Author Topic: MusicBee for Linux (ubuntu)  (Read 115374 times)

Zak

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Besides, only a truly thick person would contact the developer of a Windows app to complain that it didn't work on Linux.
*makes popcorn*
Bee excellent to each other...

Steven

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i dont have a problem with this and agree with raffraffraff
but if anyone did ask for help i would simply say i cant help them

raffraffraff

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i dont have a problem with this and agree with raffraffraff
but if anyone did ask for help i would simply say i cant help them

Too late, I've changed my mind now. ...kidding, I'll see if I can put something together for winetricks first, and failing that, wiki.

raffraffraff

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OK, something for the Ubuntu people at least. The usual disclaimers apply "Never run something you downloaded from the internet without checking it"... yadda yadda.

#   wget http://www.theraff.net/musicbee-on-linux/musicbee_installer.sh -O $HOME/musicbee_installer.sh
#   chmod 755 $HOME/musicbee_installer.sh
#   $HOME/musicbee_installer.sh

Quick summary of what it does:
1. Adds the wine PPA so you can get the latest version
2. Installs: wine, winetricks, icoutils, p7zip, unzip
3. Downloads my musicbee.verb and installs it using winetricks.
4. Extracts the .ico from MusicBee.exe, converts it to .png
5. Creates a MusicBee launcher script and shortcut

If I get this working happily on a few different linux distributions without any serious hacking, I'll add a wiki item. I've spoken to the winetricks dev and he's cool with the idea of integrating my musicbee.verb and a function to extract icons and build desktop shortcuts.

This post is just FYI. I'm not going to edit or update, so if anything changes, it'll change here: http://www.theraff.net/musicbee-on-linux

EDIT: Making myself into a liar here: I've moved most of the functionality from the script to the musicbee.verb so that it can be more easily incorporated into Winetricks. Also added the latest 2.2 beta and IE is installed automatically.  Bugger-all testing done though.
Last Edit: October 07, 2013, 07:50:35 PM by raffraffraff

beeing good

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Thanks for the effort and info raffraffraff. I'm currently thinking of moving completely over to some form of linux so I was very excited to read your posts about using MB on it. Going to have to look in to it a bit more yet but great to hear it is possible, I can't imagine not using MB.

domieatworld

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an ubuntu version would be fantastic. musicbee is the only reason why I stay with windows....

WiR3D

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FYI instructions don't work with current musicbee.

I keep getting either dotnet or gdi related errors.

Having official wine support at least would be awesum, especially since I have just switched over to linux, and for the life of me can't get musicbee working.

But I'm not going to expect anything, we know Steve Mayall is very busy, and this is quite a detour.

Although Steve should probably consider it, since with Steam OS coming and Valve making a big Linux push, more and more users will go that way, also the music players on linux blow, seriously, none of them are half a ball hair good at organising.

peace.

theEndBeta

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Please, Steven!

We need a player/manager at the level of MusicBee on Linux. The only reason I use Windows anymore is (1) music management (e.g. MusicBee) and (2) gaming - and (2) is quickly becoming less necessary. And just to put this out there, but I would gladly pay for MusicBee if I knew that there was a Linux version coming (I would even be okay with having to purchase a Linux license). I doubt that I am alone in this; I would bet that you could get enough funding (if that was an option) if you decided to run a Kickstarter (or something similar).

WiR3D

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Begging is a bit underhanded, he has already replied on the issue a while ago.

Here's the issue from a programmers perspective.
MusicBee is based heavily on .NET
.NET is Microsoft and windows.

That leaves 3 options for Linux:
1) use Mono (open source Linux C#) but its far from perfect. as in galaxies away.
2) use Wine, which is an option,
        but sound quality becomes questionable, unless you use wineasio and jack.
        then its all the wine hacks he will have to put in, and there will be many, and many odd ass bugs. which is not fun for a dev.
3) Rewrite it using QT, which is laughable. If it took him this long to get MusicBee this good on .NET, because it would be a full rewrite and in C++ not C# and the differences are vast.

there are so many more issues, thankfully though the BASS library does support linux. 

psychoadept

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I linked your post from the wiki, that's a great analysis.  Probably won't stop others from coming along and asking the same thing, but at least we can point them to it.
MusicBee Wiki
Use & improve MusicBee's documentation!

Latest beta patch (3.5)
(Unzip and overwrite existing program files)

megalithic

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Just to say that I have MusicBee working on Linux following raffraffraff's example with the current MusicBee 2.4 in OpenSuse 13.1 and Lubuntu 14.2.

Install 'PlayOnLinux' from the standard distro packages, this is a nice graphical interface that also installs Wine - do 'Install a Program' - 'Install a non listed program'. Where it asks 'Install some Libraries' choose that and choose dotnet40, mfc42, xmllite,  gdiplus, wmp10, windowscodecs . Then go on and install from the standard Windows installer. Untick 'Run after Install'.

I found I didn't need vcrun2008 or d3dx9. The only thing I've found that doesn't work is the other skins - I just stick to the MusicBee default.
Very happy...

MusicBee works in Linux, it's just not particularly intuitive to set up. Here's a very brief explanation of how I did it:
- Install wine and winetricks
- Run winecfg to create a default .wine folder and change the Windows version to XP.
- Use winetricks to install the requirements (not sure if all are required: dotnet40, mfc42, xmllite, d3dx9, gdiplus, vcrun2008, wmp10, windowscodecs)
- Download the portable version of MusicBee + all extras (like bass_aac.dll)
- Extract to the wine C:\ drive
- Create a shortcut that executes: wine "C:\\MusicBee\\MusicBee.exe"

What can I say, except that it works? To make it look pretty, choose a suitable font - things can look a bit weird otherwise.  I have Linux and Windows computers in my house and they all use the same version of portable MusicBee. The MB library is shared between them on a NAS, along with the music files. Furthermore, my NAS monitors the location that "Export as external playlist" uses. If it finds a new file, it runs a BASH script that parses the playlist, creates a folder structure and makes hard links to music files. (Hard links take up no additional space, are created in seconds and can be safely deleted). My Android phone does a scheduled rsync when it's connected to the home wifi. So in case you didn't catch that, to get music onto my phone:  right-click the playlist and "export as an external playlist". Ass-kickery, without the cables.
Last Edit: November 02, 2014, 01:31:37 PM by megalithic

gnite

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Not demanding, just curious - with Microsoft announcing that .NET, or at least part of it, is going open source and cross platform, is there any reason to hope for a proper linux port sometime in the future?

Steven

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no i dont think its something i would do - there are still a lot of windows dependencies and i have no familarity with linux systems at all.


listener

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I registered today so I could thank you for this thread! I have a new installation of Mint 17.1.   I use musicbee on windows to download and move my podcasts to my sansa clip.  I followed the instructions above and also installed the libraries recommended by Megalithic upthread.  The functionality I use, subscribing to podcasts and  downloading them works well.  The "send to" command (available when right-click on an episode) isn't working, but I can move the files easily in Nemo. 
THANK YOU all very much, and if anyone could suggest how to get "send to device" working, that would be cool!