(This post is updated regularly, and should contain the most up-to-date information about these RPMs.)

Xine is a full-featured media player for Linux, that can play CDs, DVDs, VCDs, MP3s, Ogg, and more. The main site for xine is www.xine-project.org - you can find information, install instructions, and more user interfaces. These RPMs should work on White Box Enterprise Linux (WBEL), Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), and CentOS. To stay up-to-date on these releases, you can subscribe to the RSS feed for this category.

As with any standard disclaimer, no warranty is expressed or implied - these RPMs are provided as-is, and we assume no responsibility for any ill effects that may come from the downloading and installation of these files. However, feedback is welcome if you encounter problems with these RPMs.

Note: To use xine, you'll need both the library and the UI. To play commercial DVDs, you'll need libdvdcss, which is not provided here (but, knowing the name, you should be able to find it).

How the RPMs Were Built

xine-ui 0.99.9 to current / xine-lib 1.2.6 to current / gxine 0.5.908 to current
These RPMs were built on Ubuntu Trusty Tahr (kernel 3.13.0-34-generic) as deb packages and converted to RPM using alien.

xine-ui 0.99.8
These RPMs were built on Ubuntu Saucy Salamander (kernel 3.11.0-17-generic) as deb packages and converted to RPM using alien.

xine-lib 1.1.21 / xine-ui 0.99.7
These RPMs were built on Ubuntu Precise Pangolin (kernel 3.0.0-24-generic) as deb packages and converted to RPM using alien.

xine-lib 1.1.20.1
These RPMs were built on Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot (kernel 3.0.0-14-generic) as deb packages and converted to RPM using alien.

xine-lib 1.1.20
These RPMs were built on Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot (kernel 3.0.0-12-generic) as deb packages and converted to RPM using alien.

xine-lib 1.1.19 / xine-ui 0.99.6
These RPMs were built on Ubuntu Lucid Lynx (kernel 2.6.32-24-generic) as deb packages and converted to RPM using alien.

xine-lib 1.1.16.2 and xine-lib 1.1.16.3
These RPMs were built on Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (kernel 2.6.27-11-generic) as deb packages and converted to RPM using alien.

xine-lib 1.1.16.1
These RPMs were built on Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (kernel 2.6.27-9-generic) as deb packages and converted to RPM using alien.

xine-lib 1.1.13 through 1.1.15
These RPMs were built on Ubuntu Hardy Herron (kernel 2.6.24-19-generic) as deb packages and converted to RPM using alien.

xine-lib 1.1.9.1 and 1.1.10.1
These RPMs were built on Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (kernel 2.6.22-14-generic) as deb packages and converted to RPM using alien.

xine-lib 1.1.7 / xine-ui 0.99.5
These RPMs were built on Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (kernel 2.6.20-16-generic) as deb packages and converted to RPM using alien.

xine-lib 1.1.1 / xine-ui 0.99.4 and earlier
These RPMs were built on White Box Enterprise Linux 4 running kernel version 2.6.9-5.EL.

When I ran Windows as my desktop, I had a program called WebShots that I used to set my desktop wallpaper, and cycle it. They have Windows and Mac versions, but no Linux version yet. They still send me e-mails each week, showing the daily picture selections for each day in the past week. I decided to download the Windows version, and install in under wine to see if it would work. I moved websamp.exe to /home/summersd/.wine/fake_windows, then ran wine C:\\websamp.exe to install the program. wine "C:\\Program Files\\Webshots\\Launcher.exe" then started the desktop control. I used that to disable the tray icon (wine has one, but you can't see it), and I disabled almost every other “auto update” feature.

I had downloaded a “.wbz” file (which is what is imported into WebShots), and I finally figured out how to import it. Running the launcher program, and following it with the name of the .wbz file, imports it. I may figure out a way to automate that, but for now, I know how to do it.

(Note: This is the end of the “My Linux Adventure” series of posts. After this, I ended up going back to Windows XP, just because it worked and I didn't have hobbyist time. As of May 2007, I'm running Ubuntu 7.04 on one computer, and Windows Vista on my laptop, which is currently out of commission.)

I was finally able to resolve my problems with Apache and MySQL. When I decided to mount my FAT32 drive under /home/summersd, I inadvertently caused myself some problems. From talking to a Linux guy at work, I found that no processes that weren't running under my user ID could access those files. The reason is that Linux looks up the entire directory tree, back to /, to determine if you can access the file. So, although I had -rwxrwxrwx summersd summersd on every file, /home/summersd was drwx------ summersd summersd, and /home was drwxr-xr-x. The permissions on /home/summersd were keeping Apache from seeing /home/summersd/drive_d/wwwroot, and MySQL from seeing or writing to /home/summersd/drive_d/mysql/data. I moved the drive to /mnt/drive_d, with the mount point being owned by “root”, still mounting the drive with my user name, and everything worked.

In the process of reconfiguring Thunderbird, I believe I may have found out how to share the address book across operating systems. The file ~/.thunderbird/default.[something]/prefs.js has a listing of all the preferences and settings. I modified this file to change the location of my mail files, and there is a setting there for an address book (which isn't shown in the configuration dialog - after all, it is 0.7.3…) I'll play with that later - right now I'm just elated to have Apache and MySQL working again.

foobar2000 is about the best, most organized audio player I've found. However, it is a Windows application, and according to what I've read, very reliant on Microsoft C++ extensions. I decided to give it a shot under wine, and it works great! There is a repaint problem - sometimes the playlist doesn't refresh as it should. But, it's pretty much a start-and-minimize sort of application, so that's acceptable.

We're speedily working towards a Friday deadline at work, so tonight I had some analysis work to do on some COBOL code. Great, I thought, I can use my VSlick setup under wine. I moved my computer from the living room back to our now-empty bedroom (soon to be nursery), and booted it up. Kernel panics galore - never got past the network stuff. When I booted to Windows, I found that the wireless network didn't reach that far, and I'm guessing that the ndiswrapper folks haven't tried their driver a lot with a wireless card, but no wireless network. Once I get past that, I may grab the dumps from these kernel panics and see if the developers need them to see what went wrong. So, for tonight, I had to use WXP (in which I actually had to disable the wireless connection - seems Windows doesn't handle a barely-there wireless connection much better than Linux).

The diagnostics I ran last night never found anything - they ran for about 10 hours. I suppose I'll just have to wait until I have problems again, then run it right then. Another person from the WBEL users list suggested I check the way I have my hard drives set up; he thinks that a 2GB drive slaved to a 20GB drive may be causing conflicts, which would cause freezes or panics.

At work, we use an editor called Visual SlickEdit (VSlick). It's got a lot of features, and supports color-coding for many different languages. I decided that I'd give wine another shot, as we only have the Windows version of this program. I installed wine and winesetuptk, used winesetuptk to configure the installation, then ran the installation program. Everything installed, and the program ran up to a point, when it started complaining about a missing DLL. I booted to WXP, found the DLL, copied it to the FAT32 drive, rebooted to Linux, and copied the DLL into the “fake windows” system directory. Soon, it was working great! I can't believe it - success with wine!

I also have made little headway towards getting Apache and MySQL to working. I changed the process that Apache uses to run as “summersd”, and I was able to see pages (although any pages that relied on a database didn't work). I still haven't figured this one out yet…

I'm still getting kernel panics from time to time, and it seems to be whenever I access networking. A suggestion from one of the folks on the WBEL users list was to download the Ultimate Boot CD, filled with diagnostic programs. I downloaded it, burned it, and ran some memory checks. Those checked out, so I'm going to run a “CPU Burn-In” program to see if it can detect errors from the CPU. It runs for up to 7 days, but I think I'll just run it overnight - folding@home didn't take nearly that long to crash it before.