Not Much of a Rant but a Rant about broken Software.

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gregoryshock
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Not Much of a Rant but a Rant about broken Software.

Post by gregoryshock »

It all started out 2 Sundays ago. My dad wanted me to make him a Video DVD of some AVI files from a nature cam. I first started with a program called DeVeDe. In sort it failed me. Then I moved to other DVD authoring programs and got totally lost. Not one would work for me. They either failed or they wouldn't do all the files I needed to be changed into a Video DVD. Some people on this forum has tried to help me, but my problems don't end there. My favorite DVD burner program XFburn began giving me problems as well. The gstreamer complains when I try to add mp3 files to create a CD. It seems that some program or update my system got changed something. I spent the whole second half of a day just installing and re installing linux mint 18.3 xfce to try and figure out just which package is being changed, and by what program. I've never ran into an issue so extreme before. Especially on Linux Mint! I try to watch what packages are being installed in case something is getting replaced that shouldn't be. But I didn't see it. It's like looking for needle in a haystack. I can work around the xfburn problem by simply converting mp3s into wav files. But this has got me to thinking maybe linux isn't very good. I mean it's been good to me for around 3 years. But at any time something can come down and just change something without me knowing about it! What makes matters worse is sometimes I got to use PPAs which introduces more issues.

I have health issues too. High blood pressure runs in the family, and I take meds for it. Just out of curiosity I've been using a electronic blood pressure cuff to see what my readings are, after I work on a computer problem. In short it is raising my blood pressure because I'm frustrated and angry at linux. I'm also frustrated and angry at microsoft. It's weeks like this that make me wish I didn't need a computer.

Here is a list of programs I always add to a linux mint and linux lite system. Probably someone in that list is causing the issue. But I installed all the updates, then painstakingly installed each, one at a time, and then tested Xfburn and every time it worked. But xfburn had a trick up it's sleeve. It worked on the Mp3s that I was tasting it on, but as soon as I tried one from a different directory I got the error message. "Gstreamer did not like this file (detection timed out)"

Code: Select all

audacity
Bombono DVD
Brasero
brotherpinter driver
chromium
DeVeDe
gedit
gparted
Htop
K3B
kid3
mat
media info
mpv
psensor
puddletag
redshift
shotwell
winff
grub-customizer
kdnlive  https://kdenlive.org/
 Version 17.04.3
simplescreen recorder
waterfox
PIP and Youtube-dl


I wrote a thread on the xfceforums. I'm asking them what gstreamer files xfburn 0.5.4 needs.
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Not Much of a Rant but a Rant about broken Software.

Post by Flemur »

gregoryshock wrote: Wed Jun 13, 2018 6:41 am But this has got me to thinking maybe linux isn't very good.
Well, you're right that Linux media apps - audio and video - aren't very good. In fact they pretty much suck (quirky, buggy, bad documentation), although some of them kinda work sometimes, if you're into user-hostile GUIs and crashes.

An audio editor is a useful part of any modern OS - let's check out the Linux version!

Open a wav file in "audacity", then Exit: "Save changes before closing?" It's too stupid to know you didn't make any changes.

But that's not all! Hit "Yes" to save changes - you get a nifty error message! (they VERY stupidly made the error message text un-copyable):
audacity.jpg
Then audacity wants to save an "aup" file...PLUS a new directory with three levels containing TWO .au files! If you drag/drop the AUP file into audacity, you get another "I can't do it!" error:
audacity2.jpg
If you hit "Help" it tells about opening "unprotected" files from other devices, nothing about AUP. W T F ?
(Edit: and THAT error window GUI is stuck - "Close" and "X in the corner" don't do anything)

If you save the (unchanged wav file it thinks is changed) as a .wav file, audacity wants to put the wrong extension on the wav file (aiff), then warns you that the extension it suggested is wrong. What a joke. That's the behavior of software that was written last weekend.

Audition running under wine isn't stupid.

Recently I was trying to get a semi-automatic mp3 tagger - after an hour or so of messing with linux unicorn-ware (names of the programs have been psychologically repressed to protect the guilty) which basically amounted to "Huh? *DO* something, dammit!" I installed windows' "Mp3Tag" in wine and it worked perfectly and intuitively right off the bat.

If it weren't for "wine" I'd be using windows.
Please edit your original post title to include [SOLVED] if/when it is solved!
Your data and OS are backed up....right?
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Re: Not Much of a Rant but a Rant about broken Software.

Post by Hoser Rob »

Well, I've never had anywhere near these sorts of problems with Linux media programs. Personally I think you're messing up your system in some way. Where did you get that offending gstreamer codec? SOmetimes people think you can do any ubuntu solution in Mint and install ubuntu-restricted-extras whereas the correct package in Mint is mint-meta-codecs.
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Re: Not Much of a Rant but a Rant about broken Software.

Post by Flemur »

Hoser Rob wrote: Wed Jun 13, 2018 10:16 amWell, I've never had anywhere near these sorts of problems with Linux media programs.
OP's version of xfburn won't convert (some valid) mp3 files to make a standard audio CD; it gives an error message.

It's a documented bug in xfburn, not anything he did.

And, speaking of bugs, even the error message is a bug: "Gstreamer did not like this file (detection timed out)"

It's not a gstreamer problem, it's an xfburn problem: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1408329
Please edit your original post title to include [SOLVED] if/when it is solved!
Your data and OS are backed up....right?
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Re: Not Much of a Rant but a Rant about broken Software.

Post by gregoryshock »

I think that there might be a chance that I can get xfburn 0.5.5 working. We were able to fool linux mint 18.3 into running it, and in all my tests it worked better than 0.5.4 was I think. If I can just fool lInux lite into allowing me to run 0.5.5. I think I will try it for a while and see what happens!

I want to make you guys aware of a quirk of mine. I have a learning disability and it makes my life a little harder. It makes me get frustrated easily. I often say I'm going to quit and then for some reason my frustration doesn't go away, so I can't stop thinking about the problem until I either solve it or almost kill myself trying to solve it.

I have low self esteem and I don't feel like I have the right to give any of you advice. But please allow me to give you my experience. puddletag and kid3 seem to be really good mp3 tag programs. kid 3 in my opinion out does mp3tag, that is as long as your only doing ID3 tagging. If you haven't you tied those two, then give them a try. I could maybe help you if you needed it with those two programs, since I use them a lot.
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Re: Not Much of a Rant but a Rant about broken Software.

Post by gregoryshock »

Update

When I try to copy xfburn file to /usr/bin Then I try to click on it from the menu it says "Failed to execute child process "xfburn" (Permission denied)" I don't understand why I'm getting the error message. The hack worked on linux mint before, but didn't work on linux lite. Now it won't work on either one. But I can run xfburn from downloads by ./xfburn on both oses. I tried to make it executable and I tried to change the owner to root and the group to root. Linux lite would let me do both of those things, but linux mint won't let me do either one. Even with the command line running in root!
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Re: Not Much of a Rant but a Rant about broken Software.

Post by phd21 »

Hi gregoryshock,
gregoryshock wrote:It all started out 2 Sundays ago. My dad wanted me to make him a Video DVD of some AVI files from a nature cam. I first started with a program called DeVeDe. In sort it failed me. Then I moved to other DVD authoring programs and got totally lost. Not one would work for me. They either failed or they wouldn't do all the files I needed to be changed into a Video DVD. Some people on this forum has tried to help me, but my problems don't end there.
You are already being helped in your other post regarding DVD Authoring software. The "Avi" video format is an older video format, and requires that you install the video codecs for that which was explained in your other post. Depending upon what types of video files, of which there are a fair amount of video types and variations of those, that you want to process could also require adding more video and audio codec support packages. In Linux you have to install those one time. It is entirely possible in MS Windows or Mac as well depending upon the application, that you would have to install various video and audio codec packages. MS Windows and Mac are paid for operating systems as are most of the software applications whereas Linux and most of its software are free, so there are licensing issues, but most of the video and audio support packages are available, you just have to install them. Because I enjoy video and audio editing, I try to install all of these that I can find when I first install Linux Mint so that they are available for various applications that might want to use them. Although installing the 3rd party software (the "mint-meta-codecs") as part of your Linux Mint installation covers a lot of these video and audio packages, I have found that installing "ubuntu-restricted-extras" and some other packages help with certain multimedia applications.
gregoryshock wrote:My favorite DVD burner program XFburn began giving me problems as well. The gstreamer complains when I try to add mp3 files to create a CD. It seems that some program or update my system got changed something. I spent the whole second half of a day just installing and re installing linux mint 18.3 xfce to try and figure out just which package is being changed, and by what program. I've never ran into an issue so extreme before. Especially on Linux Mint! I try to watch what packages are being installed in case something is getting replaced that shouldn't be. But I didn't see it. It's like looking for needle in a haystack. I can work around the xfburn problem by simply converting mp3s into wav files. But this has got me to thinking maybe linux isn't very good. I mean it's been good to me for around 3 years. But at any time something can come down and just change something without me knowing about it! What makes matters worse is sometimes I got to use PPAs which introduces more issues.
You just stated, "I mean it's (Linux Mint) been good to me for around 3 years." All operating systems can have updates or upgrades, as well as various software applications updates and upgrades, that can cause issues. These are uncommon in Linux Mint. You also have this wonderful free support forum to ask questions from very knowledgeable people even though you may have to wait a little time for good replies. Have you ever tried to get free support on MS Windows or Mac, unless you pay for support it is a challenge to say the least? Some PPA 's are perfectly okay to use and do provide the only method of getting newer updated software for some applications.
gregoryshock wrote:But xfburn had a trick up it's sleeve. It worked on the Mp3s that I was tasting it on, but as soon as I tried one from a different directory I got the error message. "Gstreamer did not like this file (detection timed out)"
Not all files are created equal. With all the various applications for video and audio in all the operating systems and various browser download extensions and add-ons, It is entirely possible that various video and audio files have different underlying structures, even some corruption, some are not even the file type they claim to be, in other words they are not really an mp3 audio file or avi video file, but actually something else, etc... Some applications and or devices may not like certain super high quality formats either, like mp3 at 320kbps, or HD video. FYI: There are applications in the "Synaptic Package Manager (SPM)" to check and or repair various multimedia files like mp3 files. Sometimes the filenames contain special characters (quotes, brackets, parenthesis, number signs (hash tag), etc... ) that need to be removed before using them in some applications. Also, sometimes depending upon your system's setup, you may have to move the files from an external drive or a separate (MS Windows) partition to your current Linux Mint partition because of Linux "permissions" issues; you can always right-click files to check properties, permission tab, to make sure the files allow your current user access to them.

Just last night while spending many hours testing the excellent Bombono DVD Authoring (DVD creator) application for you and others, I added some "webm" video files and one of which was apparently corrupted and or used a non-standard audio codec when it was recorded (created), so Bombono errored out (stopped processing) after 45 minutes which I tried a few times with a message unsupported audio codec although it let me add it to the project and I tested them first and they all played on my system using other multimedia software? I ran "curlew" a multimedia converter to convert them from webm to mp4 to see if that would help, and sure enough one of the webm videos used an unusual "aac" audio codec variation which the program could not handle, so I went into the "Synaptic Package Manager (SPM)", searched for "aac" installed some of those packages (faac and aac-enc) and told Curlew to use just aac and it converted them to mp4 and the Bombono application finished creating the DVD project. FYI: Bombono was able to process webm files, except for that one video file.

As for "xfburn" DVD/CD application, I rarely ever use it unless I am helping others in this forum because "K3b" is so much better with many more features. You probably needed to install some "dependency" software to get the xfburn version from the Software Manager or Synaptic Package Manager (SPM) to work for you, sometimes using the "Synaptic Package Manager (SPM)" you can right-click a software package and install the recommended and suggested packages to do that, other times may require more help. But, once you have that application working the way you want, it should work well from then on.

After doing some research on "xfburn" there is a slightly newer version available. I was able to compile from their source code archive v0.5.5 and install it, but compiling software is not for novices (inexperienced newbies). It sounds like you found an already compiled newer version of "xfburn" that you downloaded because you said you can run it from your downloads folder; this may be a self-contained archive file that can run fine from their folder which has all the supporting dependency packages where you can create a new desktop shortcut to that xfburn executable program to use that one over the installed version from the Software Manager or Synaptic Package Manager (SPM).

Xfburn-0.5.5
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/vi ... fburn.html

FYI: How To Install Nero Linux (nero Burning Rom) In Ubuntu 16.04
- Not sure if this is free software or not?
http://www.elinuxbook.com/install-nero- ... ntu-16-04/

Hope this helps ...
Last edited by phd21 on Wed Jun 13, 2018 3:02 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Not Much of a Rant but a Rant about broken Software.

Post by jimallyn »

Installing K3b is one of the first things I do when I do a new Linux install. And I have used it to burn mp3 files to CDs MANY times.
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Re: Not Much of a Rant but a Rant about broken Software.

Post by gregoryshock »

phd21 wrote: Wed Jun 13, 2018 2:07 pmAfter doing some research on "xfburn" there is a slightly newer version available. I was able to compile from their source code archive v0.5.5 and install it, but compiling software is not for novices (inexperienced newbies). It sounds like you found an already compiled newer version of "xfburn" that you downloaded because you said you can run it from your downloads folder; this may be a self-contained archive file that can run fine from their folder which has all the supporting dependency packages where you can create a new desktop shortcut to that xfburn executable program to use that one over the installed version from the Software Manager or Synaptic Package Manager (SPM).
Thank you for the thoughtful message. I need to print your DVD Video instructions.

Every time I look at compelling software my head hurts. I don't think doing that is for me because in the past I've watched videos on youtube on how to do stuff like that, and I yet I never learn anything from them.

I can't decide what I want to do about my Xfburn problem. A part of me thinks it would best if I just give up and try a different program. Another part of me wonders if I could some how link into the newer version I downloaded in a deb package. Every time I could get Xfburn 0.5.5 to run, it seemed to solve the problem. But getting it to run has been inconsistent.
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Re: Not Much of a Rant but a Rant about broken Software.

Post by phd21 »

Hi gregoryshock

You are welcome...

You can keep messing around with "xfburn", or just install "K3b" and use that, or maybe even "Nero" which I just installed in Xfce. I have installed Nero before and it works too has two options (Nero Linux and a simplified one called Nero Express).

Although anyone with a working DVD writer burner and DVD discs can just simply create a "Data" DVD and copy the multimedia files (pictures, videos, audio and music files, etc...) to a DVD disc which can be read (played) by most home and Business DVD players and of course computer DVD players, it is much nicer to create a personalized DVD with menus and simplified navigation options (DVD menu buttons). It is also a good idea to have rewriteable DVD discs (DVD+-rw) and rewriteable CD discs (CD-rw) for practicing with DVD/CD applications.

I will create a new video tutorial for Bombono soon which I would recommend that you watch to see how easy it is to use. It's interface is a little different than typical DVD authoring applications like DeVeDe, but very easy to use once you know how.

Hope this helps ...
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Nero_Express_Linux_DVD-1.jpg
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Nero_Linux_AudioMusicCD-1.jpg
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Nero_Linux_DVD-Video-1.jpg
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Re: Not Much of a Rant but a Rant about broken Software.

Post by MurphCID »

*sigh* why can Apple not port iTunes to Linux? It and photoshop are the only two programs keeping me on Windows.
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Re: Not Much of a Rant but a Rant about broken Software.

Post by Moem »

MurphCID wrote: Sat Oct 27, 2018 1:54 pm *sigh* why can Apple not port iTunes to Linux?
They can. They probably don't want to. There is nothing to be gained there.
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Re: Not Much of a Rant but a Rant about broken Software.

Post by MurphCID »

Moem wrote: Sat Oct 27, 2018 1:56 pm
MurphCID wrote: Sat Oct 27, 2018 1:54 pm *sigh* why can Apple not port iTunes to Linux?
They can. They probably don't want to. There is nothing to be gained there.
I know, but if they did, I could FINALLY leave Windows for good.
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Re: Not Much of a Rant but a Rant about broken Software.

Post by Moem »

You can. You just don't want to. :wink:

iTunes is a want, not a need; I understand wants, I have them too. (I'm lucky because my most important wants run on Wine.) Wants matter. But they're not needs.
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Re: Not Much of a Rant but a Rant about broken Software.

Post by MurphCID »

Moem wrote: Mon Oct 29, 2018 7:14 am You can. You just don't want to. :wink:

iTunes is a want, not a need; I understand wants, I have them too. (I'm lucky because my most important wants run on Wine.) Wants matter. But they're not needs.
True that. iTunes just works so well for my music, movies, and TV shows I have downloaded.
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Re: Not Much of a Rant but a Rant about broken Software.

Post by Moem »

Fair enough. We like what we like!
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Re: Not Much of a Rant but a Rant about broken Software.

Post by lsemmens »

Strangely enough, I found iTunes was the REASON I did not replace the last bit of fruit that I owned. It invades your entire ecosystem, like a noxious weed. There are alternatives out there that do run in Linux, but, I have not needed to explore those since I installed Linux.
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Re: Not Much of a Rant but a Rant about broken Software.

Post by Hoser Rob »

MurphCID wrote: Sat Oct 27, 2018 1:54 pm *sigh* why can Apple not port iTunes to Linux? It and photoshop are the only two programs keeping me on Windows.
Of course they could, they just have zero interest in supporting Linux. Ditto for Photoshop, and anyone who tells you that Gimp is a real substitute for PS doesn't know much about pro graphics work. I've never felt that using Linux meant you have to abandon WIndows.
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Re: Not Much of a Rant but a Rant about broken Software.

Post by rambo919 »

Flemur wrote: Wed Jun 13, 2018 9:42 am Well, you're right that Linux media apps - audio and video - aren't very good. In fact they pretty much suck (quirky, buggy, bad documentation), although some of them kinda work sometimes, if you're into user-hostile GUIs and crashes.

An audio editor is a useful part of any modern OS - let's check out the Linux version!

[snip/]
You are wrong on a few counts there, the most glaring being that the aup file it wants to save is actually the work file. Mostly media editors do not directly edit the files the way a text editor does which means that yes you have to export it. Gimp is the same. It's really quite logical.

The aiff bug specifically though is a OLD and well known one specifically affecting debian compiled bases, no one knows why they mis-compiled it that way or why it STILL is not fixed, maybe it's different in the 18 base I have not checked yet. It's an annoyance but easily fixable by just removing the extension before export.
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