Amarok

From openSUSE-Community

Amarok screenshot

Amarok is a music player for Linux and Unix with an intuitive interface. Amarok makes playing the music you love easier than ever before - and looks good doing it. Amarok has excellent streaming support, visualisations, smooth crossfading and the unique "Context Browser", separating this player from existing KDE solutions. At the same time Amarok provides a very intuitive and quick user interface, with unparalleled playlist handling, and a lightning fast music catalogue.

[edit] Getting a full-featured Amarok

The version of Amarok in the repositories comes with a few set-backs, since some features require restricted formats. This includes things such as mp4 tagging support, but also lack of MySQL and PostgreSQL support for collections.

To install a full-featured version simply update your amarok and amarok-xine packages with the ones available in the Packman repository.

[edit] Restricted format support

To play restricted formats (such as MP3, MP4, ...) in Amarok, make sure to install the libxine1 package which is available from Packman as well.

Read here on how to add the Packman repository to your list of installation sources: Package_Sources

[edit] Latest Amarok Packages

Amarok is an application with a very swift development team, with very frequent releases. Nevertheless, the latest Amarok packages are always available from the Packman source. You can either download directly from the site, or add the Packman source and update.

When using the amarok packages from Packman, make sure to install the packages amarok and amarok-xine.

• Using zypper (on 10.2):
  zypper install amarok amarok-xine
• Using yast2:
  yast2 -i amarok amarok-xine
• Using smart:
  smart install amarok amarok-xine

You don't need to specify additional packages, as the amarok-xine package from the Packman repository already explicitly requires libxine1, mad and full-featured libtunepimp packages and sub-packages (libtunepimp-mad and libtunepimp-mp4).

Note that Amarok 1.4.x has dropped support for the gstreamer backend as it isn't maintained any more. Also, you won't be able to use the helix/RealPlayer backend because of license restrictions from Real. For almost any case, using the xine backend instead provides better quality and performance as well as support for all audio codecs. To be able to play ".rm" (RealPlayer) files, you will probably have to also install the w32codec-all package from Packman but this only works on 32bit systems.

[edit] Getting Amarok to work with MySQL

Amarok can use multiple methods for storing the collection database, including MySQL. MySQL with Amarok has been known to provide some performance improvement, and it can be set up very easily in openSUSE.

Simply follow these instructions:

1. Make sure that you have mysql and Packman Amarok packages (if you have the Packman source added, just upgrade your amarok and amarok-xine) installed.

2. Make sure that MySQL is running. To get it up-and-running enter the following command in the terminal:

To make MySQL automatically start when your system boots, head over to:

YaST -> System -> System Services (Runlevel)

select mysql, and then hit the Enable button.

To do the same from the command-line:

3. Set up the Amarok MySQL database:

4. Now enable Amarok to use the MySQL for the collection. In Amarok, go to:

Settings -> Configure Amarok -> Collection

Change the database type to "MySQL" and enter the following details:

Hostname: localhost
Database: amarok
Username: amarok
Password: amarok

Now hit Ok, and then head over to:

Tools -> Rescan Collection

and you're done!

As an alternative, the latter can also be done from a shell, with your regular, non-root user:

[edit] Configure Amarok to use the xine backend

Amarok supports using several audio libraries and we strongly recommend to use the xine backend as, combined with the libxine1 package from the Packman repository it provides both the best quality and supports reading all restricted audio formats (such as MP3 and MP4).

However, after having installed the amarok and amarok-xine (the latter containing the xine backend for Amarok) you must tell Amarok to use it.

From the shell, this can be done by copy/pasting the following line, using your regular, non-root user:

You can also do it using Amarok itself:

Settings -> Configure Amarok -> Engine

and select "xine Engine" from the "Sound System" drop-down box (at the top of the configuration window)

[edit] Links

• Homepage: http://amarok.kde.org
• openSUSE.org entry: Amarok
• Full MySQL howto with more information: http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/MySQL_HowTo
• "How To Manage An iPod From A Linux Desktop With Amarok": http://www.howtoforge.com/linux_amarok_ipod