Linux.... mediamonkey.... meant to be..?

[Owyn]

Now, wonder where I can find a safe slip-streamed WXP Pro SP3 ISO for future clean installs.

I know it is off topic, but you should be able to build such ISO with either the MSDN documentation or with nlite. It cannot get much safer than that.

Tx. I just a took a quick look at http://www.nliteos.com/index.html. Put it on my high priority totest list.

And, to get back on topic, I suspect that MM+Wine will not be a pretty solution. Things like integration with IE for podcast downloads will add more than a touch of spice to the mix.

My own plans lean more to hosting a WXP image via VM on Linux / Mac. My hopes, perhaps futile, rest with new native Linux tools.

[botijo]

Now, wonder where I can find a safe slip-streamed WXP Pro SP3 ISO for future clean installs.

I know it is off topic, but you should be able to build such ISO with either the MSDN documentation or with nlite. It cannot get much safer than that.

Tx. I just a took a quick look at http://www.nliteos.com/index.html. Put it on my high priority totest list.

And, to get back on topic, I suspect that MM+Wine will not be a pretty solution. Things like integration with IE for podcast downloads will add more than a touch of spice to the mix.

My own plans lean more to hosting a WXP image via VM on Linux / Mac. My hopes, perhaps futile, rest with new native Linux tools.

WINE + MM can be as ugly or as nice as somebody wants. Just try Picasa for Linux and tell me what can be done or what cannot be done. Sometimes the best way to do things is to not let the user know the gory details about it, and that is something that Google has done. Basically, they have improved WINE so that Picasa works on top of it without problems. I wonder if MM developers would have the time to do something like that.

[botijo]

Ok, I got bored, so I tried MM inside WINE. That was Ubuntu 8.04, but this should work everywhere, including MACs. Please check following screenshots.


Figure 1 - MM can be started with full skinning support

Figure 2 - Some of the scripts actually work

Figure 3 - Some of the new features of MM3 show

Even if some things work, I notice following ones do not work:

• MTP devices, flash sticks
• CD Burning (I suppose Windows Burning API is missing)
• Use of internal browser. It looks like URL passed does not specify protocol, so Gecko Internet control does not know what to do. Hey, developers, this should be easy to fix!
• Auto tag from the web (OLE error...)
• Lots of visual artifacts, like missing entries in Track Browser when you switch view modus
• Internal player does not work. Maybe external players work?
• Autoplaylists do not work
• Most of the scripts do not work

But there are some things that already work:

• Auto Organize files
• File tagging (real important one). Database is working.
• Did I say scripts? Yeah, some of them work.

I might not be truly true here, I had to install some Windows Components via http://wiki.winehq.org/winetricks, but it is still a good start. The files I installed were Windows Scripting Host 5.6, gecko interface and Visual C runtime libraries v6. Your mileage might vary with other things installed.
What worries me is that MM is dependent on many Windows features. This can mean lots of trouble making something like Picasa did (putting a working version of Wine and Picasa in the same package), because legally you cannot redistribute some of the Microsoft runtimes.

[Owyn]

Nice report. Pretty close to what I expected would happen.

Got my first 8.04 ISO late on Friday. Mirrors were too swamped on Thursday and my ISP is throttling bittorrents.

Looks good on first glance except for some xorg issues. Breaking out of 800x600 safe mode is, ummm, interesting. The new bare bones xorg.conf, hey everything is done for you, what do you need the details for, is not a blessing when it doesn't work.

It does not help that the hidden Applications->Other->Graphics tool fails to run it's Test on even the installed config.

Oh well, wrong forums for this discussion. Just happened to catch me as I was reviewing my working notes.

Again, good work, get bored more often.

[Peke]

@botijo
- While you are bored can you try burning using Win98 Patch?
- Internal Player. Try Wave output. and replace few Input plugins we alternatives?
- Scripts try to reinstall/update(I saw few links to autopatch updates) VBScripting Engine as some work maybe it is outdated version.

[Owyn]

@botijo/Peke
Just about to install 8.04 as dual boot on my WXP system replacing older 6.04 . I had hardware support problems last time I checked on this system so should be interesting. ATI Radeon 64 and Turtle Beach Santa Cruz.

Will repeat your Wine test after I have confirmed all basic functions work via Amarok. Catch you on the flip side.

Edit: Added Wiki article as common point to collect info about this.
http://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index.p ... ediaMonkey

[botijo]

Added some info to the Wiki. Some progress has been made, but more debugging needs to be done, specially trying to figure out what is missing or what is too much.
@developers, I hope you get the report made by me. I was just checking that bug report was working.

[Owyn]

Thanks for the Wiki edits. I have still not got to the Wine tests due to other gremlins (my router decided to stop co-operating with my DSL modem). Oh well, at least got to test pppoeconf on Ubuntu. Off to eBay shortly to see if I can find a hackable Linksys router (the old version).

Running through a 24 hour use as production test at the moment. Looks like I have FF3b5 stable now with my critical extensions. Running with a stable mirror. Audio and video stable. Dropped back to no desktop effects due to limited horsepower on this system. CD and DVD burning next test.

Your notes will make my testing easier.

[botijo]

Owyn,
good news. I got a way to record all those Kernel32.DebugOutputs:

Code: Select all

WINEDEBUG=relay wine ./MediaMonkey.exe &> /tmp/MM.log
grep Debug /tmp/MM.log > MM.log

That helped me trace the errors during "player initialization". At the end, those errors were caused by the iPod plugins, so I deleted those (do not have one myself, and I do not know what file are they missing). Right now I am looking at these errors:

Code: Select all

0061:Call KERNEL32.OutputDebugStringA(007cff7c "Going to start playback.") ret=007cfe49
0061:Call KERNEL32.OutputDebugStringA(007d4cf0 "Decoder: CreateDecoder() started") ret=007d4bdc
0061:Call KERNEL32.OutputDebugStringA(0075745c "Player: There is a problem in playing this file, try the next one") ret=00756f15

Update: Isolated the problem to decoder problem.
Any help is appreciated. If I got this correctly, this is the last step before getting MM start without trouble and playing music. I am really looking forward that!
If anyone knows what I should be looking after the "Decoder: CreateDecoder() started" message, I might have a look at that tomorrow. For today, that is enough.

[botijo]

I really really was looking into it before going to bed when I realized that the problem is the wmp3 plugin. installing the MAD one gave me audio!
One big step towards Linux real use.
Updated/ing the wiki with latest achievements.

[Owyn]

Botijo

Why don't you go back to Win* and use DebugView to capture a log of the startup process using equivalent files / settings.

This should give you a good baseline to compare against the Linux log. In fact, just added that to my task list. Wanted to recheck the current install options for podcasts anyway.

Time to get a clean sheet and work out my test plan.

Great work!!

[Owyn]

Quick update.

I decided to back/side track a bit on the MM+Wine tests.

I am working on my top Windows only apps , excluding MM, first WITHOUT winetricks.

Success has been excellent.

At this point uTorrent, NoteTab Pro, and MP3Tag are running without obvious problems in quick tests. Need to go back to WXP (later) to see what else I really need. Probably not much. All packages have been installed from MSI packages. MP3Tag had a subsidiary WMP9 run times install. A little bit of scripting and I should have them fully integrated. Much improved from my last Wine tests (about a year ago).

Noticed a software update installed today for Wine. Synaptic still shows 0.9.60 so I assume it is an Ubuntu specific packaging change.

Running Amarok for the moment. Usable, but not as functional as the Monkey. Amarok 2 still down the road a bit.

PS: Back in WXP for a while today. Major reason I went back was to pick up my podcast updates. Other reason was to fix volume labels on all my WXP partitions to make it easier to recognize and static mount them in Ubuntu.

Edit: Glitch#1. When I switched desktops uTorrent's window became inaccessible. ps shows it is still running but now I need to find the equivalent of Task Manager, Bring to Foreground.

[Owyn]

For Wine, Windows 95 (Winsock2), 98/ME, NT/2000, XP, 2003, and Vista.

http://www.utorrent.com/download.php


Re-install from stable did not fix problem. Psigh.

[nohitter151]

Owyn, why use uTorrent in WINE when native Linux apps exist ie: KTorrent?

[Owyn]

Duh. As soon as I woke up this morning I knew where uTorrent was. Running as a task bar icon. Right-Click. Hide-Show. No problem at all. Running perfectly, sort of. The switch away from it's desktop was interpreted as a minimize event.

Owyn, why use uTorrent in WINE when native Linux apps exist ie: KTorrent?

The test plan I worked out for not just MM, but Wine as well, included testing my top 5 Windows only applications. Anyway, uTorrent is such a jewel of tight code I just hated to let it go. No way I was ever going back to Azureus. And yes Ubuntu includes Transmission by default (a very limited UI) with others available.

It was also a good test case for a windows app with lot's of network IO.

Finally I tend to get a bit evangelical when things work. But, I am philosophically from Missouri. I need to see it for myself.

Very close to platinum.
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.p ... ngId=22706