I know! I haven’t written anything here in ages, and what I have, has been incredibly short, or just silly. This isn’t horribly easy, but at least I’ve made it easy for you.. and compared to doing some things in Linux, it is actually quite easy.
Entering the 20th century (in the 21st, natch), I’ve finally got XM. XM has the ability to listen to it online, but it streams as Windows Media (WMV) which is a closed format by Microsoft. You can listen to it on MacOS X with Flip4Mac, but there’s no truely native ability to listen to it in Linux due to the licensing restrictions.
If in KDE or GNUME, press Alt-F2. KDE Users, type “kdesu yast” (without the quotes), then press enter. GNOME users, type “gnomesu yast” instead.
If you’re at the terminal, you’ll already know how to adapt these instructions to do at the command line.
Depending on your configuration, it will ask for your, or the root password. Enter the appropriate one, then in YaST, select “Software” -> “Software Repositories”. If you have the Packman Repository, enable it, then skip past the next paragraph.
If you do not have one, don’t worry! Select “Add a new Repository”, Name it “Packman Repository”, “Edit Parts of the URL”, Protocol is “HTTP”, host: “packman.unixheads.com” (Please check for a local mirror), directory on server: “/pub/packman/suse/11.0/” (or 11.1), Authentication type is Anonymous.
Finally, Save and choose “Refresh now”. Open the “Software Manager” from the YaST window, and Search for “totem”. Select “totem”, and “totem-xine-plugin”. Press “Accept”, and let it install. When it finally completes, choose “Install more Packages” (Yes)
Search for, and install “w32codec-all”.
I like to also install “mplayerplug-in”, since it provides support in places that totem still has issues.
(Optionally) Select “kaffeine”, and let it install. (This is a much more robust player than the totem plugin alone).
If you want to use Kaffeine, there are a few more steps:
Start Kaffeine, “Settings” -> “xine Engine Parameters”.
Choose the “Decoder Settings”, and set both paths to “/usr/lib/win32”.
Save and exit Kaffeine.
Close any running Firefox browser.
Open Your browser, and setup your Netscape Plugins/Programs as required. I’ve provided information on how to do so for Firefox 3.x and Konqueror 3.x. I don’t use Opera, and no longer use Firefox 2.x, so I can not assist you with those.
For Firefox 3.x, choose “Edit” -> “Preferences”. Choose “Applications”, then scroll down to “Windows Media”. Choose “Use Windows Media Player Plugin”.
For Konqueror 3.x, open Konq, choose “Settings”, “Configure Konqueror”, then “Plugins” in the menu on the left side. Select “Scan for New Plugins”. Press the “Discard” button, then click the “Plugins” tab. If you see “libtotem-gmp-plugin.so”, you’re set. Click “OK”. When you load the first time, it will usually default to MPlayerplug-in, with the MPlayer library. Press the first left ‘Down Arrow’, and choose ‘xine’, rather than mplayer. Press the Play button. Viola!
Finally, go to xmradio.com. and login. The totem plugin will be loaded when you choose your channel. Give it about 10 seconds to buffer on a standard DSL/Cable line. There you go – XM in Linux!