I'm now finished with Amarok

[AG]

On 09/04/11 15:55, Thomas Lübking wrote:
> Am 09.04.2011, 13:27 Uhr, schrieb AG<computing.account at googlemail.com>:
>
>    
>> After so many different attempts to make Amarok work, I am sorry to say
>> this but I am now done with this damned thing.
>>      
> So your approach was to try on your own instead of asking and when you
> couldn't bear it anymore you decided to inform the general amarok list
> (not even the devs).
> Sounds not very smart to me - unless you just want to troll around, then
> it's a pretty perfect strategy (and given your mail address i'm actually
> quite sure i'll just waste my time to a troll by the following reply, but
> i cannot help myself - the first lines may sound a bit harsh to get a
> non-troll's brain down to the ground ;-)
>
>    

Not all users who get pissed off because an application doesn't work as 
advertised and who are vocal are "trolls".  You may notice from the 
archives that I have posted to this list before with similar problems 
and may even note that various offers of help have already been made, to 
which I have responded.  So, after all of these efforts the application 
still becomes non-functional.
>> It has proven itself to be terminally buggy on my system
>>      
> And you get to the diagnosis "terminally" on what kind of knowledge about
> the system internals?
>
>    
See above ...

>> plays for a few days then without warning and with no changes to my
>> system aside from KDE updates on
>>      
> what basically means "i did nothing... except for loading packages that
> impact the complete library base of the application - and might do
> whatever else"
>
>    

Which means that I have attempted to debug this application before and 
the most helpful solution offered was to ...

>> Debian testing, it just stops playing.  It loads the track and gets
>> stuck on pause - despite my best efforts to change that status.
>>      
> and your "best efforts" have been exactly what, except for clicking the
> play button a lot of times?
>
>    
>> UI have renamed and then removed the ~/.kde/share/apps/amarok and
>> relevant config files
>>      
> please define "relevant config files" - also this is no problem solving
> but mindless freaking around.
> Sorry but if you want to get a problem fixed and are older than three
> years, one would expect another and more directed approach.
>
>    

which was the suggested advice from this list.  So much for consistency 
of advice from the user world then.

>> so many times now and that helps for a bit,
>>      
> "for a bit" means: "everything works as expected, but for a short time
> only" or "some things work, but not as expected" or what?
> once again: ranting may be helpful to your mind, but not to solve any kind
> of problem.
>
>    

Point taken.  Nonetheless, as this issue has been protracted and the 
solutions offered hitherto work for short periods of time or there is a 
resounding silence from this list, from a user's perspective I have 
other things to work with (such as my PhD thesis) rather than to figure 
out the arcane subtleties of a music application.  If you care to let me 
know what sort of debugging info would be helpful beyond that which i 
have posted in previous threads, I'd be happy to help out by providing 
same.  When I did so however, the silence from this list was deafening.

I personally just want a music app that plays music reliably.  Amarok 
used to be able to provide that.  Now it doesn't.  If I reboot the 
system it works again.  If I play a music video on-line it doesn't.  Go 
figure.  Is it my system or is it the app?  In my experience, Amarok is 
the only app that has such a volatile performance pattern.

>> but then Amarok just decides to quit playing again.
>>      
> maybe it's in its monthly period...
> It does certainly not "decide" to do things - either you changed sth.
> substantially (eg. in the phonon configuration or replacing the mp3
> decoder lib with a stub to convince the f**** IFPI or whatever) or there's
> a bug that shows up on doing sth. specific, like loading a particular file
> or stream or adding maaaaany entries to the playlist or whatever.
>    

Lighten up - it's a figure of speech.  I fully appreciate that as much 
of a wet dream AI is to some, computers at the level of the desktop 
don't spontaneously decide to do anything independently.

> Computers are no women (sorry to every woman out there, but it's like that
> ;-) and if they start to do things out of apparently some bad mood that
> usually means some buffer overflow or broken hardware.
>
>    

Your sexism aside, you are just yanking my chain right now.  I updated 
the kde libs in Debian and then went to play a video from YouTube 
(pausing Amarok) and went back to play Amarok and it wouldn't play - it 
remained on pause despite clicking the pause/ unpause button.  All 
systems seemed ready to play - wikipedia was picked up as was the album 
art, but no progress indicator movement and no minute countdown.  The 
update was already mentioned previously.

>> Unless KDE and Amarok learn how to play nicely on this system, then
>> Amarok has to go in favour of JaJuk.
>>      
> Theatric, but pointless nevertheless. No software can learn "how to play
> nicely" on an unspecified system.
>
>    

And besides an insufferable arrogance your point is what exactly?

> Now, if you really want things to work you first need to identify the
> problem and i mean more than "it's broken".
> It includes at least a detailed description of
> a) your system setup (esp. sound related like in this case phonon version
> &  backend)
> b) what leads to the problem (it works and after some time it stops
> working and what except for installing undefined packages did happen
> inbetween and what packages did you install)
> c) running amarok in debug mode from a text shell "amarok --debug"
>    

Done - and previously posted.  Same problem, same debugging info.

> Then you would file a bug report specifying the issue and in doubt ask for
> insight/help.
>    

Which I've done previously (again, check the archives) and it remains 
broken.  In fact even someone from SuSE is discussing similar 
breakages.  Seems like it may be more than just my own issue at work here.

> Cheers,
> Thomas
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