Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Ubuntu - Gotcha!
So I've been using Ubuntu for some time exclusively on my laptop. I've left Windoze on there in case I need it, but haven't booted into it since the first few days of owning the laptop.
So the other day, I blithely accepted some updates - one of which happened to be the kernel. As I saw it running, I was thinking, "hmm, that might not work out so great". You see, I've (re)compiled a few kernel modules against the previous kernel, like, oh, Cisco VPN and a patched version of Alsa sound drivers to get loud enough sound through the soundcard...
Turns out on reboot, I had NO sound (odd, since sound worked out of the box on other kernels I had, just not loud enough for the particular hardware of my laptop). Since I still had those dirs around, I was able to get loud sound and VPN capabilities back without too much annoyance.
However, all these months, I've been bothered by one thing: I need a good MP3 player. Right now I'm using Banshee (and not Amarok) because using it seems to handle mounting a Samba share and playing mp3s from that share (one of those newish off-the-shelf network attached storage devices). Amarok seizes up and I'm not sure why. I've seen a few comments about Samba and Amarok somewhere, but from what I remember, they really didn't seem to apply to my problem. Thing is, I don't like Banshee much for playing mp3s - you have to "import" music to play it as far as I can tell and that's just annoying. I'd use XMMS but it's browse window is so painful to look at and use.
If anyone has an option to tweak Samba mounting and/or a Amarok fix or a better mp3 player suggestion, by all means, let me know...
So the other day, I blithely accepted some updates - one of which happened to be the kernel. As I saw it running, I was thinking, "hmm, that might not work out so great". You see, I've (re)compiled a few kernel modules against the previous kernel, like, oh, Cisco VPN and a patched version of Alsa sound drivers to get loud enough sound through the soundcard...
Turns out on reboot, I had NO sound (odd, since sound worked out of the box on other kernels I had, just not loud enough for the particular hardware of my laptop). Since I still had those dirs around, I was able to get loud sound and VPN capabilities back without too much annoyance.
However, all these months, I've been bothered by one thing: I need a good MP3 player. Right now I'm using Banshee (and not Amarok) because using it seems to handle mounting a Samba share and playing mp3s from that share (one of those newish off-the-shelf network attached storage devices). Amarok seizes up and I'm not sure why. I've seen a few comments about Samba and Amarok somewhere, but from what I remember, they really didn't seem to apply to my problem. Thing is, I don't like Banshee much for playing mp3s - you have to "import" music to play it as far as I can tell and that's just annoying. I'd use XMMS but it's browse window is so painful to look at and use.
If anyone has an option to tweak Samba mounting and/or a Amarok fix or a better mp3 player suggestion, by all means, let me know...
# posted by Sean LeBlanc : 4:12 PM
