Audacious Media Player Waste of Time

With XMMS going by the wayside as in no more development I decided to see what was available as a replacement in my Gutsy system.
A quick Google search presents me with a media player going by the name Audacious. That name couldn't be a better fit. And I need to point out that you should not confuse this program with Audacity which is a very good audio editor in it's own right.

I open up the Synaptic Package Manager and do a search for Audacious. Mark the main package and try to mark the plug-ins but it's not going to happen. When I marked the main package for installation it popped up an error that said it can't be installed because the plug-ins aren't going to be installed. HUH!!!

I'm trying to mark the plug-ins but the main package error prevents me from adding them on.
So I try marking the plug-ins first. Same problem. I get an error message that the main program isn't going to be installed so the plug-ins can't be installed.
This is NUTS!!!

Alright then. I'll go to their website and see what's going on. I click on the link for their site from a Google search and am presented with a page that says "It Works!"
That's nice. Maybe that page works but the software package sure doesn't. I'm getting this bad feeling. Packages are messed up and the website is down.

Okay! I'll go and grab the .deb packages. Download them and when I try to install them I get the same errors as I did in Synaptic.
GRR....!!!!!!

Okay! Sigh! I'll grab the source code and compile it from there. So I grab the base and plug-in source code and get to work.
Dependency errors! Drat! Or should I say error because it said I was missing one file.
Go and grab the source for that file, compile and install it.
Back to the main package. Another dependency error. After about 5 of these I finally get the main package installed.

Next I install the 3 plug-in packages and thankfully they go much easier.
Now I open up Audacious and it looks suspiciously similar to XMMS even though the developers have said in many articles that they are trying to design a media player that is not a continuation of XMMS and will stand on it's own merit.

I open the file browser and tell Audacious to open an Mp3 file.
ERROR! Either the file permissions are not set properly or you don't have the proper codec installed.
I check to see what plug-ins I have installed. There is a whole list of them but no where do I see one for playing Mp3's. I check on a few forums and apparently that plug-in should be either in the base or dev plug-in package.

So I reinstall the plug-in packages. Still no luck. I go online to see if I can find any other info. Plenty of people posting about problems opening Mp3 files but no real solutions other then to make sure the plug-in packages were installed.

That's when I made my decision. Sudo apt-get remove audacious and all the plug-ins.
I knew this package was a bad omen when I had problems installing through Synaptic and found a dead website.

I'll stick with VLC. It has some quirks but the additional features like audio ripping and video conversion more then make up for those few minor annoyances.
And I have to really wonder what direction Audacious will really take.
Broken .deb packages and websites that are down do not paint a rosey picture for it's future.
I know it left a very bad taste in my mouth and it will take the Audacious developers a lot of work and plenty of add on features for me to even take a look at it again.

In retrospect I did get a good refresher course on compiling and installing from a source package and I honed my skills on finding missing dependency packages.
But the time wasted on a software product of shoddy construction was time I could have used on better things.

TaZMAn

Blog Entry Poster

Just downloaded and trying out a piece of software available through the Synaptic Package Manager called Blog Entry Poster.

It allows me to add new posts to this blog right from my desktop. No need to open up Firefox and log in to my page.

Well I guess I will still have to open my browser and go to my blog to see how this turned out. I do know one con about this software and that is the inability to add tags to any posts made with this software. It will require me to still log into my blog and edit the post to add the tags.

But this is still a good utility. Especially if I'm doing something and I want to do a quick post on this blog.

Enjoy!

TaZMAn

Install Additional Compiz Plugins In Gutsy And Newer Versions

This post is only for Gutsy users. If you have Hardy and have the up to date Compiz installed you should already have these plugins.

Do you want all those cool plugins like you see in those youtube videos?
Stuff like 3D Windows, Atlantis, Snow Globe, Photo Wheel, Wallpaper and several others?

It's real easy. If your using Gutsy, get on over to this Compiz-Fusion page
http://forum.compiz-fusion.org/showthread.php?t=5303

For newer Linux releases you can view the list of all available plugins from this page;
All Plugins
http://wiki.compiz-fusion.org/

To download and install them (You will need Git) follow the directions found here;
Downloads
http://wiki.compiz-fusion.org/Install/PluginsFromGit


Enjoy your new plugins!

Here is a screen grab of my cube.































And here's a video I found at youtube for your entertainment.







Enjoy!

TaZMAn

Trackerd Uses 100% of CPU in Gutsy

I was on my computer the other day and suddenly it acted like it was frozen.
I looked at the CPU monitor in my toolbar and saw that my CPU usage was pegged at 100%.
What!!! I was only reading the news.

So I opened up my monitor tool to see what was eating up my CPU.
After a minute or so it finally opened and I saw the culprit.
Trackerd.

What is that? I quickly killed it and hoped it wouldn't shut down my system.
It didn't and a few seconds later my computer was acting normal again.
I went to Google and looked up trackerd.
It's an indexing app to make file searches faster. It also seemed to have numerous bug reports concerning high CPU usage in Gutsy. It doesn't seem to be a problem in previous Ubuntu versions or the newest Hardy version.

I also found out that it can really load up your hard drive with massive databases of the indexed files. My database files totaled over 470 megs!
I also found out you don't need it. All that will happen when you search for a file it will take a few seconds longer.

Below are several options to solve the problem.


Solution #1;
Change the options of your indexing. Tell trackerd what it can or cannot index.
This can be done by going to Preferences > Indexing preferences > Tab ignored files and select what files and folders it should ignore.

Solution #2
Change the performance of trackerd by going into the same configuration screen and turning down the performance. Please note that this may not help. Trackerd has a nice setting of +19. Changing this setting seems to have no effect.

Solution #3
Disable trackerd by going to System> Preferences> Sessions or use this command:
gnome-session-properties
Then uncheck Tracker and be sure to remove the Deskbar applet from the panel.

Solution #4
Uninstall trackerd. WARNING! This may try to uninstall your Gnome Desktop.
If you get a warning or message that the Gnome Desktop will also be removed you need to abort this process and disable trackerd instead.
Open your terminal and use the following command;

sudo apt-get remove --purge tracker-search-tool tracker-utils

Then delete the index stored here.
du -sh ~/.config/tracker
rm -rf ~/.config/tracker

That should do it. By using one of the above options will give you more control over your CPU usage and free up some disk space.

Enjoy!

TaZMAn