Monday January 05, 2009 Radio Paradise on OpenSolaris?
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This year, I'd really like to swap over to using OpenSolaris as my default desktop at home if possible, but there are several things that are just not there yet, and are therefore preventing me from doing so. |
The first one is being able to listen to my favorite Internet radio station. If I click on any of the "listen" links (such as the 128k MP3 one in my Firefox browser, I get the "Opening rp_128.m3u" popup, with Totem Movie Player as the default application. If I try to run that, Totem bitches that:
An error occurred The playback of this movie requires a MPEG-1 Layer 3 (MP3) decoder plugin which is not installed [ OK ]
Unfortunately it doesn't just ask me if I'd like to install one (like Ubuntu does the first time I try this on that platform). Also my Mac and Windows XP machine "just work", right out of the box.
I then tried Songbird. Same problem.
I found a LifeHacker entry on Radio Beta that looked promising. I entered "Radio Paradise" in the Quick Search field, and then clicked on the Play icon for the entry that it found. It then bitches that:
In order to listen to this radio, please download VLC and Firefox plugin (for MacOS X and Linux users.)
I clicked on that download link, and found that for Solaris (and therefore presumably OpenSolaris), that there are no precompiled binaries and that I would have to get the source code and build it myself.
My interest started to wane at this point.
Am I missing something? Is there a package I can just install that will allow me to do what I want on OpenSolaris?
[Technorati Tag: Internet Radio]
[Technorati Tag: Radio Paradise]
( Jan 05 2009, 08:07:11 AM PST ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [21]
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Hi,
Have you tried the free MP3 decoder from Fluendo?
http://www.fluendo.com/shop/product/fluendo-mp3-decoder/
If I remember correctly, the installation instructions appear on the download page. It just involves copying the plugin to the correct directory.
Hope this helps
Craig
Posted by Craig Alder on January 05, 2009 at 09:09 AM PST #
Excellent. Works great. Thanks Craig!
Posted by Rich burridge on January 05, 2009 at 09:33 AM PST #
FWIW, I believe we *are* also looking at integrating codeina, which IIRC is what Ubuntu uses to give you that "do you want to install a codec" option.
Posted by Calum Benson on January 05, 2009 at 09:45 AM PST #
@Calum, actually Codeina is what *Fedora* uses. Ubuntu uses its own codec-installer-helper app that knows about the Ubuntu packaging.
But yes, OpenSolaris is looking at integrating Codeina...
Posted by Jan Schmidt on January 05, 2009 at 10:08 AM PST #
Jan's quite right of course, my mistake...
Posted by Calum Benson on January 05, 2009 at 10:16 AM PST #
Hi Rich - do you have the SHOUTcast add-on installed in Songbird?
If not, go install it: http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addon/1205
Then click on the SHOUTcast directory on the left hand side. Go to the Rock genre and you'll see Radio Paradise (you can type in 'paradise' into the filter to filter it)
You can favourite it by clicking on the heart, and then it'll always be easily accessible from the Favourite Stations playlist it creates.
Posted by stevel on January 05, 2009 at 11:15 AM PST #
Hi Steve,
Just went to try to install this add-on and got:
SHOUTcast Radio 0.7.1pre.883 could not be installed because it is not compatible with Songbird 0.7.0
Is there an older version that I can install that's
compatible with the version of Songbird that's in
the OpenSolaris IPS repository?
Posted by Rich burridge on January 05, 2009 at 12:22 PM PST #
I should add that I get a similar error message when
I try to install:
shoutcast-radio-0.7.0.860.xpi
or
shoutcast-radio-0.6.9.842.xpi
Posted by Rich burridge on January 05, 2009 at 12:29 PM PST #
More info. Rather than install using
Tools-> Add-ons..., I successfully installed
it via the toolbar on the left side.
I then restarted Songbird to complete the
installation and when I click on the Shout-cast
item in the left toolbar and filter on "Paradise",
I get two entires (one for 128Kb and the other
for 64Kb).
I double clicked on the 64Kb entry and now get
a popup that states:
A GStreamer Error occurred when trying to play this file: Could not determine type of stream.
Would you like to view additional help for configuring GStreamer?
[ ] Do not ask me again.
[Yes] [ No ]
Totem no longer seems to be working for me either.
I'm going to try logging in and logging out again.
Posted by Rich burridge on January 05, 2009 at 12:40 PM PST #
Yup, that did it. It's playing nicely.
Thanks Steve!
Posted by Rich burridge on January 05, 2009 at 12:43 PM PST #
http://blogs.sun.com/observatory/entry/playing_your_mp3s_with_songbird
Posted by Dominique on January 05, 2009 at 10:46 PM PST #
Don't you think life is too short to be suffering this stuff? Just use Windows or Ubuntu and get on with it.
Posted by Chamrajpet Charles on January 06, 2009 at 06:22 AM PST #
It's the people who "suffer this stuff" in the short term that will make it better in the long term. Switching to the wrong tool for the job instead certainly won't help anything :)
Posted by Calum Benson on January 06, 2009 at 06:40 AM PST #
Ah yeah - the most recent versions of SHOUTcast depend on Songbird 1.0 (which, IIRC, is/was slated to land in snv_107 - Alfred Peng would know better). Looks like you got it working in the end... sorry it was a bit of a headache!
Posted by stevel on January 06, 2009 at 10:29 AM PST #
No (real) problem Steve. It's working great
now. I do have one question though. How do I
get this application to appear on all my
workspaces? Songbird seems to have subverted
the normal way I would do this (which is by
left clicking over the small icon on the left
side of the title bar and the selecting "Always
on Visible Workspace" from the menu that appears).
Posted by Rich burridge on January 06, 2009 at 01:13 PM PST #
Hey Rich.
Alt+Space should put you in that menu. I just tried it to be sure and was indeed able to get Songbird to appear on all workspaces automatically.
HTH!
Posted by joanie on January 06, 2009 at 04:56 PM PST #
Videolan VLC is available for OpenSolaris at http://www.lifewithsolaris.jp/
It understands DVD and lots of media formats
Posted by Daniel Anderson on January 06, 2009 at 05:32 PM PST #
FWIW, lifewithsolaris.jp is currently not serving packages pending licensing and redistribution issues...
Posted by Calum on January 06, 2009 at 05:35 PM PST #
After I commented about Alt+Space, it occurred to me that this might be a job for devilspie. Sure enough, you can create a rule to decorate the Songbird window and then you'll get your familiar title bar back. Although Songbird looks less pretty at that point. *shrug*.
Perhaps of more interest is that you can create a rule to automatically pin Songbird (or whatever) to all workspaces rather than having to Alt+Space into that menu each session. This will probably be of less interest once that gnome-session bug is worked out, but devilspie let's you perform other amusing window management tasks.
Anyhoo... While looking around for the devilspie docs, I discovered there is a gdevilspie which employs pygtk goodness to minimize the effort needed to create the rule (the Get button being especially handy).
You can get gdevilspie from http://code.google.com/p/gdevilspie/. You'll of course also need devilspie. It's in the pending repo, but I kept getting errors when using that package. There is, however, a devilspie link on the gdevilspie project page. It's a super-quick build and seems to work quite nicely.
Posted by joanie on January 06, 2009 at 06:40 PM PST #
Thanks Joanie. Alt-Space works just fine.
I don't feel the need to lose the nice look&feel
of Songbird, so I won't explore [g]devilspie. :-)
Posted by Rich burridge on January 07, 2009 at 07:27 AM PST #
Heh in BeleniX 0.7.1 it just works. All that is needed after the initial install is to run: get-pkgs multimedia, or if one is using the new package manager: spkg install multimedia
Posted by Moinak Ghosh on January 12, 2009 at 06:59 AM PST #