VLC for Slacko 5.7.0? [SOLVED]

[Mike Walsh]

Afternoon, all.

Is it possible to get VLC up and running in Slacko 5.7.0? It's not in the repositories, and none of the .pets or .sfs's that I can find will work. I'm currently using SMPlayer (from scabz's post, here):-

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=93115

Works very well. However, I would prefer VLC, if it's possible to do this. I watch the odd video on it, but now mainly use it for listening to radio via PLS stream, re. my recent thread, here:-

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=100284

SMPlayer will work with PLS streams; but it takes forever to get going, because it needs a LONG time to reach the required 20% cache fill level that it seems to require before it will start to play.

VLC, by comparison, starts playing the stream straight away. And this is on the same machine, with the same ethernet connection.

Any suggestions, will, as always, be much appreciated.


Regards,

Mike.

[Semme]

Try one of these Mike. There's one here as well.

Ah, here we go >> http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 966#775966

You want the *Wheezy* sfs above >> http://smokey01.com/OscarTalks/vlc-2.1.6-wheezy.sfs

[OscarTalks]

Strictly speaking a .pls is not a stream but a file known as a playlist metafile. It is a small text file containing the URL of the stream. The player opens the file, reads the URL and connects to it in order to play the stream.

For playing streams that are audio via .pls metafiles I would suggest using DeaDBeeF or some other audio player as you don't need video capability although VLC will of course play them very well.

I am not sure how my Wheezy VLC will perform in Slacko. A lot of stuff is statically linked, but 01micko included an upgrade of ffmpeg so it is not even standard official Slackware 14.0

He did compile a version 2.1.0 of VLC for Slacko 5.7 but it needs Qt so I did make a "stand-alone" modified version of this with the needed Qt lib deps included internally in it. I have uploaded this temporarily to http://smokey01.com/OscarTalks as an .sfs in case you want to try that. It should be just load and go.

[Mike Walsh]

@Semme, OscarTalks:-

Thanks for the replies, guys. This is the one thing that's always bugged me about Slacko 5.7; I can make everything else that I use work perfectly, but VLC? It's those damn Qt4 libs that stiff me, every time.

I've come across a few other apps that seem to require them, too. I really like Slacko 5.7; I have no idea how Slackware stuff relates to Debian stuff, vis-a-vis what they use in terms of software. I tend to have a broadly similar range of apps/programs in all 4 of my Pups, so no matter which one I decide to use, I can just get on and do what I need to do, in exactly the same way.....regardless.

I did find a tar.gz for qt-opensource-everywhere src 4.8.6.....but upon further investigation, it was 231 MB in compressed format! Methinks it would've been ginormous when unzipped.....and I didn't really know where to extract it to, in any case.

I'll have a look at yr suggestions, and see what works for me. Appreciated.


Regards,

Mike.

[Mike Walsh]

Well, now; we have success..!

@Semme:- I've downloaded the ones you suggested, and also Oscar's one that he put up temporarily for me to try it out. I haven't yet tried yours; Oscar's was the first one in the Downloads folder I came to, so I tried it out. It seems to work perfectly.

I'm going to hang on to yours, though, 'cos I may well try the 'Wheezy' ,sfs in Tahrpup. I'm trying to trim down the humungous amount of stuff I've got in there, and if I can mount a VLC .sfs at /mnt/home, that'll help to slim things down.

@Oscar:- As you've just read, your version is working perfectly. There's the added bonus, too, that I've been able to use it in X-Slacko 2.3.2.....that's the one rg66 has based on Slacko 5.7.0 (which is why I picked it). I would have been very surprised if it hadn't worked.

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One query, both of you, if I may? From the sound of things, VLC should be in the repos, anyway. Any ideas which repo? I think I need to re-organise my PPM..!

Thanks, both of you, for the assistance today. Much appreciated.


Regards,

Mike.

[Semme]

Looks like Salix Mike, @ v2.0.4. And if it required deps, you grab'm from the same one -- Salix.

[Mike Walsh]

Ah, cheers for that, Semme.

Just done another update of the PPM, and for some reason it's now appeared! Weird. Especially considering it's already been updated 3 times since installation, back in May...

Never mind. It's there now, and that's the main thing. A few other things have also appeared that I felt sure ought to have been there all along...

The web, eh? Great, when it decides to work the way it should do..! Hey ho.

Cheers.


Regards,

Mike.

[rcrsn51]

It seems like overkill to install VLC just for the sake of listening to some Internet radio streams. There are several light-weight media/radio players that can do this just as well, or better.

[Mike Walsh]

It seems like overkill to install VLC just for the sake of listening to some Internet radio streams. There are several light-weight media/radio players that can do this just as well, or better.

Granted; it probably IS overkill. I started off with the 'buntus about 15 months ago, and every one of Canonical's distros come with VLC as standard. I kinda got used to having it. I do also use it for a number of videos; I'm attempting to work my way through half-a-dozen or so GIMP tutorials at present....and I also have a large number of MP3 music tracks that, for some reason, just seem to sound better played through VLC.

It's not an issue on the 'big' Compaq; with a relatively powerful (by my standards) dual-core AMD CPU, 4 GB of RAM, and oodles of storage capacity, needing to be 'economical' with usage isn't really a problem.

I mainly run Puppy because a), it's incredibly enjoyable to use, and b) it's blazingly fast.

However; where I would be interested in using a more light-weight alternative would be on the old Dell laptop. She runs Tahrpup, because it's the only one that would work OOTB with the horrible Intel graphics adapter she's saddled with; an Intel 82845G 'Extreme' graphics chip. They were universally acknowledged to be a 'pain in the a***' by just about everybody who had the misfortune to run into them. Intel seemed to have thrown the rule-book out of the window when those things were on the drawing board.

But with only 1 GB of RAM, a P4, and a 40 GB hard drive, I do need to be a wee bit more 'creative' with the way I run things, so; what could you suggest, that would also take care of the Internet radio streams? I'm open to any suggestions, there.


Regards,

Mike.

[rcrsn51]

There is Simple GTK Radio from last year. Or PeasyMP3.

1. Click the Edit button.
2. Drag your collection of playlist files into the Startup folder.
3. Restart the program and click the Playlist button.

[Mike Walsh]

There is Simple GTK Radio from last year. Or PeasyMP3.

1. Click the Edit button.
2. Drag your collection of playlist files into the Startup folder.
3. Restart the program and click the Playlist button.

Thanks for that, Bill. I remember trying Simple GTK Radio in Ubuntu 'Trusty' last year; I don't know what it was with Canonical's implementation of the app, but it never would work properly there. I still liked the look of it, mind you.

I'll give it a look, and see if I have any more success with this version. I'll let you know how it goes.

Appreciated.


Regards,

Mike.

[Mike Walsh]

Sorry about this, Bill, but I'm going to be really thick here. I've looked at the Peasymp3 thread; I see the link for downloading mPlayer for Tahrpup, I can see the link for vovchik's playlist explanation.....also the links for PeasyDVD, and other links.

I don't see a link for Peasymp3 v.3.9 though.....


Regards,

Mike.

EDIT: Scratch that! I really MUST be thick; it was staring me in the face all the time. I'm afraid I couldn't quite believe the file size was that small...

[Semme]

Mike, it's part of this pkg and @ v4.0.

[Mike Walsh]

Yeah, I know! The total size of the file is a fraction bigger than the image you've just posted.....and yet it contains three apps. Now I'm starting to understand why Puppy works so well on low-RAM machines...

That is unreal. I didn't believe coding could be that efficient..! It'll be perfect for the old Dell.


Mike.

[rcrsn51]

It's not really a case of more efficient coding - it's just using tools that are already included in every Puppy - gtkdialog, aplay, cdda2wav, mplayer, etc.

Just to finish off this project, could you confirm that your PLS files from Semme are playing in PeasyMP3?

[Mike Walsh]

Just to finish off this project, could you confirm that your PLS files from Semme are playing in PeasyMP3?

Be glad to, Bill. Yes, having installed the mplayer 'back-end' for Tahrpup that you provided in the thread, I can confirm that the PLS stream links that Semme furnished me with are indeed working perfectly in PeasyMP3. And, I'm happy to report, so has everything else that I've so far thrown at it..! I haven't yet got around to trying the Carousel, but from what I've read about it in the thread, I've no doubt it, too, will function perfectly. I'll post an update here when I try it.

I do have one last query. You state in the PeasyMP3 thread that you can adjust the sound in the player by using pEqualizer..? I've tried this, and unfortunately, it doesn't seem to make any difference to the sound quality. Am I doing something wrong here, i.e., do you have to turn pEqualizer on before you start PeasyMP3, or afterwards?


Regards,

Mike.

[rcrsn51]

Pequalizer may not do anything useful to Internet streams. But when I use it with MP3s, I can sometimes detect a slight difference.

You would need a real audiophile to answer the question, and that's not me.

[scientist]

It seems like overkill to install VLC just for the sake of listening to some Internet radio streams. There are several light-weight media/radio players that can do this just as well, or better.

I use VLC for almost all my media.

It's a stable long tested program.

[01micko]

Pequalizer may not do anything useful to Internet streams. But when I use it with MP3s, I can sometimes detect a slight difference.

You would need a real audiophile to answer the question, and that's not me.

Pequalizer creates a temporary /root/.asoundrc ($HOME/.asoundrc) that lives only whilst it is running. You do have to start it before any sound process. All alsa traffic respects that asoundrc and therefore all sounds are affected by Pequalizer. It uses the alsa-equal backend which can be adjusted on the CLI. Its an alsa plugin.

I have tested it with many audio/video players and flashplayer and it works on all my hardware, however this may depend on your sound card. If the sliders adjust then pequalizer should be working. I have also tested it in slackware. It will likely break if pulseaudio is installed. I do not know if it works with the fake pulseaudio known as 'apulse'.

Be aware that software equalizers are nowhere near as good as hardware equalizers and any audiophile will likely have a sound card with hardware equalizer capabilities and likely trash talk software equlizaton. I'm just an audio listener.

To detect the audible difference, switch from the 'jazz' preset to the 'pop' preset. The former is heavily treble biased while the latter is bass biased.

[scientist]

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You can only be certain of three things in life; birth, death.....and TAXES!! Laughing

You left out Murphy's law.