I tried posting this on another forum, but they are not being very helpful. I'm hoping I can get a little more love in here:

I just got Suse 10.1 up and running and it's my first Linux experience. I have Real Player, Banshee, and Rhythmbox all installed as of right now. I want to use either Banshee or Rhythmbox to play all of my music, but currently Banshee plays .mp3's, but no streams. Rhythmbox plays streams, but not .mp3's. Also, neither Banshee nor Rhythmbox is recognizing my girlfriend's shared music through the iTunes on her Mac. Real Player plays .mp3's and streams, but I don't like it so let's forget that one. How do I get either Banshee or Rhythmbox to have all of the capabilities they are supposed to have? Also, does anyone know of a way to install Banshee's "official external plugins" as shown here:

http://banshee-project.org/Plugins

I don't want to install them from the source. I tried it a few times already and ended up having to re-install my OS both times. I'm looking for an rpm or some way to install it from Yast.

If we have to take this one step at a time I'm okay with that.

Thanks!

Hiyas,

Personally I use MPlayer for just about everything!

There is an extensive guide here http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/254/42/ to getting a good media playing Linux system up and running.

It's mainly tailored to SuSE but I'm sure the ideas are there for other distro's.

I have already tried everything in that column to no avail.

Try amaroK, it is quite nice, plays mp3 (rhythmbox plays mp3 too) and web streams, not sure if it plays that itunes thing.

Ammarok is the big boy of audio players..it's the most complete i have used ever....windows or linux....also get VLC (Videolan) for linux. It will play pretty much any audio/video you can shake a stick at including streams.

Right so, I have 3 media players already. Rhythmbox and Banshee and both are supposed to cover everything I need but for some reason they aren't. I was hoping I could get one of them configured properly to do what they are supposed to so that I don't have to install yet another player. Or maybe I should just revert back to Windows and Winamp?

Players often use libs present in your system. Some liberaries are missing - player will lack some feature. Start your player from command line, this way you can see error messages and diagnose the problem.
XMMS and Audacious look exactly as Winamp and even can use Winamp skins. As for Windows - don't know. Visit some local computer store perhaps. Nobody here gives a damn what you are running there for OS.

There may be licensing issues with music downloaded from iTunes which could be causing your problems.

I think you got a point here, I think iTunes music comes with some DRM encryption, which makes things a bit more complicated...

take a look at this : http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/01...ked_wide_open/ (that(s just for info)

http://www.hymn-project.org/ this could be helpful for your itunes shares

PS : hope you're not in France, otherwise your trying to use opensource players would be illegal

It could be a licensing issue, but I doubt it. I should be able to see her and then have the option of connecting and getting the rights. At least that's how it worked through iTunes and Windows. I would assume it works similarly through here since the programs claim they have the ability to connect to shared iTunes libraries.

Hopefully you are not getting drm (digital rights management) wma (proprietary windows format). I just deleted 14 gigabytes of it not long ago.

Where did you read that? I just looked through the documentation on Rythmbox and couldn't find anything about it. It can stream files, yes, but i don't think that applies to streaming from an itunes library.

Oh, and i doubt it has anything to do with DRM. Its very easy to copy stuff from iTunes libraries in windows. I haven't tried it in linux yet, but i know it can be done very easily from windows(my school is living proof of that, lol).

Rhythm box can play MP3s, you will need the neccessary codecs to do it.

Is it Gnome desktop you are using?