HI,

I kind of prefer xmms, and so I want it so that the program that is started when I double click a music file in gnome is xmms, not rhythmbox. I went to the 'System->Preferred-Applications' dialog, and then to the 'multimedia' tab, where I typed in 'xmms' in the space provided, but that doesn't change anything. I use lenny and gnome and everything is up to date. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!!

you should do some research, but one might start to type as root in terminal:
update-alternatives --config x- (and then I miss the last part...)

Thanks for the quick reply!!

There's an 'x-www-browser' in the /etc/alternatives directory, so I could see if I was trying to change my default browser I might type 'update-alternatives --config x-www-browser', but when I look in the /etc/alternatives directory there's nothing that screams out to me 'this is the one for audio'. Was that too cryptic? Does anyone know the complete command for update-alternatives that would do what I want? Is there one?

I prefer audacious, it's bit less buggy than xmms for some cases

I agree, since I also use Audacious in Debian Testing... It's good !

(just .lirc should be enabled by default)

well, I've installed audacious, and it works good, but I still have the same problem. How do I make it so that my audio player runs when I double click a file on the desktop instead of rhythmbox or totem movie player? BTW, maybe I should have titled this thread 'using xmms instead of totem movie player' because that seems to be the program that's automatically run when I select a file.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Edit: Now that I look, maybe I can use 'update-alternatives' on totem, and get the results I want. Anyone ever done this before?

Well, I executed the following command:

This works. If I double click on a file, the file tries to open in audacious, which is what I want, except if it's a video file. Then audacious cannot handle it, and the video file doesn't play. That's OK, cause I want to use mplayer for video files, not totem anyway. The problem is I cannot get the video file to play automatically. I was using mplayer before I edited the alternatives link, so it's no different than before when I want to play a video... I have to open mplayer and open the video from in mplayer (or I have to do it from the command line) but I'd really like my videos to play from mplayer when I double clicked them from Gnome -- and still have my music play from audacious. Any body have any ideas? TIA...

There's a tool in the Gnome panel for configure drives and settings. Several tabs there. One of them lets you change which application autoruns when starting audio, another for DVD, another for which burning program when a blank is inserted.

I'm in KDE now so I don't see it, but it's under settings or preferences, something like that.

No need for using update-alternatives for something like this. It's part of Gnome.

I tried that already and it didn't work. Check out the very first post in the thread. I talk about that specifically. That's the original problem. The thing in Gnome didn't work.

Oh, sorry. Maybe it needs more, as that's the command directly used when you type it in there. Like the command to play a dvd or whatever. Try the xmms man or help pages for what it might need. I just don't think most folks use update-alternatives for that kind of thing.

Xmms is kind of old. I've never seen the program myself but Debian stable still has it. You'd find if you dist-upgraded to testing that uninstalling it would be a requirement. Audacious is the latest fork of it I think. Most popular these days seems to be Amarok, Rhythmbox, or Banshee. And then Kaffeine, Totem, and/or mplayer for video. The xine-ui is also nice for video. You might want to look around to see what you like. Lenny's getting released (they say) as the new stable come September or so. No more xmms, but there is xmms2, which does not come with a gui. Gotta install a 3rd party front-end gui for it. And no video support. From now on it's an audio only player and it doesn't use either xine or gstreamer. Kind of does its own thing. The development version is in Lenny.

Wish I could help. Gotta be a way to get it to autorun.

I think xmms is still in lenny. I still cannot get the Gnome 'preferred applications' thing to work. If anyone has an example of a custom command that works (for the multimedia tab) I'd be happy to see it. TIA.

I noticed it getting removed about a week ago. Doesn't mean it won't come back, but usually if something isn't in unstable and is removed from testing...

btw Can either audacious or xmms play mms internet streams ??

So to bring this from the dead, is there an option for changing the default players? In my case everything works fine, but Totem plays my online streaming audio. So, when I listen to XM radio, I cannot change to high bandwidth because I think the gstreamer won't handle high bandwidth. So I want to change it to another player which might be able to handle high bandwidth streams. Any ideas on accomplishing this task without breaking anything?

Thanks.