Ubuntu (or other *nix) eye candy and favorite media programs?

[redrumloa]

Just set up Ubuntu 64bit (Feisty Fawn) on my newly built dual core AMD64 system. I must say they sure are getting better and better making a *nix OS work right out of the box!

Anyhow, I've been playing with Desktop effects and find it to be fun. Wagging windows is neat! What else is there for eye candy?

Also, what are your favorite media players? For streaming music? For video/DVD playback? For mp3 ripping? I have a few packages I've been using over the years, but would like to hear opinions.

What else is a must do? What about 64bit specific?

[Jeff]

I have Ubuntu Feisty Fawn installed on a partition of my box also (Core 2 Duo). I agree it has come a long way since I used to play with the first versions of Slackware:-D

Take a look at Beryl, it really neat as far as eye candy goes. I have had some trouble with Ubuntu and screen refresh rate selection from the desktop. It really wants to default to 60HZ unless I manually play with the config files. I sort of gave up on it for now, but I always go back and look once and a while.  It could be my ancient PanaSync E21 also.

Have fun,
Jeff  

[kevh100]

Have a look at Automatix. It'll sort out restricted drivers, codecs and lots of other stuff for you (if you want). Feisty is definitely a major step forward in a usable desktop Linux. I've got it on my 500Mhz Powerbook G4 and it's loads faster than OSX was. The only issues I have are PPC specific ones (buggy flash support, no wine etc etc). I like to use VLC for video / dvd playback and the default Gnome RhythmBox audio player for music.

Kev

[cybernoid]

Hi there.
My x86 machine is 100% Ubuntu (7.04)

My sugestion is to leave everything as it for multimedia.
Movie player may seem the same like the 6.10 but it is lots more stable now, and will ask to automatically download any new pluggin if it doesnt already have.

As a music player, I use the mighty xmms with an equalizers file (put them in .xmms dir) with all the pluggins installed.

I dont recommend to install amarok or any kde packages. Or even the program used to rivalize with msn search or google desktop search (beagle!). If you need them, you bet start using windows and kopernic. It's better.

Ubuntu is my fave 386 OS. In my 386 computer, even the real debian distro uses a lot more resources than ubuntu. On my PC, Ubuntu starts with 100mgs ram vs Debian 150 mgs vs XP 250mgs (will never tried vista or mac os. never liked them.)

If you want a superb alternative to vista multimedia, you can try sabayon linux, or even perhaps the new Amiga OS 4 wich seems very beautiful.

About the x64 ubuntu, i think theres some repositorys add-on to make it full 64bits working. Just make a simple search around google.

If you want Amiga Emulation, just get the e-uae repository. I found E-UAE 100% stable and helped me a lot to configure my 4000. But for playing games and demos, WinUAE is better. At least in my computer. Anyway, Amiga is still the most difficult computer to emulate, comparing for example with KQEMU running smoothly any windows/ dos OS. AmigaSYS runs fine with e-uae.

I dont use beryls, etc - It's nice, but boredom after 5 minutes.

To conclude: you can safely delete a lot of asian fonts, and other stuff, like the gnome games, tomboy notes, some python help coder docs, etc without making no harm at all to ubuntu. Serpentine Audio Player is also a thing I imediatelly delete after a clean install.
This will make your ubuntu a bit more solid and faster.
I found also ext3 lots better and faster than ntfs. Lots of www-pages dont say that, but what counts is the real thing. 0 errors yet - in 2 years of Ubuntu. Youll see what im telling if you run xf dir-manager and go to a 6000 files dir... youll wait 1 sec. with nautilus is slower.

Another good programs:
easytag
Cheesetracker / Soundtracker
Liferea to see Amiga.org RSS feeds
checkmp3 - no x... (((
gnomebaker (write cd/dvd, etc)

Im telling you that after a lot of trys. You can put xubuntu and kubuntu together with ubuntu. The system keeps going, but ... what for? Also found having wine/ qemu a waste of time. Dont really see any need to have microsoft software. And samba is good, but youll have your system more vulnerable.

Oh! and avoid chmod with sudo. Also vmware if you really dont need that. Will install a v-server at startup ...

Before you install thunderbird, keep a look at evolution mail

And as you will probably try lots of things, a good thing is to put a gnome applet in the task bar called kill-window (xkill). Right click task-bar, add -- etc


Before any critics - thats my oppinion

Regards from Portugal
(But Amiga OS is better.)

[redrumloa]

Thanks for the replies:-)

I am starting to see where some reading will be needed.. Like, how to get things like Flash working on X86_64?

I really am amazed how much is available in the software manager! Tons of Commodore 8 bit and CP/M tools even :-)

[Failure]

You may have found this already, but:

http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/linux-amd64.html

I don't use flash on my AMD64 boxes, it makes the web much more...quiet :-)  But I may go through with it sometime soon so that I can check out stuff on the flash video sites.

I am keeping an eye on Songbird as an eventual replacement for good ol' (ancient...) XMMS.

[cybernoid]

well, i have to make a correction about deleting serpentine audio/cd creator:
Don't do that! It's system-native, and, sometimes, usefull.

I was talking about rhythmbox, a program i found with no interest for me, and probably to most of the ubuntu'coders -> It's 100% safe to delete it.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

[AJCopland]

64-bit stuff is usually just a different flavour of the 32-bit stuff so most simply have a slightly differently named repository, i.e.; "feisty-AMD64" instead of just "feisty".

Getting flash to work was a minor hassle but there's some guides online that are fairly simple to follow. I think the one I found actually had a script that did it for me :-D

For the eye-candy category you cannot beat compiz-fusion, but be warned that if you get it installed wrong it will be a pain until you've figured it out. It's the de-forking of the Beryl project and is now more up to date than Beryl. Also be aware that you MUST install the 64bit version. The 32bit one which _EVERY_ guide uses will install and seem to work just fine... for about 5 minutes then crash very badly. Just about the only time I've ever had to force power off when running a Linux distro, at least I know it was my fault! Just remember there are AMD64 repo's out there for it.
YouTube - Compiz Fusion
For example that video is almost exactly my desktop :-D

I haven't bothered with DVD playback (have a 360 connected to the same 24" monitor for that) and just use the distributed players for mp3s when I want them. They've done everything i've wanted thus far.

Andy

[Starrfoxx]

I just installed Ubuntu 64 bit on my AMD dual core this past weekend, and I like how it can be completely configured to what you want.  I did manage to get Flash working, although I can't scroll the timebar on YouTube videos.  They play at least.  

I also can't get DVD's to play, plus I'm stuck with only 3 buttons on my mouse and can't use any others.  

But I am liking it.  It reminds me of the 'ol Amiga, and with Firefox I'll be using this to surf the internet to research.  I got sick and tired of all the adware/spyware being tossed into my Windows XP system.  So now, I keep XP Pro for my games and programs, and I use Ubuntu for surfing and fun.

I'd like to try Beryl, but I've read it's not very stable with 64bit and I'd hate to mess stuff up.

I did install Thunderbird, which works well.  And I also put that "Kill App" on the bottom tool bar.  I found that to be very useful.

What are some other great apps and games to put on Ubuntu 64?  I dedicated 20 gigs to it, so I have some room to play around.  I was hoping to get DoxBox working on it and perhaps some other emulators.  I know they won't work as well as on XP, but it'll be neat to have on Ubuntu.  I'm just glad that I have a safe way to browse the internet now.  Even if I do get viruses/adware, it won't cross over into my Windows NTFS partitions because those are write protected from Ubuntu's side.  I have to physically turn on the "write ability" in order to copy something over there.

[AJCopland]

Hi Starrfoxx,

For DVDs try out VLC. It's what I've started using and it works just fine.

Forget Beryl as its been de-forked, erm, merged back into Compiz to become Compiz-Fusion and that's working fine on mine though I had a few goes at setting it up and as I said you MUST find and use the 64-bit install of it.

Unreal Tournamt 2004 run nicely if you're looking for a game :-D

Andy

[Starrfoxx]

Thanks, I'll check that out.  I've been doing some more reading about Linux, and if I read correctly I cannot play commerical DVD's on Linux due to copyright reasons or something.  I would have to have a decoder, which is illegal in the U.S.

I found another post that had a link to "30 Days With Linux", which I thought was very helpful.  The more I read about Ubuntu, the more I really like it.  I feel I can be more productive on Ubuntu than I can on Windows.  Plus, I like that I can get rid of programs I don't want and add what I do.  I couldn't imagine doing something like that on Windows, like removing notepad, wordpad, or whatever is integrated into the OS.

[AJCopland]

Regarding the DVD stuff the legality of it all in the US is confusing to the point of stupidity. However VLC uses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libdvdcss to partially get around these issues. Which is probably exempt from the DMCA due to this section:

"Unlike DeCSS, libdvdcss has never been fought over in a courtroom, in part because Section 1201(f) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act authorizes such circumvention for purposes of software interoperability."

Hell libdvdcss is such a simple little library we could probably port it over to AmigaOS in a couple of evenings :-D

Andy

[stevil2k]

I have been using Ubuntu for a while now, but I tend to stay away from the 64bit versions. I had more problems with drivers and apps than I do with the 32bit versions. Plus there is no real reason to go 64bit unless you’re planning on running SQL servers or anything else that really needs 64bit.

In terms of eye candy then the compiz-fusion packages are amazing, I recently installed the beta version of Ubuntu 7.10 (gutsy gibbon) and compiz-fusion worked out of the box. (Very surprising considering the problems I have had with my graphic card)

I would also recommend using Automatix to install the common programs, it will install everything you are after and probably more.

VLC is a great player for nearly every type of multimedia format and will also support streaming (both ways), I have used it in the past to stream a movie to my Xbox

Amarok is a good MP3 player if you want to catalog your MP3 collection - similar to how iTunes works. I think it will sync to an iPod too.

If you want something more like Winamp then use Audacious or XMMS. Both work in a similar way

As mentioned before, 64bit specific apps tend to be for server related stuff, even then you’re not likely to notice a huge speed difference. Most 64bit apps are nothing more than recompiled 32bit apps with no optimisation.

[AJCopland]

stevil2k wrote:
As mentioned before, 64bit specific apps tend to be for server related stuff, even then you’re not likely to notice a huge speed difference. Most 64bit apps are nothing more than recompiled 32bit apps with no optimisation.

Well you won't see any speed difference. I know there's arguments about why you might but you tend to find that they're balanced out by the arguments against.

The main benefit of 64-bit apps is the address space you have for memory over the 4GB mark. However just being able to access that memory won't make the machines run any faster or slower even if you do have it (I don't).

As for drivers I've not had a single hardware issue with drivers under Ubuntu (ver 7.04) so I've been quite happy with it. Though getting hold of 64-bit versions of software can be more of a hassle, for example; irrlicht (a 3d engine) compiles just fine to 64-bit however the companion sound engine "irrKlang" is closed source and only supplies 32-bit binaries :-( Flash is another example.

There's no reason not to switch to 64-bit nowadays aside from a few minor annoyances such as the above. Even windows is going 64-bit.

Also if you disagree I'll be coming back home to Scarborough this weekend and will discuss it over a pint with you :-D welcome to Amiga.org dude!

Andy

[stevil2k]

Yeah, flash was the main reason I stuck with 32bit. Seemed like too much hassle at the time!

As for driver issues, I just have a picky PC, trying to get the official ATI drivers to run on any Linux distro is a nightmare, that’s why I am so surprised compiz-fusion worked out of the box on Ubuntu 7.10 (7.04 wouldn’t even load a 2D GUI without editing the xorg.conf). It pays to do a bit of searching around for hardware that is 100% compatible with Linux before buying!

I am lazy now though, if something doesn’t "just work" I tend to loose interest. I think I may have killed my inner geek with alcohol lol.

A discussion about operating systems over a pint! lol, we haven’t done that for a while. Unfortunately I won’t be about, I am going away for a week on Friday.