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Realplayer G2 for Linux
Skijk writes "Realplayer G2 is finally here for Linux. You can get it at Real Player. " The folks at RealNetworks are calling it an Alpha, but I've heard good reports on its' stability-how's it working for everyone?
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I'm getting some weirdness...no sound plays at all (yes, I put the volume up). I'm using the stock /boot/vmlinuz > /dev/audio works fine, as do games like Quake).
sb driver on my AWE32 (cat
By the way, I'm on Caldera 2.2 which is similar to Red Hat in that it is entirely egcs based and comes only with libstdc++.so.2.9. rpm -i'ing the Red Hat 5.2 libstdc++ 2.8 worked without having to rename any links, because the realplay executable is linked to libstdc++.so.2.8. The Red Hat package won't overwrite your generic libstdc++.so link, which is the one that matters.
Of course, the raises another issue - all this library stuff is going to be VERY discouraging to a new Linux user. Someone coming from Be, or the Mac, or even Windows isn't going to know that they need an old version of a given library. I've been seeing all sorts of problems like this, mostly related to libc5/glibc2/glibc2.1. I can understand libc5->libc6 problems, but come on! Shouldn't all the glibc's be completely compatible now? Shouldn't executables just be linked generically against libstdc++.so, and shouldn't new versions be backwards compatible? If not, shouldn't distros (especially 'user friendly' ones like Caldera) come with old libraries, if those are needed?
Trying to run executables and seeing "not found" or "undefined symbol" is very frustrating even for a hardened UNIX vetran like me. I can imagine that for a newbie, it would make me want to give up in disgust altogether.
Sorry, rant over.
that sucks big balls. sparc, alpha and ppc are all in really good shape, really solid ports. and yes, i know, the linux community (and esp the lovely /. community) are so x86 bigoted that they don't care.. "get some real hardware!" HAH. Motorolla and IBM PPC systems are fantastic boxen, as are the newest Sparc Stations.
After some fiddling, I got it to work w/o a
/usr/lib
.ram
hitch. I run Linux 2.3.3, with egcs (and it's
libstdc++), and glibc 2.1.1pre1. My system is
based on an old a.out Slackware install from 1995,
upgraded by hand to ELF and then to total glibc.
So it's a non-distribution really, nothing of
slackware left -- DIY (do it yourself distro).
It wants libstdc++ 2.8, so I went into
and made a link called that pointing to version
2.9 (egcs's version) -- Install worked, but
there was a unresolved symbol.
I downloaded RH 5.2's libstdc++ 2.8, installed that,
added the appropriate environment variable to
by bash config, and everything went peachy.
A few bugs I noted:
1) It forgets about the clip (the URL, the
file, whatever) immediately after playing it.
Pressing PLAY again says that the URL is out of
date, or some such.
2) The default audio volume is really low -- and
it resets it with every new clip loaded. So you
have to move the volume slider down and up again
to hear the audio portion.
3) You cant zoom the video in the window (i.e.
play at double size).
4) As a consequence of #1 (forgetting URLs), it
cant play the AudioNet/Broadcast.com style, where
it plays their 20 second plug, then forwards you
to the content you wanted.
5) RealPlayer doesnt come w/ a default, or demo
clip -- but the one suggested under Open Location
doesnt work (it says that you are missing some
components to play that one)
rtsp://g2home.real.com/install/welcome.smi
(err, that one...it starts buffering, resizes the
playback window, then pops up the error -- yes my
environment variable was set)
Other than that, it's fine. Speed and quality at
least as good as the previous versions (except
for the bugs. of course)
Run 'strace realplayer' and see what it's doing when it segfaults. At this point, it could be anything.
I had a bit of trouble getting G2 working, but I ran some tape today and I usually have problems with DMA buffers after loading and unloading the SCSI modules (goes away after a few error messages -- I'm going to build preallocated buffers next time around). I tried rvplayer right afterwards and sure enough, got the "couldn't open sound device" message.
G2 is working now. Observations:
- Better sound, at least IMO and on my hardware. YMMV.
- No "skips" when I open web pages or large files, as with rvplayer 5.0 (with linux 2.2.x "open()" hack).
- No more "net congestion" messages. This is a subjective observation, granted, but I've gone back and forth between rvplayer 5.0 and G2, listening to WABC New York and the difference is very noticeable.
- G2 looks a little nicer than 5.0.
- The statistics display is prettier. It shows a heart monitor with percentage of target bandwidth.
I haven't tried loading from Netscape yet, but for my setup (loading from WM menu) it seems Ok, so far.slashdot broke my sig
The first line turns off esd, and the last will see if the realplayer is still running when the script ends (meaning the script was called in order to change the stream that the player is playing... err.. that sounded mucky..) If it is still running, nothing happens. But if realplayer is no longer running, esd gets turned back on..
Hope that helps..
That being said, I'm not planning on installing Realplayer anyhow. The only non-free software I have on my computer is Netscape, and I've got a clear upgrade path for that, too. When something coredumps, I want to be able to fix it - and unfortunately, Realplayer and Netscape do that, sometimes more often than others - and I can't do that with proprietary software.
Umm, did you use 'realplay %s' in the Netscape prefs? If oyu don't give it the '%s', Netscape won't pass a path to the file to open when the program's being called.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Yes, it's a test of a Linux App... which is the what the topic of this news story is, and thus the point of trying it.
And, Since /. has a high precentage of Linux users, it's something people will probably want to know.
Also, not, the application that is involved, is an ALPHA, so, our feedback is probably of value to RealPlayer as well...
Plus, I just installed RH 6.0, and NS 4.6, and now this is done downloading, ;-) I wanna see what happens, and if I am the only one it works/doesn't work for... ;-) Let ya know in a little while..
I got it (rpm) installed, and set the plugins in preferances in netscape to start realplay. When i click a link for something, it opens realplayer, and then just sits there... It doesn't open the location.
I haven't ever used this thing before, but it looks cool, would like to see it work though.
Red Hat 6.0, Netscape 4.6, G2... ?
http://www.cnn.com/videoselect/
Feel free to download it, then test this page, report back your distribution and version, netscape version, and special tweaks to anything (plugin configuration), I would love to see the results..
Okay, as many of you seem frustrated and can't get it working in Netscape, here is the deal. Edit -> preferences -> navigator -> Applications. From here, find the real player item, open it, and tell it to use an application "realplay %s". The key thing here is the %s. I have no idea how to get the inline plugins working, if anyone knows, tell me.
XSwallow is a nifty little plugin that can be registered to handle all mimetypes and spawn off a helper app to handle the type, which netscape won't do for embedded mimetypes. The nifty bit is that xswallow can relocate the spawned off X program into the space that netscape provides in its window, so you get a nicely faked plugin especially for vrml and animations.
With xswallow you have two choices, when netscape finds an embedded realvideo type do you want the realplayer app to appear embedded in the webpage, or whether you want it to appear external to the webpage, which might be a better option as the actual app has menubars etc that wouldn't exist in a real plugin.
I used it quite happily for the previous rvplayer with a xswallow config line of ;Real Player
audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin; rpm; rvplayer %s;
C.
I sometimes write stuff
According to the README file that came with this Alpha release (come to think of it, the README and "About RealPlayer" say that this is a Beta...hmmm?), the plugin doesn't work; which is what this web page needs. Here's a snippet of the README file (under /usr/doc/):
RELEASE NOTES
What's Not Working?
The following items are either not working in the Beta Release G2
Player or they are working but have not been tested for performance
levels. Some of these features may only work intermittently or
anomalously.
1. RealFlash is currently not working on Linux and AIX. You will
receive the error message "Some components are not available to
provide playback of this presentation on your system," when trying
to play RealFlash clips.
2. Status Bar (several of the indicators are not working).
3. View, Presets, Sites menus.
4. Most recent clips in File menu.
5. Statistics dialog (Bandwidth, Streams, and Advanced panes not working).
6. Compact mode.
7. Playlist pane.
8. Netscape Plugin
Well, my experience with it so far is it isn't substantially better than rvplayer. It still won't properly start when I click on a link in netscape (even if you pass it the URL via cmd line, it still starts "blank"). It's also, sadly enough, incompatible with ESD (enlightenment sound daemon).. which makes putting it in *my* X setup alittle difficult.
--
About an hour ago I downloaded an rpm. My system is pretty normal (AMD 350, 64meg, sb16, RH5.2, 2.2.1). I would consider myself a pretty heavy user of realaudio. This seems to be pretty good, as stuff like this goes. There are no plug-ins, and it still lacks many features, but it works well for what it dose. I tired watching CNN on it, which it did better then the old one. Although I have been only using this for a few hours, I would say for most users, this is an improvement. The README actually had some relevant info about what is not working & left out. Even some Esd info.
Oh, before I forget. This is using a good %18.1 of my memory on simple local clip. CPU usage is down, but memory is way up from the last version. This is not a product for those short on resources. Hope this helps.
However, the RealAudio formats are still proprietary. For a streaming format, that may be a little less of a concern than for a true archival format. Still, RealAudio files are being archived. Who will be able to read those files 20 years from now when Win95, NT4, and Linux 2.0 will be all dim memories? And why should users of other operating systems (FreeBSD? BeOS? AmigaOS? Plan9? future free OS software efforts?) be excluded from listening to on-line broadcasts?
Internet streaming audio could become an important way of distributing public service information, independent information, etc., and I think it should be open. I hope it will happen, one way or another.
a: Sounds like your code literacy could use some work. Certainly, many, many software packages have huge code sizes and sometimes poor coding style, if you are reasonably fluent in the implementation language and the ideas/concepts that the source is batting around, you shouldn't have much trouble fixing things that need fixing. I should note that if you need something fixed, the group of authors who did most of the work would probably be frothing at the big to help you solve your problem. You might just learn something, too!
b) "And waht do you do when the next version comes out??"
Ah, this is the best part. When the next version comes out, your patch is already a stable part of it (remember, you contributed to the community?). So you just install it and carry on, and maybe give a little showing in a newbie-visited discussion group and offer a bit of direction, now that you are a bonafide free software developer.
Good for the code, Good for the soul. What more could you want?
Anyone? So far, I haven't seen a single post from someone running it on good ol'Slack. If you managed doing so, please post details. TIA
As always: there are no versions for non-intel processors. When are these people going to see that there are other architectures? :-(((
Understanding is a three-edged sword. --Kosh