so “lucid lynx” appears to work well… which is to say, once i had got it installed, it hasn’t crashed or done anything non-computer-like…
dolphin (one of the file managers that i’ve been able to find) doesn’t work any longer… i invoke it in various different ways, but it doesn’t show any files (fortunately, i know that they’re there, otherwise i’d really be freaking out). instead it says: “Could not start process Unable to create io-slave: klauncher said: Error loading ‘kio_file’. this is probably a “non-computer-like” behaviour, but i’m fairly confident that i can, actually get it straightened out within the next few days…
however, amarok, the music player, has some difficulties… so much so that i actually logged a bug on the “new” version (2.3.0) yesterday. it plays music files of all kinds quite the same as it did in its previous version (2.2.4, or something like that), but instead of track lengths, it says that all the tracks are 0:00 minutes long. also, when i view the tags for an individual track, sometimes i can change them, and sometimes i can’t, even though all the files are set to permissions 644…
of course, the immediate response to my bug (as was the case pretty much all the time when i was testing software for a living) was that i am “doing it wrong”, and that i have to upgrade to a version (2.4.0) which, from what i understand after having read a bunch about the process, actually won’t run on lucid… apparently lucid doesn’t have some important piece of the puzzle necessary to run the version of amarok that doesn’t have problems with track lengths and tags… or not, nobody’s exactly sure what’s going on at all. 😐
not only that, but, following the instructions that i, finally, was able to find for upgrading to 2.4.0 on lucid, only upgraded me to 2.3.2 – which isn’t really that surprising, because, from what i have been able to find out, 2.4.0 really won’t run on lucid – which has exactly the same bug as 2.3.0 did.
this is one of the reasons i’m REALLY glad i don’t test software for a living any longer… i don’t have the patience to reply to the “developer” and explain to them that i’m not “doing it wrong”, what i’m doing is EXACTLY the same thing that any other bozo would be doing on their computer, and if they perceive something as a bug, they’re not going to be as satisfied a “customer” as i would be… only i’m NOT a software tester any longer… and i only posess the patience to fume and rant on my blog about how amarok 2.4.0 WON’T WORK on lucid, without some forcing and installing some non-standard bullshit that nobody except the developers truly understand! 😛
i’m afraid that a tagger would not work for everything in my collection, though… i’ve got a whole bunch of music from india, brazil, germany and a bunch of other places with strange scripts… not to mention the music that hasn’t been “released to the public”… but i’ll check it out.
Have you put your files through a tagger? My favorite is Picard, because it will almost always correct indentify your tracks, tag them correctly, and even fix their filenames if necessary.
If you just want to check the tags, try kid3.
Excellent tags are worth the trouble. I’ve fixed most of mine while watching TV. 🙂
you don’t have amarok installed because it’s typical of the KDE version (it’s installed by default).
however, the fact that your .mp3s list 0 seconds duration is intriguing… but only when you view the tags using gnome, and not your music player…
my .mp3s (and ogg files and flac files, and even my wma files) don’t have their tags listed in KDE at all, the only place tags are listed are in a music player… whether it’s amarok or bangarang, or dragon player, or VLC, or something else… and, as far as i can tell, they all list 0:00 as their duration, regardless of how long they actually play…
hmm…
I’m not so sure it’s completely Amarok-related. I’m running Ubuntu 10.04 (teh Lynx, yah) but *not* the Kubuntu version. Plus, I don’t (to the best of my knowledge) even have Amarok installed. But lately if I right-click on an mp3 and choose properties and then the audio tab I get the tags (if any) but they all list “0 seconds” as duration.
Double-clicking brings them up in Movie Player (unless I’ve put them into the Rhythmbox thing) and they list the proper duration and play just fine.