Sunday 19 July 2009

How-To: Compile and Install Audacious 2.1 in Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope

Audacious is a GTK music player similar with the older XMMS (X Multimedia System) player. Ubuntu 9.04 ships with Audacious 1.5.1, which is a little old. However, you can easily install and set up the latest Audacious (currently 2.1) following the steps below:

Audacious 2.1 running in Ubuntu 9.04

1. Install the development libraries
Open GNOME-Terminal or Konsole and type:

sudo apt-get build-dep audacious

This command will fetch and install all the development libraries needed by Audacious, including the build-essential meta package which depends on compilation tools.

You will also need to install the libxml++1.0-dev package:

sudo apt-get install libxml++1.0-dev

2. Download the source tarball
Get the source tarball from the Audacious official website (direct link here), save it for example in your home directory and then uncompress it:

tar -xzf audacious-2.1.tgz

3. Compile and install Audacious
First, you can uninstall the current Audacious from repositories (if you have it installed):

sudo apt-get remove audacious
sudo apt-get autoremove

Then, issue the usual commands in the audacious-2.1 directory:

./configure
make
sudo make install

Alternately, you can specify another prefix for the installation, and install Audacious as normal user somewhere inside your home directory. For example:

./configure --prefix=/home/USER/usr
make
make install

Replace USER with your username and make sure the path /home/USER/usr is included in your $PATH environment variable.

At this point, if you run Audacious (using audacious2), the following error may appear: audacious2: unable to launch selected interface skinned

So proceed to the next step and install the plugins.

4. Installing the Audacious plugins
This should be the same as the first part of the tutorial. First, get the development libraries:

sudo apt-get build-dep audacious-plugins

Next, download the source tarball called audacious-plugins-2.1.tgz from the same location (direct link here), uncompress it with tar -xzf audacious-plugins-2.1.tgz, change the current working directory to audacious-plugins-2.1 and issue the usual:

./configure
make
sudo make install

Run audacious as audacious2 (or type Alt+F2 and enter audacious2 in the run box).

21 comments:

muggins said...

i get this error if i try to launch audacious2 in a terminal: 'unable to launch selected interface skinned' and i get this error if i try and launch it from kstreamripper: 'no output plugin selected' Sounds like it needs a little setup,

Craciun Dan said...

From the article
At this point, if you run Audacious (using audacious2), the following error may appear: audacious2: unable to launch selected interface skinned

So proceed to the next step and install the plugins.
.

muggins said...

i was sure i did step 4 the first time .... but this time i typed in everything instead of copying the code. Now, it works, thanks!

Craciun Dan said...

No problem! Well, it's actually a good idea to see what type of commands you run in a shell, since blind copy/paste can get you into trouble.

Anonymous said...

Whenever I bring someone over to the Linux side, I try to make them feel at ease and keep things familiar and one thing I get all the time is "Is there a music player that's simple like Winamp?" as opposed to the full screen programs that ape Itunes.
I cant figure out why other programs dont have at least a minimal interface option but Audacious is exactly what they want.

I will definitely give 2,1 a shot this weekend.

Anonymous said...

is there an update for SndStretch plugin that works in Audacious 2.1? enabling sndstretch crashes the app

Kiran said...

Thanks a lot...It worked

Jorge said...

Excellent tutorial, it worded perfectly for me. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

'enabling sndstretch crashes the app'
fixed in the developer tree

Anonymous said...

im getting this after getting the first part right.

configure: error: Cannot find Audacious 2.1 or later, have you installed audacious yet?

which i have.

Anonymous said...

Ok, this is how to get audacious2 installed on working on jaunty.
But what if I want to remove it in the future? Cannot use aptitude remove I guess.
Also, those 120+MB occupied by the build-dep of audacious and audacious-plugin can be remove afterwards issuing an aptitude remove command or not?

Anonymous said...

Use "sudo make uninstall" to remove audacious2.

vladimir prieto said...

i get the error

audacious2: unable to launch selected interface skinned

on ubuntu karmic for audacious 2.2 with the same steps of this post. i check it twice, and i still c the error.

any ideas?

Silent_Bob said...

I get the following error when i tri to compile the audacious-plugins2. I don't know, what's wrong. The configure script run properly, but the make command get the following error :
here is the terminal output:
kv@kv-desktop:~$ cd audacious-plugins-2.2
kv@kv-desktop:~/audacious-plugins-2.2$
config.status: creating po/Makefile

kv@kv-desktop:~/audacious-plugins-2.2$ make

Audacious_Driver.cxx: In constructor ‘ConsoleFileHandler::ConsoleFileHandler(const gchar*, VFSFile*)’:
Audacious_Driver.cxx:70: error: ‘aud_filename_split_subtune’ was not declared in this scope
Failed to compile Audacious_Driver.cxx!
make[5]: *** [Audacious_Driver.o] Error 1
make[4]: *** [all] Error 1
make[3]: *** [subdirs] Error 1
make[2]: *** [all] Error 1
make[1]: *** [subdirs] Error 1
make: *** [all] Error 1
kv@kv-desktop:~/audacious-plugins-2.2$

Khelben said...

I just installed Audacious on my system. Works good and reminds me of the old XMMS which I used for the first time 10 years ago when I ran Linux on my Amiga..

Good work with this blog!

ruben said...

installing the plugins fails with:
"Failed to compile pulse_audio.c!"
and audacious2 fails to start with the, "selected interface skinned" error.

I'm trying this with audacious 2.2, but I don't think that's the problem...

blaming pulseaudio for now..

Anonymous said...

Ruben!!
In the configure command use the following:
./configure --disable-pulse

let me know that works i It works well on my system

mort said...

Tried this and all i got was 2 Audacious's sitting in my menu that I can't mount nor get rid of. Audacious2 and Audacious GTKuid. How do I uninstall them?

Anonymous said...

sudo make uninstall
in the directory that you untar the cource

Unknown said...

fantastic post! thanks a lot :))))
greetings from sarajevo

pierre501 said...

Hi everybody I got this error when I run audacious2 in a terminal:
mowgli_dictionary is deprecated and pending removal in Mowgli 1.0 series.
Please use mowgli_patricia instead.
Erreur de segmentation

Thanks to help me with.

Pierre507