Need help with ubuntu - Someone who uses it

[NutterzUK]

Hi there,
Ubuntu seems good, but I have to admit at this moment i'm really not getting along with it.
A couple of things I want to do, which actually seem impossible ( I know they're not ).

First thing, my music.. I have a playlist called "all minus.m3u" made in winamp on my windows. To get to it, I first had to save it in a "playlist" folder in my music, but now thats done. I have downloaded amarok and audacious, neither of which seem to want to open this playlist. I double click it, and it asks me if I want to run in the terminal... no. I open amarok, and click add media, navigate to the playlist, click open... then the box just disappears and it does nothing. I've tried dragging and dropping it onto amarok... why on earth can I not open this playlist? It has over 12k tracks ( i'm deleting what I don't like, hence the name "all minus". ). But,.. there is no loading or anything, it just does nothing.

My other problem is accessing anything that is on my windows partition, ubuntu just refuses to see it. I started reading a tutorial, which said install something from the synaptic package manager. I did that, the next thing said to open it from the applications menu... it just wasn't there. It was called gparted, and is not in any lists I can see. Whats that all about? I installed it,.. and poof... it's just not there.

I want to get used to ubuntu and learn to use it... but this is driving me up the wall. I'm in no way computer-stupid, i'm a computer science student thats been around them and built them for years... so I have no idea why this seems so difficult.
Cheers

Steve

 

[malef!c]

Okay - haven't been using Ubuntu long but:

- Try RhythmBox for your music, that has an playlist option that you can open a file with. Can't guarantee that it will open the Winamp ones, but RB is IMO the better music option so its worth installing anyway!

- To connect to a Windows share I just do something like:

sudo smbmount //windowshost/sharename /mountpoint/on/ubuntu -o user=windowsusername password=windowspassword

Although I still get asked for the password anyway!

Second option is on my tool bar under 'Places' there is a 'Connect to server' which gives you the option of a Windows share, fill in the boxes and away you go.

Like I said, only been using Ubuntu as my desktop for a few weeks but hopefully the above might help a bit!

 

[Outcast]

I assume your songs are on an NTFS drive ?
That drive would have to be mounted so your playlist actually points to somewhere accessible.

To access NTFS drives, which is already built into 10:04 you need ntfs-3g. You will still need to click on said drive to mount it unless you alter fstab. There might even be an option in ntfs-3g to mount at boot... I can't remember.

 

[JonJ678]

You can fix the vast majority of problems with proprietry software, like flash and mp3s, by

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

If that fails, open your "sources list" and remove the # in front of the lines with "universe" written somewhere in them. I don't know if this is commented out by default or not.

 sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

For the ntfs thing, you need to check what partition it is. sudo blkid and/or df -h should make this fairly obvious, it's probably /dev/sda1. Then decide where you want to be able to access it from, and make a directory there with mkdir. Then mount it, using mount. e.g.

sudo su
mkdir /mnt/windows
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/windows
chmod -R 777 /mnt/windows
exit

There are cleverer ways to do it, specifically you can write a new line in /etc/fstab which does the mounting bit automatically when you reboot. If that doesn't work, it may be an eccentricity of wubi that you don't get to see the windows files.

Finally a useful scrap of code, which may appeal to a compsci, type sudo su then:

for i in update upgrade dist-upgrade 'install gparted ntfsprogs ntfs-3g ubuntu-restricted-extras'; do apt-get $i -y; done && exit

gparted can be called by sudo gparted from a terminal, or it's in the system/admin menu called partition editor. ntfsprogs lets gparted manipulate ntfs partitions.

Enjoy

 

[zinc]

Yea as malef!c said try rhythmBox first as it has a lot of features and may support it, but I've never used playlists with it myself.

The easy way to access and read your windows partition which is NTFS I presume, simply install ntfs-3g from the Ubuntu Software centre or Synaptic, it doesnt matter which you install it from. ntfs-3g allows you to read and write to NTFS windows drives. The gparted application you installed is a partition editor to edit, delete and add partitions to your hard drives just, it wont allow to see the files in the drive and use it in the operating system so to say.

You might need a restart before you see the NTFS drives I'm not sure though.

Once you have ntfs-3g installed you need to mount the drive by clicking on it in the various places you can see it, like Places or Computer.