature
> of kde4, and get back the performance kde4 otherwise robs compared to
> kde3.

Some similar experiences here. I do no longer use KMail since it killed
some thousand mails, simply by moving an IMAP sub-folder to another
folder. I just tried to reproduce this, and hey, the mails are not
deleted, but KMail crashes, this is reproducable. Maybe I should file a
bug... but my report about the deleted mails got no attention, and I
expect the developers to try things like moving folders around for
themselves. It seems whenever I do such things, I run into bugs sooner or
later. Usually sooner. Oh, and I do not need to mention that all the time
while I tried this I get Akonadi notifications about missing folders and
such.

I do no longer use Akregator, altough Liferea also has its issues
(so far I reported 4 bugs and 5 wishes).

I still use Konqueror... not really sure why. I like it, yes, it looks
more KDEish than Firefox, and it opens in a new window instead as a new
tab in an existing Firefox window, which probably could be changed
anyway... but a problem are the bookmarks, moving multiple top-level
bookmarks to a folder makes keditbookmarks crash, sometimes losing some
of those bookmarks, and sometimes it will additionally delete the very
first folder. Happened at least three times for me, and guess what, the
first bookmark folder is named 'Accounts' and is the most important one
for me. Then I will have to get an old version of bookmarks.xml from a
backup and merge it with the current file.

This is really annoying. From the beginning of KDE4 I had trouble with
the bookmark editor. And the bug I just mentiones is nearly two years old
now. Will this ever be fixed? Will KDE ever have a working bookmark
editor? Maybe using Rekonq instead will help, I did not play around with
this browser yet.

Amarok is an outstanding exception. It's not perfect yet, and has some
stability issues, although this has become much better. I like how it
looks. I like how I can configure it. Being able to fuse context and
media view together in two tabs, so I save some space [*]. I like the
information the context view presents, such as Wikipedia entry or lyrics.
I like the look and feel, for me it is just beautiful.

Another fine piece of software is Digikam. I don't use it much, but I
like it.

> But I still like kde's general configurability, and plasma as a
> desktop's actually quite good, once you add a few plasmoids from
> kdelook and configure everything to your liking.

Yes, but I back up my .kde4/share/config directory (or at least
plasma-desktop-appletsrc) before that, as many of those plasmoids caused
trouble here.

> kwin's also quite
> configurable, and I like the available effects and kde integration.
> And with a decent mid- range graphics card (radeon hd4650 on the old
> system, radeon hd6770 on the new, freedomware drivers of course) it's
> fast and stable.

Yes, kwin is really great. Window rules are such a cool feature, I use
them often. Sometimes to work around problems, like some application's
windows always opening minimized, I do not know why. Okay, this also only
happens in KDE4, so the window rules are a solution for a problem I would
not have, but still. And I like mplayer to open without any window
decoration, visible on all desktops, and always on top. And I like to
group windows together, like on the top left of my screenshot [*]. It's a
Konsole and a Dolphin, minimized to title bar size unless I need one of
them. The Dolphin has two tabs, each with two panels, I use it to manage
files in my music and video folders. I also have Claws and Liferea as a
window group, this feels similar to having Kontact with its KMail and
Akregator sub-modules.

Wonko

[*] http://www.wonkology.org/comp/desktop/2012-04-01/desktop2-1.png

Alex Schuster posted on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 14:19:23 +0200 as excerpted:

> I still use Konqueror... not really sure why. I like it, yes, it looks
> more KDEish than Firefox, and it opens in a new window instead as a new
> tab in an existing Firefox window, which probably could be changed
> anyway... but a problem are the bookmarks, moving multiple top-level
> bookmarks to a folder makes keditbookmarks crash, sometimes losing some
> of those bookmarks, and sometimes it will additionally delete the very
> first folder. Happened at least three times for me, and guess what, the
> first bookmark folder is named 'Accounts' and is the most important one
> for me. Then I will have to get an old version of bookmarks.xml from a
> backup and merge it with the current file.

Interesting. I still use kde/konqueror bookmarks as I'm able to open
them from a dedicated bookmarks menu plasmoid, but I've /never/ (to my
recollection) had that issue. I moved to firefox for other reasons, and
gripe a bit to myself when I have to create a new bookmark in kde semi-
manually since it's not kde-integrated like konqueror, but I've never had
problems with kde's bookmarks.

--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman

Duncan writes:

> Alex Schuster posted on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 14:19:23 +0200 as excerpted:
>
> > I still use Konqueror... not really sure why. I like it, yes, it looks
> > more KDEish than Firefox, and it opens in a new window instead as a
> > new tab in an existing Firefox window, which probably could be changed
> > anyway... but a problem are the bookmarks, moving multiple top-level
> > bookmarks to a folder makes keditbookmarks crash, sometimes losing
> > some of those bookmarks, and sometimes it will additionally delete
> > the very first folder. Happened at least three times for me, and
> > guess what, the first bookmark folder is named 'Accounts' and is the
> > most important one for me. Then I will have to get an old version of
> > bookmarks.xml from a backup and merge it with the current file.
>
> Interesting. I still use kde/konqueror bookmarks as I'm able to open
> them from a dedicated bookmarks menu plasmoid,

Right, that's also a reason why I'm still using Konqueror.

> but I've /never/ (to my
> recollection) had that issue. I moved to firefox for other reasons,
> and gripe a bit to myself when I have to create a new bookmark in kde
> semi- manually since it's not kde-integrated like konqueror, but I've
> never had problems with kde's bookmarks.

In early KDE4 keditbookmarks was totally unusable, I think it was not
even possible to move bookmarks around. This has been fixed, but it still
crashes often, and the problem I mentioned is quite reproducible. It does
not happen every time, but it happens a lot. And that it additionally
deletes the very first folder completely is especially annoying, because
I did not realize this until much later, when needed the bookmark.
Here's a report: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=255611

And I think this is a big problem with KDE4. Such bugs exist for years,
and noone seems to care much. Could you imagine Firefox's bookmark editor
to be buggy for two years, or Internet Explorer? No, this sort of
problems exists in KDE4 only I think.

Sorry for the ranting, I know this is free software and so on, but these
are the things that make it hard for me to recommend KDE4 to others.
People just expect simple things like bookmark editors to work. But
instead they crash, and they delete data when doing so. I'm, still a big
fan of KDE4, and would not like to change, but I do not recommend it to
others. And of course my mom's Laptup runs Gnome, not KDE.

Wonko

Alex Schuster posted on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 20:44:16 +0200 as excerpted:

> Duncan writes:
>
>> Alex Schuster posted on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 14:19:23 +0200 as excerpted:
>>
>> > I still use Konqueror... not really sure why. I like it, yes, it
>> > looks more KDEish than Firefox, and it opens in a new window instead
>> > as a new tab in an existing Firefox window, which probably could be
>> > changed anyway... but a problem are the bookmarks, moving multiple
>> > top-level bookmarks to a folder makes keditbookmarks crash, sometimes
>> > losing some of those bookmarks, and sometimes it will additionally
>> > delete the very first folder. Happened at least three times for me,
>> > and guess what, the first bookmark folder is named 'Accounts' and is
>> > the most important one for me. Then I will have to get an old version
>> > of bookmarks.xml from a backup and merge it with the current file.

>> but I've /never/ (to my recollection) had that issue. I moved to
>> firefox for other reasons, and gripe a bit to myself when I have to
>> create a new bookmark in kde semi- manually since it's not
>> kde-integrated like konqueror, but I've never had problems with kde's
>> bookmarks.
>
> In early KDE4 keditbookmarks was totally unusable, I think it was not
> even possible to move bookmarks around. This has been fixed, but it
> still crashes often, and the problem I mentioned is quite reproducible.
> It does not happen every time, but it happens a lot. And that it
> additionally deletes the very first folder completely is especially
> annoying, because I did not realize this until much later, when needed
> the bookmark. Here's a report:
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=255611

After thinking about it a bit, the fact that I haven't run into the issue
may well be because I've simply never moved whole folders around since
the bug originated (likely with kde4). Since I've been using the same
general setup since kde2 era, I long since had my bookmarks arranged in
general as I want them. I do add new bookmarks occasionally, and delete
old ones, and /very/ occasionally create a new folder and move a few
bookmarks into it, but I don't normally move folders around as I've had
the general arrangement setup how I wanted it "forever". ("Forever" is
in this case defined as pretty much since I originally set it up when I
switched from MS over a decade ago, now, "I don't remember changing it
since I switched to Linux" type "forever", thus the quotes.)

> And I think this is a big problem with KDE4. Such bugs exist for years,
> and noone seems to care much. Could you imagine Firefox's bookmark
> editor to be buggy for two years, or Internet Explorer? No, this sort of
> problems exists in KDE4 only I think.

The major problem here is that even most kde devs don't use konqueror for
anything "serious". To them, it's simply a toy, not a browser that's
their primary means of paying bills (epay via the bank), etc.

That's why bugs such as this go years without fixing; it's why the
infamous double-form-submit bug in kde 4.6.2 had to wait two full months
(4.6.4) to be fixed for users even tho they knew the problem right away,
but didn't quite get the patch in before 4.6.3's code-freeze, instead of
either never being full-version released (that's what betas are for, yet
this happened in a bugfix only stable update!) in the first place, or the
error having happened, expediting a fixed 4.6.2.1 update within a week,
two at the outside, as would have happened with any browser product where
its own devs are serious about it. It's why in an era of entire
certificate authorities having their entire collection of certs revoked,
kde4/konqueror had no GUI for certificate management for YEARS after kde4
was declared "ready for ordinary use", etc.

The only conclusion possible is that kde devs including the konqueror
devs themselves consider konqueror it no more than a toy by said
"ordinary users" -- DEFINITELY not something people are going to rely on
for banking, since it was declared ready for ordinary use, yet even with
certificates being revoked left and right, there was no way for a user to
tell konqueror not to actually USE those certs. DEFINITELY not something
people are going to be using for transacting money, since the double-
submit bug was allowed to sit without a critical update for two full
months.

But if it's only a toy, not actually used for anything important, then
such fixes are as trivial as the use of the product, and can be allowed
to sit for months and years, even after the product has been declared
ready for ordinary users.

So that's why I use firefox for my major web browsing, including banking,
etc, now.

And... if it's only a toy, and security and double-submit issues can wait
for months and years /because/ it's only a toy, then it's certainly no
big deal if the toy's bookmark editor is a bit buggy, as well...

> Sorry for the ranting, I know this is free software and so on, but these
> are the things that make it hard for me to recommend KDE4 to others.
> People just expect simple things like bookmark editors to work. But
> instead they crash, and they delete data when doing so. I'm, still a big
> fan of KDE4, and would not like to change, but I do not recommend it to
> others. And of course my mom's Laptup runs Gnome, not KDE.

I recommend kde to others, but only the core desktop (with semantic-
desktop disabled at compile time for best results, tho unfortunately I
don't know of a binary distro that's doing that, but of course it's
possible with gentoo), games, etc. Firefox or chromium for a browser.
Something non-kmail/non-kdepim/non-akonadi for mail/news/feeds/etc. Just
let kde be the desktop environment and provide a few games, gui file
management, etc. That's all. And kde4's actually reasonably good at
that... once it's built without semantic-desktop, at least, and with a
bit of care taken to keep backups of one particular vital plasma file
(plasma-desktop-appletsrc) in particular.

--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman