KDE 4 woes

Hi, don't let the subjective title distract you. But I am finding kde 4 a bit of chore. I cannot find a way to play audio CD from cd icon. When I insert a CD the only option I get is to extract the cd but not play it. I hope the screenshot helps.

No, I'm afraid the screenshot doesn't help at all. What are we supposed to be looking at?

First of all, do you have a cd player program installed? Second, unless it's a kde program, chances are there won't have any kind of auto-play rules automatically set up, which means you may have to configure the file associations for it manually in the kde settings (try the "advanced user settings >> device actions").

Finally, make sure you have the kdemultimedia-kio-plugins installed. That's the plugin that gives the file browsers the ability to access audio cds.

kscd doesnt get built in kdemultimedia cause of the missing musicbrainz dependency

Thanks for the feedback folks, but I am at a loss as to what to do first. Can you give a walk through step by step process.?

BTW that screen shot was showing my home partition, external drive and vfat sd card. Note there was an audio cd in the drive which was not showing.
I just took it for granted that in all other linux distos the "computer" or "places" menu would also give access to mounted cd drives.

I am begining to realize Slackware requires configuration to set that up.

Thanks again.

Maybe installing some audiocd capable player would help, for example kaffeine. If plasma applet already shows an audiocd in drive then there's probably no need for any additional configuration. Audacious should be able to play cd-s too if correct plugin is enabled and configured. There has been another thread about not being able to play cd-s in slack13 / kde 4.2.4.

You can also install musicbrainz from slackbuilds and recompile kdemultimedia using sources and buildscripts from slackware dvd. Kscd in kde 4.2.4 isn't really worth all the trouble though, imho.

If you want something light I would suggest grip which is a ripper but plays too.

Thanks guys. I notice grip and kaffiene have only one source. Does that mean there is only 32 bit version available. I have not enabled multilib yet...?

i already have audacious. What plugin do i need and how do I enable it?

Cheers

Audacious, Mplayer, Xine, Gxine, xmms - all already included with a stock Slackware have audio cd play back abilities.

I notice grip and kaffiene have only one source.

Which is correct. Normally only one source file is required to build a package for any architecture. I believe you may be confusing a binary (pre-compiled) package with a source package that you build your self

In my slack13 before (now in -current) it automatically mounts any plugged removable media (CD/DVD, thumbdrives) and displays a little box near the K menu. I wonder why it doesn't show in your screenshot.

okey, i checked audacity, there's an audio CD plugin included and enabled by default. Audio cd-s gets added to playlist through a rightclick menu(in playlist area) entry 'Plugin Services' - 'Play CD' or 'Add CD'.

Xine also has a special CD button in its user interface to play cd-s.

You probably know that it is impossible to mount audio CD disks because those doesn't contain any filesystem. Instead kde kioslave fakes it by displaying 'flac' and 'ogg' directories in file manager, maybe kde4.2.4 in slack 13 doesn't have that feature included and thus doesn't display audio CDs in dolphin. Just a guess.

This is what my kde4 system has. First, I can use the "device notifier" widget. It will automatically display any new devices, including audio cds, and allow you to access whatever available options you have set up. As I mentioned before, the options are configurable in the kde system settings.

Then there's dolphin with the kio multimedia slave installed. It displays the disc in the device list, and when you access that it gives you the standard tree of virtual ogg, wav, and flac files. In case you don't know, this means that these files don't actually exist yet, they will only be "ripped" from the disc when you try to copy them to another location or otherwise access them. For general playback you should probably access the disc directly from your player program.