Well, yet again xmms isn’t working. Oh, life is hard when one loves deprecated software!

Now, to make matters worse, some of xmms’ dependencies have been deprecated as well.

Out of sheer perversity, I decided to install all the old schtuff to see if I could get xmms to work.

(I don’t necessarily recommend doing this in general, mind you – I usually try to avoid installing random deprecated things which may have security holes, conflict with everything else installed or generally cause annoyances. However, it was late and I was in a mood. Since installation, Since installation, I’ve had a closer look and I don’t think that adding these deprecated packages should cause any problems for a clean installation of 10.04, but it is possible that they could cause conflicts with other packages one might choose to install. For me, it is definitely worth the risk!)

Here’s what I did to get xmms working:

Went to:

• https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/hardy/i386/libglib1.2ldbl/1.2.10-19build1

Downloaded and installed:

• libglib1.2ldbl_1.2.10-19build1_i386.deb

Went to:

• https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gtk+1.2/1.2.10-18.1build2/+build/484191

Downloaded and installed (in this order):

• libgtk1.2-common_1.2.10-18.1build2_all.deb
• libgtk1.2_1.2.10-18.1build2_i386.deb

Went to:

• https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/hardy/i386/xmms/1:1.2.10+20070601-1build2

Downloaded and installed:

• xmms_1.2.10+20070601-1build2_i386.deb

Amazingly, this seemed to work!

…Mostly. I’m now getting some terrible moments where the track repeats until I move the mouse. It sounds rather like a CD does when it gets caught on and plays the same hyper short bit of a track over and over again until someone with Fonz power hits it. There was certainly no such bad behaviour a couple days ago when I was happily xmms-ing away on Jaunty.

Just for kicks, I tried Audacity and, interestingly enough, it seems to be plagued with the same skippy repeaty problem.

I don’t think this skipping is a problem with xmms; I think it’s a problem with something else. If this happens, closing and re-opening xmms sometimes works. If other applications are running that involve audio, try closing them. On one occasion, I had to restart the computer, but after that xmms worked fine.

Not sure what’s going on. Audio is a black art. I’m going to bed.

After the most recent Jaunty update, I received this “Couldn’t open audio” error message when I next tried to play audiobooks on xmms:

Please check that:

Your soundcard is configued properly
You have the correct output plugin selected
No other program is blocking the soundcard

This thread had lots of info on diagnosing the problem.

(All I had to do was go to Options -> Preferences -> Audio I/O Plugins and choose “ALSA 1.2.11 output plugin [libALSA.so]” from the “” menu. It had been set to “OSS Driver 1.2.11 [libOSS.so]” before.)

I’m an xmms girl. I’ve never needed the extra features in xmms2, so I was distraught when xmms was no longer available from my friendly neighbourhood Synaptic Package Manager once I moved to Hardy.

Thank the stars, this wonderful person provided all the information I needed to rectify the situation.

This also worked for me in Jaunty (Netbook Remix).

Long live xmms!