xmms2 a 'music server" with gKrellm, lotsa fun!

Hi
This is mainly for new people to Linux or for people who previously used xmms and may want to fiddle with xmms2 or experienced people who have always wanted to try a “sound server”..

If you are happy playing stuff using mplayer, vlc, amarok, whatever, songbird, then go for it and you can skip this post.

First a little discussion.

However, if you would like to take a little look at how Linux “used to do things” then you might give this a try.

One of the “original tenets” of Linux was “one need, one application”, or conversely, “one application, one job”.

Nowadays media players are “catchall”. They do everything under the sun and people are continually clamoring for more stuff.

Xmms2 is a fork of xmms. Xmms kind of fell off the Linx map a few years ago because the original developer/developers didn't SEEM to choose to keep it up for whatever reason, and there was a lot of active development for the above players and there is a whole host of other players which have come and gone, and they sometimes rise back again and then fall away again.

xmms2

However, there are two really COOL things that xmms2 does that the other “dedicated” players don't do.

a) xmms2 and/or xmms hook immediately and with no problem into gKrellm. Gkrellm is a “system monitor” that is just full of coolness. It monitors scads and scads of stuff, from your normal CPU load etc. to internet mail, to well.........lotsa stuff!

gKrellm site

it also has a LOT of skins, I mean a LOT of skins.

If you want a "tailored" or "coordinated" look for items on your desktop and would like to have a cool thing that monitors lotsa things then gKrellm is for you!
:D
b) the other cool thing that xmms2 does is that it can use any of several “clients” or “front ends” to play the music.

Clients such as:

gxmms2

Abraca

Esperanza

a full list of xmms2 clients

In other words, when you use, say Amarok, it is a “server” that plays the music and the “Client” that you see to find files, see cd covers, all that stuff.

Xmms2 is “just” the server. You choose whatever “client” you want. You “could” use something like Audacious etc. but why?

The use of xmms2 as a server and a “client”, lets you get something going, like a .pls stream from Shoutcast and then.........

you can CLOSE, SHUT DOWN, GO BYE BYE the client, such as Abraca ….. and... WOAH!!!!!

The music keeps playing!!! how cool is that!

You can then later shut down the stream from the CLI with "killall xmms” in terminal.

I mean, talk about being minimalist with resources!

Being minimalist with resources USED TO BE a big deal in Linux land, however it is not so much now.

And..............ya gotta say...............Knoppix is ….......pretty frugal!!! :)

Soooooo......I'd say............perfect match here! :)

Now..............yes.................given we have humoungous machines now,and being efficient is not nearly as important as it was just a few years ago. I mean, you can run Sunbird and twenty other apps at the same time....so why bother with fiddling with xmms2?

I reply that you might fiddle with xmms2 because:

a) like the Matterhorn............IT IS THERE!!!
b) it is FUN!

Will you have all the bells and whistles of Amarok or Sunbird? No....

But, some things that “most” people consider useful, like popping a song title from a stream or a displaying a cd cover and maybe doing visualzations is something that Esperanza does, while the other two just play the song...

There are plans for doing covers, and some other stuff, but...if one wants that kind of thing then use a regular player.... xmms2 is something one uses for other reasons.

Also.. A NOTE:

...........do you need gKrellm? NO.....

I just include gKrellm because it is cool and does things that are interesting and it works with xmms2.

If you don't want gKrellm then don't install it specifically, go ahead and install the rest of the stuff, you'll have a few more lines of code, but what the hey...

We're having fun here. :)

So....let's get to the deed.

From Synaptic or sudo apt-get install

install xmms2

install gKrellm

The following are listed if you do a search for “xmms2” in Synaptic, you can therefore install them manually from Synaptic or copy and paste sudo apt-get install

Abraca esperanza gkrellmxmms2 gxmms2 libxmmsclient++3 libxxmsclient-glib1 libxmmsclient4 pidgin-musictracker python-xmmsclient xmms2-client-cli xmms2-core xmms3-plugin-alsa xmms2-plugin-asf xmms2-plugin-asx xmms2-plugin-curl xmms2-plugin-flac, xmms2-plugin-ices xmms2-plugin-icymetaint xmms2-plugin-mad xmms2-plugin-mp4 xmms2-plugin-musepack xmms2-plugin-normalize xmms2-plugin-pls xmms2-plugin-pulse xmms2-plugin-vorbis xmms2tray

At some time in the past I also found this lot of stuff for xmms2 which seems to flesh the requirements out.

You can just copy and past into a terminal.

sudo apt-get install xmms2-plugin-airplay xmms2-plugin-alsa xmms2-plugin-ao xmms2-plugin-asf xmms2-plugin-asx xmms2-plugin-avcodec xmms2-plugin-cdda xmms2-plugin-cue xmms2-plugin-curl xmms2-plugin-daap xmms2-plugin-faad xmms2-plugin-flac xmms2-plugin-gme xmms2-plugin-gvfs xmms2-plugin-ices xmms2-plugin-icymetaint xmms2-plugin-id3v2 xmms2-plugin-jack xmms2-plugin-karaoke xmms2-plugin-lastfm xmms2-plugin-m3u xmms2-plugin-mad xmms2-plugin-mms xmms2-plugin-modplug xmms2-plugin-mp4 xmms2-plugin-musepack xmms2-plugin-normalize xmms2-plugin-ofa xmms2-plugin-oss xmms2-plugin-pls xmms2-plugin-pulse xmms2-plugin-rss xmms2-plugin-sid xmms2-plugin-smb xmms2-plugin-speex xmms2-plugin-vocoder xmms2-plugin-vorbis xmms2-plugin-wma xmms2-plugin-xml xmms2-plugin-xspf esperanza
Yes, there are some repeats in that mess, but all you have to do is say ok and you are done.
You will have to “first run” Abraca, gxmms2 and Esperanza.

For Esperanza it will ask you about a network server, if you have one you didn't need this anyway, :) you can test it or not. (SEE MY EDIT IN POST IMMEDIATELY BELOW).

The only real problem using any of clients for xmms2 and xmms2 itself is in the playing of a “music stream”, that is a .pls file. That is “dot PLS”, from someplace like Shoutcast or Soma FM.

The critical files for playing a .pls are: xmms2 plugin iceymetaint, xmms2 plugin libcurl, and xmms2 plugin pls.

So.....again, if you already have xmms2 running and just didn't have the capability of playing a .pls then those, again, are the critical files for a stream.

The easy way to play a .pls is to save it someplace you like and then navigate to it from the client(Esperanza, Abraca or gxmms2). When you have once done this you will be able to right click a saved .pls and choose one that you like.

Below is a further discussion.

Xmms2 is way off people radars but there is active development going on, it is being done through a list serve instead of a “forum” so most folks don't know about it, but it is going on.

Abraca, gxmms2 and Esperanza were developed in, what seemed to me, to be kind of fits and starts, and that was because they did not have a lot of people working on them. The clients would “kind of go” and then “kind of slow down” etc.. But, they kept on truckin', as it were, :) and that has now all changed because all three are now fine clients for a sound server. However, gxmms2 and Abraca “just play”(althought they do emphasize some other things) the files while Experanza pops a song notification and has a somewhat more slick look. Esperanza seems to be under some, not heavy, but some development and there are plans for things like a cover viewer and visualizations.

Each of the clients has it's specialty, like dealing with "collections" and such, you should maybe try all of them and determine which one best suits your fancy! :)

I, personally, like the way that Esperanza is coming along although I use all of them just to keep track of what is going on with them.

NOTE: some of the comments above are “just my impressions', and there may be people who have better information, so if anyone has additions, or corrections, or whatever to comment on this PLEASE do so.

So.............have fun! If anyone has questions please ask.

woodsmoke