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Realplayer G2 for Linux 170

Posted by Hemos from the listen-and-love dept.
Skijk writes "Realplayer G2 is finally here for Linux. You can get it at Real Player. " The folks at RealNetworks are calling it an Alpha, but I've heard good reports on its' stability-how's it working for everyone?
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Realplayer G2 for Linux

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  • I am usnig roadrunner, and behind am IP Masq system. Trying to get realplay to work in that configuration was dificult, but perhaps this fix will work for you:

    1.Go to the options->transport tab
    2.select "use specified transport"
    3.turn off "use multicast..."
    4.turn off "use udp..."
    5.make sure "attempt to use tcp..." is on.

    That fixed it for me. Unfortunately it doesn't save the settings, so each time you close/open realplay it forgets the settings.

    Hope this helps....

  • Works Great Here (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is what I have been waiting for. I tried about 24 different audio and video sites and have not had 1 problem.

    SB16 / Rawhide 1.3.6

    Finally!

    The only thing that scares me is the number of systems that people are saying it does not work on...This is becoming all to common in the Linux world....Products that work on 1 machine but not another, when you have the same "OS"....This is something I believe the Linux community needs to address before these commercial vendors start pulling their hair out trying to figure out how many different "versions" they are going to need...Don't get me wrong, I am for Open Source as much as the next guy, but I also believe people have a right to make a living and put food on the table writing code.....If the source was open for Real Audio, Star Office, WP, etc...We could prob. fix a lot of problems, however no money would change hands, and the programmers would go work for a platform that pays....



    DT

  • It preloads the esd library or something. Anyway, I found the trick to be very interesting, it allowed me to play several mp3s concurrently ;-) The X-files theme actually didn't sound bad with them overlapping.
  • Here's what I did to make it work after a bunch of failed attempts and other grief (Slack 3.4 base...)

    First you need glibc2. You can either make this from sources (fun fun), or just score a Slack 3.6/4.0 package and install it.

    Once that's done, go get the RH5.1 libstdc++ package (evil, yes, I know)... I got it here:

    ftp://ftp.seul.org/pub/independence/distribution /Independence/RPMS/libstdc++-2.8.0-14.i386 .rpm

    (lose the space in that URL first of course)

    Finally, convert to tgz (rpm2targz) and either do installpkg on the resulting tgz or untar it by hand and copy it into /usr/lib as a plain file. Then rerun ldconfig just to be sure everything is happy.

    Assuming you get all that done, it should fire right up without any complaints.

  • No sound (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm getting some weirdness...no sound plays at all (yes, I put the volume up). I'm using the stock
    sb driver on my AWE32 (cat /boot/vmlinuz > /dev/audio works fine, as do games like Quake).

    By the way, I'm on Caldera 2.2 which is similar to Red Hat in that it is entirely egcs based and comes only with libstdc++.so.2.9. rpm -i'ing the Red Hat 5.2 libstdc++ 2.8 worked without having to rename any links, because the realplay executable is linked to libstdc++.so.2.8. The Red Hat package won't overwrite your generic libstdc++.so link, which is the one that matters.

    Of course, the raises another issue - all this library stuff is going to be VERY discouraging to a new Linux user. Someone coming from Be, or the Mac, or even Windows isn't going to know that they need an old version of a given library. I've been seeing all sorts of problems like this, mostly related to libc5/glibc2/glibc2.1. I can understand libc5->libc6 problems, but come on! Shouldn't all the glibc's be completely compatible now? Shouldn't executables just be linked generically against libstdc++.so, and shouldn't new versions be backwards compatible? If not, shouldn't distros (especially 'user friendly' ones like Caldera) come with old libraries, if those are needed?

    Trying to run executables and seeing "not found" or "undefined symbol" is very frustrating even for a hardened UNIX vetran like me. I can imagine that for a newbie, it would make me want to give up in disgust altogether.

    Sorry, rant over.

  • another linux product for x86 alone. (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 19, 1999 @06:29PM (#1886185)
    that sucks big balls. sparc, alpha and ppc are all in really good shape, really solid ports. and yes, i know, the linux community (and esp the lovely /. community) are so x86 bigoted that they don't care.. "get some real hardware!" HAH. Motorolla and IBM PPC systems are fantastic boxen, as are the newest Sparc Stations.

  • Works for me! Buggy as Hell! :) (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 19, 1999 @09:04PM (#1886186)
    After some fiddling, I got it to work w/o a
    hitch. I run Linux 2.3.3, with egcs (and it's
    libstdc++), and glibc 2.1.1pre1. My system is
    based on an old a.out Slackware install from 1995,
    upgraded by hand to ELF and then to total glibc.
    So it's a non-distribution really, nothing of
    slackware left -- DIY (do it yourself distro).

    It wants libstdc++ 2.8, so I went into /usr/lib
    and made a link called that pointing to version
    2.9 (egcs's version) -- Install worked, but
    there was a unresolved symbol.

    I downloaded RH 5.2's libstdc++ 2.8, installed that,
    added the appropriate environment variable to
    by bash config, and everything went peachy.

    A few bugs I noted:

    1) It forgets about the clip (the URL, the .ram
    file, whatever) immediately after playing it.
    Pressing PLAY again says that the URL is out of
    date, or some such.

    2) The default audio volume is really low -- and
    it resets it with every new clip loaded. So you
    have to move the volume slider down and up again
    to hear the audio portion.

    3) You cant zoom the video in the window (i.e.
    play at double size).

    4) As a consequence of #1 (forgetting URLs), it
    cant play the AudioNet/Broadcast.com style, where
    it plays their 20 second plug, then forwards you
    to the content you wanted.

    5) RealPlayer doesnt come w/ a default, or demo
    clip -- but the one suggested under Open Location
    doesnt work (it says that you are missing some
    components to play that one)

    rtsp://g2home.real.com/install/welcome.smi

    (err, that one...it starts buffering, resizes the
    playback window, then pops up the error -- yes my
    environment variable was set)

    Other than that, it's fine. Speed and quality at
    least as good as the previous versions (except
    for the bugs. of course)



  • Any word on a Solaris version? Or are use unix users still stuck with realplayer 5.0 for now?

  • From the README:
    1. RealFlash is currently not working on Linux and AIX. You will receive the error message "Some components are not available to provide playback of this presentation on your system," when trying to play RealFlash clips.

    I installed the Shockwave Linux beta last night. It's pretty cool, actually. It chokes on stuff that requires "Director," whatever that is (the Macromedia site is no help in that regard), but otherwise seems to work pretty well, so far.

    If you want to get it, just visit a site with the "download shockwave" button, click it, assuming you're using Netscape Linux, you'll go straight to the Linux download. Bust the files out of the tarball, copy the plugin to a directory listed in $NPX_PLUGIN_PATH, or to one of $MOZILLA_HOME/plugins, or $HOME/.netscape/plugins, restart Netscape, you're there.

  • Run 'strace realplayer' and see what it's doing when it segfaults. At this point, it could be anything.

    I had a bit of trouble getting G2 working, but I ran some tape today and I usually have problems with DMA buffers after loading and unloading the SCSI modules (goes away after a few error messages -- I'm going to build preallocated buffers next time around). I tried rvplayer right afterwards and sure enough, got the "couldn't open sound device" message.

    G2 is working now. Observations:

    • Better sound, at least IMO and on my hardware. YMMV.
    • No "skips" when I open web pages or large files, as with rvplayer 5.0 (with linux 2.2.x "open()" hack).
    • No more "net congestion" messages. This is a subjective observation, granted, but I've gone back and forth between rvplayer 5.0 and G2, listening to WABC New York and the difference is very noticeable.
    • G2 looks a little nicer than 5.0.
    • The statistics display is prettier. It shows a heart monitor with percentage of target bandwidth.
    I haven't tried loading from Netscape yet, but for my setup (loading from WM menu) it seems Ok, so far.
  • I have a small script I use to try and circumvent the esd problem.. Basically a 'wrapper' for the real player..

    #!/bin/sh
    esdctl off
    realplay $*
    (ps ax|grep "realplay"|grep -v "grep" > /dev/null) || esdctl on

    The first line turns off esd, and the last will see if the realplayer is still running when the script ends (meaning the script was called in order to change the stream that the player is playing... err.. that sounded mucky..) If it is still running, nothing happens. But if realplayer is no longer running, esd gets turned back on..

    Hope that helps..

  • Re:True Stability Test - but not of Linux (Score:3)

    by HoserHead ( 599 ) on Wednesday May 19, 1999 @06:10PM (#1886191)
    Oh, sure, that's a stability test - but it's not a test of Linux' stability. That's a test of the stability of Realplayer and Netscape for Linux, which is a very different thing. The fact is that it takes a lot to crash Linux, at least in the stable kernel series. Even if X crashes and hoses your display, Linux is still probably working. Of course, this doesn't mean much for the end-user; if the average person's display is hosed, they'll probably just hit reset - but the fact is that Linux itself isn't crashy like Netscape and Realplayer for Linux are.

    That being said, I'm not planning on installing Realplayer anyhow. The only non-free software I have on my computer is Netscape, and I've got a clear upgrade path for that, too. When something coredumps, I want to be able to fix it - and unfortunately, Realplayer and Netscape do that, sometimes more often than others - and I can't do that with proprietary software.

  • I've seen more non-x86-happy folks here on /. than anywhere else.

    Do you SERIOUSLY see that many x86 supporters here? Folks USING x86 hardware (due to cost), maybe... but people who seriously would rather be behind a P3 than a SPARC? I certainly don't.
  • Posted by kenmcneil:

    Same thing is happening on my system with the same setup. I'm going to post to the root of this thread to see if anyone else is having this problem.
  • Posted by kenmcneil:

    On Red Hat 6.0 (Intel) with Netscape 4.6, G2 doesn't work at all. It starts up and just sits there. Anyone else seeing this?
  • Posted by kenmcneil:

    Well...the page were we all picked it up from said to send mail to alphag2@real.com [mailto] but my mail was bounced back. So until then just send it through the normal support pages [real.com].
  • Posted by kenmcneil:

    The download page said something like "Red Hat 5.x/6.0" so I assume that the libs aren't the problem.
  • Posted by kenmcneil:

    I'll answer for him/her...yes.
  • Posted by kenmcneil:

    Nope, I'm just using a plain old dialup connection.
  • Posted by kenmcneil:

    Yepp!
  • x11amp sets its volume by changing the system (/dev/dsp) master instead of using esd_set_stream_pan(). Unfortunately I don't know enough about x11amp internals to change this. In addition, there's no simple esd_get_stream_pan(). :(
  • Gotta agree... x86 sucks, but I have to use it... Quake 1,2,3, WordPerfect, the list goes on...

    3dfx actively discouraged Darryl Strauss from releasing Glide on x86, citing some legal !#@$!@$. Despite the fact that Darryl said a port would take a day or two at most. (In fact, I think there's a working Alpha port that only he posessess due to 3dfx's anality.)

  • OK (Score:1)

    by pingouin ( 783 )
    It's less flaky than 5.0 and performs better (it damn well better, for the size of it); I doubt it will ever be as feature-rich as the Winversion, but at least I don't have to boot some other OS in order to see G2-encoded content. Thanx, Real, but please don't leave the PPC/Alpha/etc people in the lurch -- shouldn't it just be a matter of configure and make?

    (Trying it -- the non-RPM version -- out on a K6/166, 2.0.36, 64 MB, and a glass of iced herbal tea...)

    --

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Installed the regular Linux version on two machines:
    • Celeron 300A @ 450 MHz, 64 MB RAM, 2.2.9
    • Pentium 100, 48 MB RAM, 2.0.32
    These are both systems that started as Redhat systems, but are now mostly upgraded with stuff compiled from source.

    Works well on both systems. Only observed problem so far was a segfault during the registration on the 450.

    This seems to play more smoothly than 5.0; I used to get this choppy effect where the audio would be sort of "jumbled." Doesn't seem to happen with G2.

    I agree that they should at least compile a version for SPARC, Alpha and PPC. Such is life with proprietary software. Ugh.

    --
    Get your fresh, hot kernels right here [kernel.org]!
    World domination: coming soon to a computer near you!

  • Just downloaded the RPM and installed it on RH 5.2 with a 2.2.6 kernel and it works great. Not at all the hog I feared it would be. Check it out.

    Groucho
  • Did you enter 'realplay %s' instead of just 'realplay' in the MIME type association? If not, make sure to include the %s - that passes the path to the .ra or .ram file to RealPlayer when it's called.
  • The only problem with them using DGA is that there's more than one implementation of DGA - I think MetroX and XFree use the same implementation (I _think_) but I know Xi Graphics' X server uses a different DGA implementation than XFree does.
  • chmod +x g2a1_linux22.bin, anyone? If you did that, do you have a glibc2 system? (this version is glibc2-ONLY)
  • Umm, did you use 'realplay %s' in the Netscape prefs? If oyu don't give it the '%s', Netscape won't pass a path to the file to open when the program's being called.
  • > (why the hell was his/her message moderated down to a -1??)

    probably because the first sentence was moderation bait . . .
  • How do you figure? I just ran it on my (nearly) stock RedHat 5.2 system (Kernel 2.0.36). I've got an SB16PnP and it works just fine for me. Audio/Video is at least as good as rvplayer 5.0gold. Only thing that's irritating to me is that it keeps coming up asking for registration, even though I registered it.
  • Software source DOES matter.. /dev/dsp doesn't always work the same on different platforms, plain and simple.. Unless they are riding G2 on top of one of the audiolibs, they would need to add platform specific code to use it on another system..
  • I didn't say it was a Linux stability test. Heh, actually that's funny, if it core dumps, Linux will be fine, no one will BSOD...

    Yes, it's a test of a Linux App... which is the what the topic of this news story is, and thus the point of trying it.

    And, Since /. has a high precentage of Linux users, it's something people will probably want to know.

    Also, not, the application that is involved, is an ALPHA, so, our feedback is probably of value to RealPlayer as well...

    Plus, I just installed RH 6.0, and NS 4.6, and now this is done downloading, ;-) I wanna see what happens, and if I am the only one it works/doesn't work for... ;-) Let ya know in a little while..

  • K, thought I would share my results.

    I got it (rpm) installed, and set the plugins in preferances in netscape to start realplay. When i click a link for something, it opens realplayer, and then just sits there... It doesn't open the location.

    I haven't ever used this thing before, but it looks cool, would like to see it work though.

    Red Hat 6.0, Netscape 4.6, G2... ?

  • Yea~!!! That's what I needed!

    http://www.policescanner.com [policescanner.com] now.. very cool...

    weeeeee.....

  • True Stability Test (Score:3)

    by BadlandZ ( 1725 ) on Wednesday May 19, 1999 @05:49PM (#1886216) Journal
    I really hate to say anything bad about Linux. Really, so don't consider this a flame on the OS. But, the true stability and userfriendlyness test for realvideo and netscape is when I can load the following page, and actually see it work:

    http://www.cnn.com/videoselect/ [cnn.com]

    Feel free to download it, then test this page, report back your distribution and version, netscape version, and special tweaks to anything (plugin configuration), I would love to see the results..

  • I think that's the SBLive driver.... I've heard of lots of problems with it coredumping when not run under root.
  • As cool as this was to hear, it won't work on my
    system. I've got a glibc2.1, libstdc++-2.8.1.1 system, and I get

    "undefined symbol: __eh_pc"

    when I try to run realplay.

    This is too bad. Anyone have an idea on how to fix this problem?
  • Great! Thanks a lot. Is there some problem with
    libstdc++-2.8.1.1 or something? I've heard that
    2.9.0 works, as does 2.8, but people seem to have
    trouble with 2.8.1.1. Hmmm...

    Aubin
  • Exactly the same thing happens to me. Even the installer craps all over itself. Slackware 3.5, kernel 2.2.9, glibc 2.06 as default libraries.
  • Yes, as the fellow above mentions, you need to get a glibc version of libstdc++ 2.8. If you followed the libc5 to glibc conversion howto (or if you were forward thinking enough to realise you still need your libc5 libraries) you will have copied all your old libc5 stuff into another directory and added it to your library path. You should move your libc5 libstdc++.so.2.8 files (and all links that point to it) into your libc5 libraries directory before you install the glibc libstdc++. This will save you all sorts of trouble with Netscape and other libc5 programs.

  • HOW TO GET IT WORKING IN NETSCAPE! READ HERE! (Score:5)

    by Panix ( 2408 ) on Wednesday May 19, 1999 @07:52PM (#1886222) Homepage
    Okay, as many of you seem frustrated and can't get it working in Netscape, here is the deal. Edit -> preferences -> navigator -> Applications. From here, find the real player item, open it, and tell it to use an application "realplay %s". The key thing here is the %s. I have no idea how to get the inline plugins working, if anyone knows, tell me.
  • Macromedia does have a beta release of a flash plugin for linux. I'm not sure if it's the same thing, but I've viewed animations with it.
  • I'm guessing the new video codecs need that much CPU and RAM, no matter which OS you're running.
  • As far as I know, the real player protocol us utterly closed and proprietary.

  • How to handle embedded realvideo. (Score:3)

    by caolan ( 2716 ) on Thursday May 20, 1999 @03:55AM (#1886226) Homepage
    If you want to use realplayer as an inline viewer you should be able to knock it together with XSwallow [csn.ul.ie].

    XSwallow is a nifty little plugin that can be registered to handle all mimetypes and spawn off a helper app to handle the type, which netscape won't do for embedded mimetypes. The nifty bit is that xswallow can relocate the spawned off X program into the space that netscape provides in its window, so you get a nicely faked plugin especially for vrml and animations.

    With xswallow you have two choices, when netscape finds an embedded realvideo type do you want the realplayer app to appear embedded in the webpage, or whether you want it to appear external to the webpage, which might be a better option as the actual app has menubars etc that wouldn't exist in a real plugin.

    I used it quite happily for the previous rvplayer with a xswallow config line of
    audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin; rpm; rvplayer %s; ;Real Player

    C.

  • (oops)

    I imagine some of the segfaults could be attrributed to redhat 6.0's use of glibc2.1. I've run into problems before. Anyone else know if G2 uses any glib2.1 calls (or outdated 2.0 calls)?
  • Between RedHat 6.0 and Real Player G2 releases...YAY!!!! :)
  • Now if only the stupid thing would obey my stupid preference settings. Everything under Options/Preferences/Connection seems to be ignored.

    At least alien converted their .rpm to .deb without fuss. :-)
  • I know, my libc is getting old, but it works :)
  • | I'm guessing the new video codecs need that much
    | CPU and RAM, no matter which OS you're running.

    If the requirements are in fact true for the Linux version, that's not it. Realplayer G2 runs on a P120 (non-MMX, even) with 32 megs RAM at work. It only chokes on the biggest streams (e.g. local episodes of South Park at high bit rates)
  • For now, I'm going to have to have rvplayer (5.0) and realplay (G2) installed. While Real G2 plays G2 streams okay, it's segfaulted more in the last fifteen minutes than the 5.0 player has *ever* segfaulted on me. It seems to have trouble with the older streams for some reason. Note that this is just playing locally stored streams from the command line, but it's still quite unstable!

    To Real's credit, they do label this version as an "alpha" version, and it behaves as such. Here's hoping they release more stable updates quickly!

    (And an alpha Alpha version would be nice, too, but I don't see that happening anytime soon...)
  • | that sucks big balls. sparc, alpha and ppc are
    | all in really good shape, really solid ports.

    Except that if I let my Sparc IPXes run X with the normal X screen blanking enabled (from xset), they will hard crash after a while, requiring a power cycle. Turning off the screen blanking appears to cure the problem.

    That said, I still would like to see more effort by corporations to support non-x86 Linux systems. It's frustrating to not have an Alpha-Linux port of Netscape, for example. Yes, there's Mozilla and it's what I'm using to post this message, but it's not the same. At least my Sparcs have Netscape. :)

  • Use the -as n option when starting esd. "as" stands for auto-standby and will give up the sound device after n seconds of inactivity. If you do that, non esd-aware programs can grab write top /dev/dsp when esd isn't using it.

    Usually if you have a program foo that doesn't support esd, you can run "esddsp foo" which does some tricks to make the program talk to esd.
    --

  • Yep, same here; works fine, for the most part. It's (i.e. using the RPM) running on a PII233/64MB/AWE64/RH5.2/2.0.36 system. The only problems after 15 minutes of usage: 1. core dumped almost 7 megs (probably due to me trying to run other file types though :) 2. sound seems a bit out of sync with video. 3. It asked me to register twice. 4. Oh yeah, after installing it (i.e. a 4 meg RPM), I noticed 13 megs of /usr disk space suddenly vanished :( .On the plus side; video seems sharper and installation was simple. Just had to change the name of the executable, which is now realplay; as opposed to 5.0's rvplayer.
  • According to the README file that came with this Alpha release (come to think of it, the README and "About RealPlayer" say that this is a Beta...hmmm?), the plugin doesn't work; which is what this web page needs. Here's a snippet of the README file (under /usr/doc/):

    RELEASE NOTES

    What's Not Working?

    The following items are either not working in the Beta Release G2
    Player or they are working but have not been tested for performance
    levels. Some of these features may only work intermittently or
    anomalously.

    1. RealFlash is currently not working on Linux and AIX. You will
    receive the error message "Some components are not available to
    provide playback of this presentation on your system," when trying
    to play RealFlash clips.

    2. Status Bar (several of the indicators are not working).

    3. View, Presets, Sites menus.

    4. Most recent clips in File menu.

    5. Statistics dialog (Bandwidth, Streams, and Advanced panes not working).

    6. Compact mode.

    7. Playlist pane.

    8. Netscape Plugin


  • Some music streams seem to work, but for example, these [real.com] example animations do not. They only say "Some components are not available to provide playback of this presentation on your system". So it seems that only limited set of codecs is supported !?!?

  • Are you behind a firewall/proxy? The realplayer page says you have to open up ports 6970 - 7170 to UDP traffic.

    This seems to be the problem in my case... My roommate usurped our connection a few weeks ago to try proxying our LAN himself with WinRoute instead of through my Linux box (using the excuse that it was too hard to figure out how to set up port forwarding for kerberos :P ) It's been a bumpy ride since then... bouncy bouncy

  • At least!
    I don't want to miss the next Shuttle launch
    iak
  • I'm going abroad, and I'm taking my Digital8 cam to shoot video postcards.. Now I can send them home in G2!

  • Do you have RH 6.0? Could this be the problem.. I get the segfault also. I noticed that to download options for OS's only say Redhat 5.x. Can anyone else get it to work with RH 6?
  • Try viewing the source of the page and finding
    the embed tag. Once you've found it, look for
    the src portion and point RealPlayer to that
    ram/rpm manually. About the only way I can think
    of.
  • Debian 2.1, netscape 4.6 glibc,realplayer G2 (at last):

    The page loads normally, selection works fine for 28.8K, sometimes 80 K is not selectable (non-reproducible error...). Resizing netscape sometimes messes up the screen...

    I cannot see why this is a stability test of realplayer though ;-)

    P.
  • Based on RP5 the animations probably require Shockwave. As macromedia do not make a Linux player, RP can't play them.

    As SW format is now "open" and there *is* a Linux player I wonder if the RP plug-in format is documented well enough to create the components necessary for playback??
  • bah! i don't know where they got those from. maybe for video, but for audio the new G2 player works way better on my old P5-100 than the 5.0 player did. i'm listening to the BBC world service c/o broadcast.com and it's using 8% of the CPU and 8 MB of RAM. so it does use more memory, but not outrageously so and it's certainly a worthwhile trade-off for the lower CPU utilization. now i can even build a kernel on the old P5-100 without causing sound drop-outs. very nice.

    tim
  • AMEN! Preach on, brother! Yet another reason that open-source software is so significantly better than closed-source garbage. Linux for Sparc architecture is extremely solid and runs every open-source item that I want... Yet, if I want to run Civ CTP on my sparcstation, I cannot and probably never will be able to. Too bad there is no emulator... Wait a second!!! have you heard of SoftWindows? or SoftPC? What it is is a Intel box emulator... it is available for mac and solaris and probably several other OSes. It allows you to run Windows on a Sparc... Maybe what we need is FREE-PC or FREE-WINDOWS... so we can emulate a Intel box to run Linux in a window.

    or maybe not... seems kinda excessive...
  • It works pretty good on my system. Debian Potato on kernel 2.2.9 -- oced 300a+64mb ram. Very nice .No crashes in the last 2 hours of real video watching on CNN.

    Though, I have to report a bug, or a lack of feature or maybe I just couldnt find the button to do it. That's zoom.. my friend. G2 windows are tiny on my X.. I have to press my nose against the display to look at it. A basic, working zoom function would be much appericated. Also how about full screen with DGA? That's a nice possiblity.

    I know this is alpha, and for alpha this is extreemly good. Also real, please support other *linux platforms. It helps not to include too much asm on 86.
    --
  • Well, my experience with it so far is it isn't substantially better than rvplayer. It still won't properly start when I click on a link in netscape (even if you pass it the URL via cmd line, it still starts "blank"). It's also, sadly enough, incompatible with ESD (enlightenment sound daemon).. which makes putting it in *my* X setup alittle difficult.



    --
  • Some sites, like FOXNEWS, try to embed it into a tiny box as an inline plugin. How do you make this work under Linux/Netscape???

    Thanks




    ==============================
    Windows NT has crashed,
    I am the Blue Screen of Death,

  • I have to agree with the sentiment of the above poster (why the hell was his/her message moderated down to a -1??). As an avid user of SPARC/Linux, I'm very close to going back to Solaris (as soon as I get a box that runs Slowaris as fast as my LX runs Linux). I'm sick of a Netscape that segfaults on load, a lack of precompiled binaries (my box is slow, I appreciate the convenience of binaries).

    I've heard the "get a PC" argument before, albeit not on SlashDot. It's justified to some extent, as PCs are cheap-o, but if you've got an older workstation-class machine lying around, you might as well use it, eh?

    However, what annoys me more are that Red Hat actually released RH Linux 5.1/SPARC as an actual product even though it sucked out-of-box (broken gcc in some cases, broken gtk+, broken lots-of-things). I guess we SPARC/Linux users are just such a minority that we don't have a voice yet.


    The following sentence is true.
    The previous sentence is false.
  • The RPM Real Player would core dump on
    me but not the tar.gz version. Perhaps
    the problem is similar, try the tar.gz version
    to see.

    I use 4-Front sound driver.
    I haven't tried G4 yet, just got it downloaded.

  • Real Player always has had in the past both
    a tar.gz version and a .rpm version.

    The rpm Version 5 version would core dump
    on me while the tar.gz file would not.

    With the G2 version I didn't have to hunt
    for a tar.gz version (libc5 instead of glibc2)
    because the rpm version work perfectly except
    that I can save a setting as I can do on
    winblows.

    I use 4-Front sound software though. Perhaps
    the new screwed up sound support in the
    new kernel has more to do than anything else
    about the core dumps, not to say that the
    combination with glibc2-1 doesn't contribute
    to it.

    As for your comment about dope, I'm sure you
    know what to do with it or should I be
    more specific?

  • How it works (Score:3)

    by Nessak ( 9218 ) on Wednesday May 19, 1999 @06:38PM (#1886254) Homepage
    About an hour ago I downloaded an rpm. My system is pretty normal (AMD 350, 64meg, sb16, RH5.2, 2.2.1). I would consider myself a pretty heavy user of realaudio. This seems to be pretty good, as stuff like this goes. There are no plug-ins, and it still lacks many features, but it works well for what it dose. I tired watching CNN on it, which it did better then the old one. Although I have been only using this for a few hours, I would say for most users, this is an improvement. The README actually had some relevant info about what is not working & left out. Even some Esd info.

    Oh, before I forget. This is using a good %18.1 of my memory on simple local clip. CPU usage is down, but memory is way up from the last version. This is not a product for those short on resources. Hope this helps.
  • Mighty steep system requirements. What about it requires a p200 and 64MB of ram?

  • ... but I do have a weird system... Something wrong with my sound setup - it is still easier in Linux than installing some odd card under NT, but I managed to screw it up anyway ;(
  • First of all:
    if X crashes, in all likelihood, if the user knows their computer from a cardboard box, they'll know that Ctrl+Alt+Backspace will kill the X server, and most likely get them back to a prompt to restart X.... try doing that with windows and all it's multimedia...
    Secondly:
    Yes, linux does lack in the multimedia department. Are we surprised? After all, how old is it? 4, 5 years old? wow, 4-5 years into Micro-Soft's existance they were ripping QR-DOS for their own MS-DOS... Linux is growing by leaps and bounds... give it a year, and you'll have all your point-and-click pleasures available, in all likelihood...
    go back to bed..... with MS...
    ----------------------------------------
    ...A view of the Universe functioning...
  • The requirements are bull sh*t, while I do meet them K6-233/64MB it only uses 2.7% of the cpu and 12K of memory, it was smaller than Netscape.

    My guess is that they restated the winbloze requirement for Linux. Speaking of Linux I love it running G2, three shells, four netscape windows, an icq client, and top only a .17 load.

    For all the people coplaning about it I could not even get rvplayer5 to run it did not like my non-open sound system card or 2.2.* or something.
  • Would it be that hard for them to just put it in a tarball for us? Jeesh. Anyone know what I can use on BSD to get the stuff out of the rpm or anything?

    Ah well. If Real wants to keep from being steamrolled by MS, they need to get cracking on their cross-platform support. It's taken too long for this to come out. They need to have G2 for Linux, BSD, Solaris, and BeOS - if they stay in their windows world, MS MediaPlayer is going to stomp them.

    -lx
  • I noticed this too. Also noticed that the windows requirements are only a p90 and 16 megs of ram. WTF!?

  • format still proprietary (Score:3)

    by jetson123 ( 13128 ) on Thursday May 20, 1999 @01:35AM (#1886261)
    I understand the time pressures that the company is under and I appreciate that they are providing players for Linux.

    However, the RealAudio formats are still proprietary. For a streaming format, that may be a little less of a concern than for a true archival format. Still, RealAudio files are being archived. Who will be able to read those files 20 years from now when Win95, NT4, and Linux 2.0 will be all dim memories? And why should users of other operating systems (FreeBSD? BeOS? AmigaOS? Plan9? future free OS software efforts?) be excluded from listening to on-line broadcasts?

    Internet streaming audio could become an important way of distributing public service information, independent information, etc., and I think it should be open. I hope it will happen, one way or another.

  • Get hold of the pgcc-1.1.3 source rpm ( pgcc-1.1 .3-3mdk.src.rpm [sunsite.uio.no]) from Mandrake, if you plan to use pgcc [ml.org] anyway :-). It provides (apart from pgcc, of course) a libstdc++ package, which includes libstc++-2.8.0 and 2.9.0 (and various others) for compatibility to older packages. Built it yesterday, works fine. (Hey, now there's a use for rpm -bb --short-circuit... Building pgcc takes 3 hours on my machine, and I had the change to spec file tons'o'times. :-( )
  • > And an alpha Alpha version would be nice, too, but I don't see that happening anytime soon...

    Well, if you look at the rpm, it's built by RedHat (not only for RedHat), so I guess they might be pushing for an Alpha and a SPARC build as well, as soon as they get them running.

  • Okay, smarty pants, where?
  • Are you sure? In the "Select OS" selection box, it first lists "Win*", then comes a line saying "PLATFORMS BELOW AVAILABLE IN 5.0 ONLY". Thanks, I've got that version.

    Actually, a Solaris alpha/beta version is mentioned in the README packaged with G2 for Linux, but nowhere to be found.

  • Didn't have any problems with the RPM version installed on my redhat 5.2 machine. The video works in packed 24bpp mode, unlike rvplayer5. Now if only xanim supported 24bpp. Strange that an open source program like xanim would lag behind real player in that respect. Of course the last improvement to xanim was what, two years ago?
  • possibly because slackware is libc5 and G2 requires glibc 2
  • Note to self: Thats a selfextracting archive with the archived data added raw to the end of the binary. strip'ing it was NOT a good idea.

    Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go download this bugger for the -third- time.

  • You too huh? I saw the news post, promptly hit the page, and then promptly sighed once I read the requirements. =(

    This sort of thing is happening much more frequently. Heh, it used to be, "Oh I can't run that because I don't use Window's." and now it's "I can't run that either cuz I don't have an Intel based machine."

    A fellow further up the comments mentioned BOCHS. Has anyone gotten it to compile under LinuxPPC?

    A strange idea... running the linux port of sheepshaver and V-PC running an intel flavour of linux. What a mess... I think I'll pass. =)

    But then, (though I doubt it) since G2 for Linux is still beta, we might see more platforms after the first stable release.
  • I meant alpha.

  • as long as there's a netscape in your path, there should be no problem. the best thing you could do would be to install netscape to some version-dependent directory (as you've done), create a symlink from the current version dir to /usr/local/netscape, then have a wrapper script in /usr/local/bin that calls /usr/local/netscape/netscape. then the upgrading is only a question of fixing the symlink, and you don't have to add a directory to the system-wide PATH.

    there are excellent wrapper scripts available which account for many of netscape's insane command-line quirks, and make it much friendlier. look on freshmeat for nss or netscape-wrapper.

    i've pulled the same trick with realplayer.

    to stay on topic, i haven't tried the new G2, but the most recent stable version works very well on my libc6 system. i had to re-download it, tho', because the previous libc5 version did nothing but dump core all over the place.

  • I had utterly no luck. It segfaulted in Slackware 4.0b3. I let them know...
  • I'm running this combination under RedHat 5.2 and it is stable and performing very well.It installed cleanly using the RealNetwork provided RPM. Gene
  • If you have multiple audio channels (ls /dev/dsp*) - I don't know if "channel" is the right word here - try running esd on a different channel (for instance, esd -d /dev/dsp1). Then, apps that don't use esd don't complain cos /dev/dsp is free, while esd is happy with /dev/dsp1. Works for me - I have both x11amp and realplay playing right now.

    -Chetan
  • a: Sounds like your code literacy could use some work. Certainly, many, many software packages have huge code sizes and sometimes poor coding style, if you are reasonably fluent in the implementation language and the ideas/concepts that the source is batting around, you shouldn't have much trouble fixing things that need fixing. I should note that if you need something fixed, the group of authors who did most of the work would probably be frothing at the big to help you solve your problem. You might just learn something, too!

    b) "And waht do you do when the next version comes out??"

    Ah, this is the best part. When the next version comes out, your patch is already a stable part of it (remember, you contributed to the community?). So you just install it and carry on, and maybe give a little showing in a newbie-visited discussion group and offer a bit of direction, now that you are a bonafide free software developer.

    Good for the code, Good for the soul. What more could you want?
  • Yay

    Seems to work fine, now I can watch the Simpsons without having to reboot into NT :-)

    One gripe I have, though, is the fact that you can't make it full screen (can't even seem to double size it :-p I had to ctrl-alt-+ until the window took up most of the screen)

    "Software is like sex- the best is for free"
  • Yeah - trust their "check for upgrade availability" button in rvplayer 5.0...
  • Yup, same here, as soon as I run the downloaded install program, it segfaults on me. Running it w/ strace gives me a ton of blurb, ending in:

    open("/etc/localtime", O_RDONLY) = 3
    --- SIGSEGV (Segmentation fault) ---
    +++ killed by SIGSEGV +++

    Slackware 3.6, kernel 2.2.6, glibc2.0.7 runtime support.
  • Anyone? So far, I haven't seen a single post from someone running it on good ol'Slack. If you managed doing so, please post details. TIA

  • As always: Linux==Linux/i386 (Score:3)

    by rastan ( 43536 ) on Wednesday May 19, 1999 @09:46PM (#1886293) Homepage
    As always: there are no versions for non-intel processors. When are these people going to see that there are other architectures? :-(((

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