Archive for May 10th, 2006

Ubuntu 6.06 - Part 5:Amarok, the Media Player

Wednesday, May 10th, 2006

This post will cover the installation of Amarok, because in my experience it hasn’t been seemless. It is expected that you have the Universe and Multiverse repositories enabled in Synaptic.

  1. Open Synaptic, and click on the Sound & Video category.
  2. Check Amarok to be installed and click Apply.
  3. Once done, click the Advanced button.
  4. Search for xine.
  5. Mark the package libxine-extracodecs for installation and click Apply. It will automatically include its necessary dependancies.

You should now be able to listen to most audio formats, including streaming music.

Enjoy!

Ubuntu 6.06 - Part 4: Windows Games

Wednesday, May 10th, 2006

Note: this will not work if you have XGL/Compiz installed, as NVidia does not support XGL with OpenGL at this time!

This tutorial will expect the following:

  • A current subscription to Cedega (http://www.transgaming.com).
  • An AMD Athlon 64 processor (or any other 64-bit AMD processor, the point being we are installing on 64-bit and not 32-bit).
  • A (hopefully high-speed) internet connection.
  1. Download the package cedega_5.1_i386.deb (or newer) package from the Transgaming website (link above) to your desktop.
  2. Open a Terminal window (again, this should be familiar): Applications > Accessories > Terminal.
  3. Type:
    sudo dpkg -i --force-all ~/Desktop/cedega_5.1_i386.deb

    (or newer package name).

  4. This should run successfully in just a few seconds.
  5. Once complete, open: Applications > Games > Transgaming Cedega.
  6. Click Accept.
  7. Click Forward.
  8. Enter your Transgaming username and password, then click Forward.
  9. The screen will prompt you for what updates you want to download, check them all and click OK.
  10. Click Accept.
  11. At this point I noticed that the window decorations dissapeared, however, this should be no reason to worry.
  12. Click Accept again.
  13. Click OK when it says the installation is complete.
  14. Click OK.
  15. Review your system specs, then click Forward.
  16. Click Run Selected Test. Note that in my setup this fails at two points: OpenGL Direct Rendering and ALSA sound. The OpenGL failure is due to the last tutorial (installing XGL and Compiz: XGL does not work in conjunction with XGL, status of inclusion into their driver is unknown at this point). The ALSA sound failure is something that I have been unable to fix, however, the games I have run so far work on OSS as well, so no trouble. I am still trying to get ALSA to work though.
  17. Click Finish.
  18. Log out, restart GDM and log back in. Cedega is now installed (and ready to go if you didn’t have any failures).

Installing a Windows game now is as easy as inserting the CD, and installing it through the Cedega interface. You will see the familiar Windows installation screens, etc.

I am researching the above-mentioned errors and will post the work-around as soon as possible.