Need help from Ubuntu Gurus please

mpj88 · 10 Aug 2010 at 17:17

Hi, i have decided to try and give ubuntu a bash on my laptop. So please bare with me as i'm a complete noob!

My NAS uses firefly to stream media across our home network. I can use iTunes to pick this up on windows pcs. For ubuntu i found that i would need songbird. So i managed to download and install version 1.4 of songbord to find that i needed the newer beta 1.8 version. I installed the 1.8 following these instructions:

wget http://download.songbirdnest.com/installer/linux/i686/Songbird_1.8.0b3-1747_linux-i686.tar.gz

tar -xvf Songbird_1.8.0b3-1747_linux-i686.tar.gz

cd Songbird/

rm lib/libgst*.so

./songbird

However i now have to open up console and type in:

cd Songbird/

./songbird

everytime i want to open it.

If i try and load it via the start menu it loads the old version. Is there anything i can do to remove the old one and put the new one in the menu?

It also seems quite slow (lagging mouse) when Songbird is running.

Thanks

jack.mitchell · 10 Aug 2010 at 18:11

This is because it was build directly from the source code and not installed properly through the Ubuntu package manager. From a quick read around it seems as though songbird is discontinuing Linux support, or I may have just stumbled accross some out of date news.

Are you sure songbird is the only mediaplayer to support firefly? I would have thought that Banshee or Rhythmbox would have supported it, have you tried them?

mpj88 · 10 Aug 2010 at 20:40

Rhythmbox seemed to have a dicky fit when i tried to use it!

How do i go about uninstalling the two programs and installing the newer one properly?

jack.mitchell · 11 Aug 2010 at 21:20

The new songbird you can just delete the folder you extracted it to. The current one you have from the repositories you can uninstall through synaptic. I don't know how you you would compile the new songbird and have it link in properly with ubuntu without a script though. Have you tried installing Banshee from synaptics if Rhythmbox is giving you jip? Songbird doesn't have a linux version anymore as there website shows so it would be much better to find a FOSS alternative with dedicated linux support.

If you're dead set on songbird then you could try linking it into your menu somehow with a menu editor, google will be your friend to find one:

google: gnome menu editor

Mpemba Effect · 13 Aug 2010 at 10:36

Just like Jack said, just remove the old Songbird via Synaptic or something. Then create a new menu item for Songbird 1.8 by going to System > Preferences > Main Menu. Create a Menu Item, give it a name and browse for the Songbird executable. That should do it.

Optionally just to conform to linux directory conventions, I'm assuming your Songbird 1.8 tar.gz was just unpacked in your home directory, you could move the directory to somewhere like /usr/share or /opt then add a symlink for it in /usr/bin like:

Code:

ln -s /opt/Songbird/songbird /usr/bin/songbird

(you'll need to do this before creating the menu item else you'll need to relink it since the directory moved

)