Amarok

Revision 12 as of 2006-06-14 23:54:02

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attachment:IconsPage/amarok.png

AmaroK is a full-featured music player with all the bells and whistles for KDE, although it works fine in GNOME. It is scriptable and themable; it has a 10-band equalizer, crossfade, visualizations, color schemes, and a collection filter with a rating system. It supports the iPod, iRiver, and other mp3 players. It integrates with [http://www.last.fm/group/amaroK%2Busers last.fm]. It'll download CD covers from Amazon and metadata from [http://musicbrainz.org/ MusicBrainz] and burn tracks to CD (using [http://www.k3b.org/ k3b]). It even lets you choose the database type you want to use (SQLite3, MySQL, PostGreSQL)! AmaroK supports both the xine and gstreamer back-ends. For more information, visit the [http://amarok.kde.org/ Amarok web site].

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Installing AmaroK under GNOME (Ubuntu)

attachment:IconsPage/apt.png To install AmaroK, install the amarok and amarok-engines packages.

  • Note: Depending on your current system setup, the package manager may ask you to install some additional KDE/qt libraries.

  • AmaroK uses either the xine or gstreamer multimedia frameworks as its sound engine. The RestrictedFormats wiki page has more on how to configure either framework and how to add support for non-free media formats such as mp3.

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Customizing AmaroK

If this is the first Qt application you have used under GNOME, you may notice unusually large fonts or other inconsistencies in the user interface. You can customize the look and feel of KDE applications by installing the KDE Control Center.

attachment:IconsPage/apt.png To use the KDE Control Center, install the kcontrol package.

To launch the KDE Control Center, press ALT+F2 and type 

kcontrol

You will be presented with the following screen. This is how I've configured my fonts:

attachment:kcontrol.png

Feel free to change the look and feel as you like.

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Configuring the Sound Engine

AmaroK uses aRts, the KDE sound engine, by default. Change the sound engine by going to "Settings" > "Configure amaroK" > "Engine". Change the engine to xine; gstreamer works, but for now, xine is superior.

  • attachment:engine.png

Feel free to experiment with GStreamer and xine.

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Using AmaroK

AmaroK is packed with features, including:

  • Last.fm integration
  • On the fly lyrics
  • Smart Playlist generation
  • Mysql and SQLite database capability

  • And much more. For more information, see [http://amarok.kde.org AmaroK's website]

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  • attachment:amarok.png

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ToDo

  • The General Usage section in particular deserves expansion

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References

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See also

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CategoryDocumentation