Tag Archive for Xine

Enabling DVD playback in Ubuntu 9.04

July 22, 2009 No comments

This information is scattered about the web but I decided to collect something together in one place in case it helps anyone else. Here are two commands that appeared to do the deed for me:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras totem-xine libxine1-ffmpeg libdvdread4

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

The libdvdread piece is what sorts out encrypted disks and needs a two stage installation, hence the second command. For non-encrypted disks, ubuntu-restricted-extras might be all that’s needed if my experience is typical. Taking things further, Wim Wenders’ Buena Vista Social Club (Region 2 disk) worked when I tried it too. In the interests of completeness, I tried the command combination on a virgin 9.04 installation with restricted and multiverse repositories enabled. Along the way, I spied a whole raft of helper components being set in place and things worked like I would have expected with the aforementioned DVD afterwards. As with anything related to computing, your mileage may vary and, for more information, you can take a look here.

Graphics, Linux, Software, Video

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A different Firefox…

November 17, 2007 No comments

On Ubuntu, I made a move to using Ubuntuzilla‘s deployment of Firefox. Because Firefox’s Gecko engine is used by other parts of Ubuntu, any Firefox updates issued by Mozilla don’t come through straight away. The idea of using Ubuntuzilla is that you get Mozilla’s latest, be it Firefox, Thunderbird or Seamonkey, without having an impact on the rest of the Linux installation; Ubuntu’s Firefox is left in place but you are now presented with the vanilla Firefox for all your web surfing needs. Visually, there’s not much change but for the built-in Firefox application fonts coming through in the new instance, a strange sight when you see Ubuntu’s more subtle alternatives everywhere else. I tried the new tack to see if picked up RealPlayer in place of Xine but that sadly has not been the case. Nevertheless, I now have 2.0.0.9 and the latest improvements this side of version 3.

Linux, Site News, Web Development, Web Tools, Windows

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BBC Radio Player and Linux

November 13, 2007 No comments

It’s been a while since I mentioned anything that might be aurally related and then this rears its head. The Xine plugin beloved by the instance of Firefox on my Ubuntu box simply refuses to play ball with the BBC’s Listen Again feature; 6Music shows are what I am trying to catch later. RealPlayer is on the system but Firefox simply refuses to locate it. On its own, it plays live radio from the BBC and Ireland’s Today FM but, unless I need to do some digging, that’s not much use for Listen Again. It may be some hard wiring done by Canonical as part of their packaging of Firefox: might be related to their preference for Free Software. If I can be bothered, I might replace it with the usual version to see if RealPlayer can be picked up: I do seem to remember reading somewhere that this was a possibility…

Yes, I could use one of my Windows VM’s but I have found another way courtesy of openSUSE 10.3. No, I haven’t changed distro but the reason that openSUSE has made a sudden appearance on this blog in recent times has got to do with my acquiring a copy of the latest issue of Linux Magazine. It came emblazoned with a DVD containing both 32-bit and 64-bit variants of openSUSE’s latest version and, wanting to take a look at how KDE appears these days, I knocked up a VM and installed the 32-bit variant thereupon.

Unexpectedly, that has afforded a Linux solution to my BBC Radio Player conundrum. openSUSE’s Firefox instance is able to find RealPlayer once you have it installed. That process involves a spot more work than if it was Free Software: you need to add an extra software repository to YaST (openSUSE’s configuration utility). The breadcrumb trail is YaST -> Software -> Software Repositories and hitting the Add button fires up a wizard that needs the following settings to set things up as needed:

Protocol: http

Server Name: download.opensuse.org

Directory on server: /distribution/10.3/repo/non-oss/suse/

Authentication: anonymous

Once the new repository was set up (I named it Non-OSS), I found the RPM and YaST took care of the rest. So, what started out as an exercise in curiosity has now found a use. Network traffic may cause playback to stutter but I have what I want without once starting up Windows. Sorting out Ubuntu may happen but it is a lesser priority and I don’t want to disrupt my computing environment in any event.

Audio, Linux, Software, Virtualisation

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