XMMS

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This command is run in the standard Linux environment via the Terminal Activity. The GUI will probably not integrate comfortably with the XO Laptop's Sugar environment. Your user experience may vary considerably depending on the established environment and the other programs running on the laptop, may need re-installation after an OS Update. See the Linux software category for other commands.

XMMS is a simple media player for X based systems. It stands for X Multimedia System. It is a pretty lightweight GTK+ media player.

XMMS is pretty easy to get ging on the XO. Here is how:

Installation

Switch over to a VT console (CTRL + ALT + Mesh)

Then type

yum install xmms

It will ask if you want to download ~15 mb, hit y and <enter> and wait a few moments.

Launching

If you try to launch XMMS from the VT console it will freak-out about not being able to launch a GUI. Don't worry about it.

Jump back over to Sugar (CTRL + ALT + Home). Then launch the terminal activity. Now in the terminal activity you can launch:

[olpc@xo-03-19-79 ~]$ xmms

You can also check out the ExecCommand activity. XMMS can be started directly from it without starting a terminal. Furthermore, the ExecCommand activity can be customized to directly launch XMMS. Downloading Xmms.xo (modified ExecCommand) will launch XMMS from the activity list for you.

Using XMMS

XMMS is going to look TINY on the XO's 200dpi screen. So the first thing to do is switch to Double size (CTRL + D). Play with whatever settings with the Preferences (CTRL + P) and EQ (ALT + G) that you like.

Loading files

The playlist (ALT + E) is still pretty small, so you're gonna just have trust me for what the menu say. If you click the button that says + FILE (leftmost) you can load one or more files into the playlist.

At this point I suggest you load up some ogg files onto a thumb drive. They are easy to get to, and plenty fast.

Note that I said ogg. I suggest some audiobooks from [archive.org] for your listening pleasure. I happen to like Tryad's album Public Domain. But just get something ogg... or enable mp3 support at the bottom of the article.

Drag the player window out of the way so you can navigate the file system. ../ means go up a level in the folders. Click on that a few times until you can't go any further. It should say something like:

./
../
activities/
bin/
boot/
... and so on ...

Go into the media/ folder.

Now the media folder should have as many entries as usb drives or sd cards you have plugged in. Probably only the one usb drive that you have plugged in, Go in to that folder and find the list of songs you want to listen to. You can select multiple files by pressing CTRL or use the Add all files in directory button.

Then just click play to start listening!


Using XMMS while doing other things

Ok so now you have XMMS floating on your screen and playing music. So now how do you do something else too? Easy!

XMMS has a windowshade mode that makes it pretty darn small. (CTRL + W)

This window fits in the blank space of many activities top bar nicely. To make it even smaller you can take off the Double size mode from before. (CTRL + D)


Final notes

Restoring the Tiny Window

Once you have XMMS running small all you have to do to bring it back up would be to:

  1. Click on it to focus on it
  2. Double size it (CTRL + D)
  3. Open up the full window, un-window shade (CTRL + W)
  4. Open the playlist if you need to (ALT + E)

Adding mp3 and aac Support

If you also want mp3 and aac support, import the Livna repository package (as described on MPlayer) and type:

yum install xmms-mp3 xmms-aac


A few extras

A few other shortcuts that are handy are:

R Repeat
S Shuffle
Shift+CTRL+W to windowshade the playlist
ALT+G to open the EQ
Z Previous
X Play
C Pause
V Stop
B Next
CTRL+P Preferences

See also