November 29, 2007
Ubuntu, xmms and key bindings
I’ve been using Ubuntu on my home, work and laptop boxes for months now. At work I listen to music almost all the time and find xmms to be my player of choice. I hate all the players that want to be my music manager, etc. - I just want a decent mp3 player and xmms fits the bill. The problem is that xmms is not a Gnome app, which is was Ubuntu has all the standard key bindings for. But I have found a solution that works quite well… and doesn’t require a bunch of custom configs and hacking files all over, etc.
In the Preferred Applications settings applet in System -> Preferences, in the Multimedia tab, I set the “Multimedia Player” setting to “Custom” and then use “xmms -t” as the Command - don’t check “Run in terminal”. Then in the Keyboard Shortcuts applet, I set “Media player” to use the Pause/Break key.
Now when if xmms not running, it’s launched and if it is running, play/pause is toggled.
That’s all I needed! Now I’m a happy camper!
Maybe I should look into xmms2, but haven’t bothered yet.
Why does this excite you so much?
‘cuz I’m a geek!
Pat,
You can make XMMS perform as you wish by doing the following:
1. Run gconf-editor from a terminal (as your standard non-priv users)
2. Edit the following keys:
/apps/metacity/global_keybindings/run_command_1 (through 10)
3. Place the key combo(s) you would like in each one… Say N (for next song)
4. Edit the corresponding value in /apps/metacity/keybinding_commands/command_1 (through 10) to be something like ‘/usr/bin/xmms -f’ to move forward in the playlist.
You may also want to look at the -e command, to make sure the playlist isn’t cleared on first launch.
The alternative is to switch to a real desktop environment such as KDE, or use Amarok, the only real audio player - lol
-Feige
BTW. Please tell Jen “Happy Birthday” as it appears we share the same b-day. Albeit, I’m slightly older.
-Feige
Thanks for the info, Jeff. I’ll play with Amarok - it’s got more than I really need - I just want a player, but I did notice the “mini” player that works pretty well.