Few problems with RealPlayer & software
 

Hi,
I'm having a few problems with linux, which I just cannot solve.

First of all, realplayer is being a pain. I installed the latest v10 which works fine. Other than, it's choppy sound - and... BBC's radio player that apparently does work ith Linux wont play because HXPLAY or RealPlay cannot be found or something.

Totem wont play rm or ram files either, and complains of a plugin missing, when it tries to download it fails. :-s

I created symlinks to these files, in the plugins directory - but this doesn't work. Apparently one or two people have the same issues.

Furthermore, Graphics are a nighmare and the system can be choppy at times. Installed the default graphics driver for my systsm, a real 256e Onboard chip. However, I don't think it is compatible, so I will be getting a cheap 8x agp card - can anyone suggest any of the Nvidia's that will work? I.E. FX5200 or a GeForce 4 400MX? Mainly just to get the graphics acceptable, not stunning.

Other than that, everything seems pretty much perfect.

Hope someone can shed light on the realplayer issue. I'm using Mandrake and SuSe for daily use, but the same happens on a Debian server box too. :-(

Also... I might as well see if anyone can help me with Squid, as it fails to start it's process?
Do I remember correctly you have to configure it, and create two directories one a log and one a cache and define these before it will let you start the process?

Thanks for anyhelp in advance. :-D

RealPlayer works fine on a variety of Linux distributions that I have tried (on the bbc news and radio websites). How exactly did you create your symlinks and what are the results of running "about:plugins" in Firefox. You should have a section like below if RealPlayer has been installed ok,
As for totem, you need to install win32 codecs from the download page at mplayerhq.hu. Download the essential codecs or the all codecs pack and extract the file and copy the codecs to /usr/lib/win32 (create it if it doesn't exist).

Any nvidia based graphics card should work ok with Linux.

Never used Squid so can't help you on that one.

Does appear, yes.

I get a javascript pop-up on the BBC player page, saying that it can't load hxplay or realplay because they are not found.

However, I have symlinks from plugins, usr/bin/ etc... nearly everywhere... locating back to the realplayer files, including the plugin files at /usr/local/RealPlayer I think. They are done correctly anyway, but still no luck.

Same in all browsers, Moz, Konq, Opera, and Firefox.

Thanks for your help so far, I'll get a cheap Nvidia card next week.

Try uninstalling your current version of Realplayer and installing the latest one from the helixplayer nightly builds page.

Hi again,

I've tried reinstalling, but.. I'll try a nightly build. Let you know when I've done.

Thanks.

No luck :-(

Screenshot: Realplay.jpg

Where did you install to? Do you have a symlink to the realplay file in the installation directory in /usr/bin? If so is /usr/bin in your $PATH?

/usr/bin/local/RealPlayer is where it's installed. I've created symlinks back to the plugin files and realplay in /usr/bin and all the plugins folders.

This was the place G2 player installed, and I uninstalled it - because it was a default Mandrake rpm. And reinstalled new RPM, this didn't work... uninsalled it after trying symlinks, and now compiled and installed, but trying to use a nightly build.

Is this correct /usr/bin/local/RealPlayer? and where specifically should my symlinks be?

You should install it in a place like /usr/local/RealPlayer then creat symlinks to realplay in /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin.

Ive double checked that, and I have done that.

I can see hxplay > realplay, realplay > realplay, and plus, the plugins too.

Its a wierd problem you are having. There are some troubleshooting tips on the bbc site (when you launch the listen live option or select an old show to listen to), have you taken a look at those.

Yes, I know... it is rather strange. If it was windows, i'd be able to rectify it right away - but I'm somewhat new to linux, so it's a headscratching problem.

I did take a look at those on the BBC site, thats where I got the idea of Symlinks from.

Thanks for the suggestion though!

I know I should create another thread really, but just a quick question. Is it possible to multiboot various linux distros, and use the Mandrake default bootloader?

By the way, I'm sorry for asking so many questions but I'm quite new to linux - and since I have a lot of files on Mandrake I don't wish to overwrite it to try different distos.

Thanks.

Still can't get totem working...

check the screenshots: totem.jpg : totem1.jpg

Did you install the codecs into /usr/lib/win32 because totem works fine on my system with realmedia if I have the codecs installed.