Some issues (multimedia) with OpenSuSE 11.1

[sonicboy03]

Hi,

After being tired of all the windows problems (crashes, viruses...) I've decided to make a dualboot windows XP and OpenSuSE 11.1. At first sight, it worked fine and stable, but now I'm noticing some issues.

When playing some multimedia like movies or music, I get the following probls:

When playing a movie with kaffeine(dvd or divx), it often hangs when I pressed pause and trying to resume it.

With mplayer, I always get some errors when trying to open a file (will post some screens later on), but he seems to be able to open it. But when trying to go to another chapter with a dvd, he always crashes.

With atunes, when maximizing the window by clicking on the Atunes symbol in the right down bar, I often only get a blank window and cannot do anything with it, only solution is to restart the whole program.

Also, Amorak often hangs when doing a heavy duty job.

And last, I also often get a message that my sound card isn't working anymore, and that he has swithched to another device (then the music is also noisy).

So, guess that there's something wrong with my installation? I installed all the necessary libraries with the 1-click opensuse install from the packman-site. Don't know if it has anything to do with it, but I've also installed wine.

Other programs I've installed on my own: Xine, Mplayer (+GMplayer).

Is there anything I can do about this? Or should a reinstall be better? I've heard many good things from (K)ubuntu. Maybe I should go for this one instead of OpenSuse?
But before I do this, I want to try to fix these probls with opensuse first because I don't want to go to the re-install workload again (btw, is it difficult to wipe out the opensuse partition and then install ubuntu on it? I've partitioned with gparted).

Anyway, thanks for reading this and for your (hopefully ) helpful answers.

[reed9]

I think some of your problems are due to KDE4. At least, the message the sound card isn't working anymore is something I've also run across using Arch Linux with KDE 4.2.1. I don't know of a fix, yet. Possibly just gotta wait for things to improve with the next release. KDE4 has only just now become mostly usable with the 4.2.1 release, in my opinion. Also, what are your system specs? It may be that a lighter weight desktop environment would be more suitable for your computer. You might check out Xubuntu.

[gogalthorp]

Since it is all multimedia apps it might be the new pulse audio. Try using alsa

[sonicboy03]

Hi, here are the errors from mplayer:

1) When opening a dvd
warning MVs not available

2) When going to next chapter
Mplayer interupted by signal 11 in module: demux_open

3) when precing ok
Mplayer crashed by bad usage of CPU/FPU/RAM
recompile player with --enable-debug and make a 'gdb' backtrace and dissambly.
Details in docs/html/en/bugreports_what.html#bugreports crash

and then a box with bug report.

Anyone has a clue?

[gogalthorp]

I suspect it is problems with KDE 4.2

You could install KDE 3.5 that version is rock solid note you can have both installed and simply change at the log on screen.

You also may want to check in Yast to see if there are newer versions of the troubled apps.

[sonicboy03]

And now comes the question...

How do I install 3.5 on a safe way

Is this possible with yast? BTW, I don't have a log on screen, linux boots directly into my account (there's only one account)

[gogalthorp]

Yes from Yast

Yast-Software-Software Managment

change filter to Package groups

then under System-GUI you should see the optional GUI's select kde (kde4 is what you have installed) from the menu package-select all - install

that should do it

To set a log on screen

Menu-Settings-Personal settings -System administration - Convenience
uncheck auto login

note that is for 3.5 desktop 4.x may have some of those things moved around

note you will need to press admin mode button and log in root password to modify

[sirmille]

Got audio problems with Suse too, get error message saying "alsa not working going to default" or some such bs. I have to set volume to 1/2 when playing audio just to take most of the distortion away, never had any problems with Ubuntu, Windows XP or Vista. I really like Suse but this sound issue is pissing me off.

[gogalthorp]

In a console as root (ie su)

alsaconfig

let us know any errors.