MP3 on openSUSE – 5 Minute Fix

Unlike its commercial cousin SUSE, openSUSE doesn’t come with proprietary and/or patent encumbered software due to legal restrictions.

This happens to be a bit of a nuisance, as most of us like to play DVDs and MP3s on our computers without having to bugger about too much getting it going.

This is a < 5 minute fix to get MP3 working on gnome on openSUSE 10.2.

First of all, head on over to the MP3 page on Fluendo.com – follow the instructions there to download the Fluendo MP3 decoder. Don’t be worried about the ’shopping cart’ etc – the MP3 decoder is free…

Extract the fluendo-mp3-1.i386.tar.bz2 file.

As root, copy the libstflump3dec.so file to the gstreamer plugin directory by entering the following command:

’sudo cp libgstflump3dec.so /opt/gnome/lib/gstreamer-0.10′

Open up Banshee and enjoy – you are now ready for MP3…

Posted by Chris

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 9th, 2007 at 10:01 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

39 Responses to “MP3 on openSUSE – 5 Minute Fix”

  1. joop Says:

    Very usefull; thanks!!!

  2. chris Says:

    Glad to help mate ;-)

  3. doggie Says:

    Sry, I’m too stupid to download the MP3-Plugin and get the necessary file. Can anyone help?

  4. ratclma Says:

    Apologies if I missed something, downloaded the file, extracted archive and copied to the gstreamer folder but no change. Did I miss a step?

  5. Keith Says:

    Thanks Chris for pointing us in the right direction. For people having trouble doing this, read here:

    You need to get root permissions to do this. If you have trouble copying the file try this (this is how I did it with Gnome, but it’s probably similar with others):

    1. Save the ‘fluendo-mp3-1.i386.tar.bz2′ file to the desktop.

    2. Hide all windows to see the desktop.

    3. Right click on the desktop icon for ‘fluendo-mp3-1.i386.tar.bz2′ and click on ‘Extract Here’

    4. A ‘fluendo-mp3-1.i386.tar.bz2_FILES’ folder icon should appear on your desktop. Double click on it to view its contents

    5. Right click on the icon for the ‘fluendo-mp3-i386′ folder. Click on ‘Open In Terminal.’

    (NOTE: Any time I tell you to type something I will put single quotes around what you need to type. You just type whatever is inside the single quotes, without typing the single quotes. After typing each command, press the enter key.)

    6. At the terminal prompt, type ’su’ (for super user) and enter your root password (I hope you can remember it!) You need root permissions to do this right.

    7. Now like Chris said, type ’sudo cp libgstflump3dec.so /opt/gnome/lib/gstreamer-0.10′

    8. At the terminal prompt, type ‘cd /opt/gnome/lib/gstreamer-0.10′

    9. Type ‘ls’. A list of files will appear. Make sure
    ‘libgstflump3dec.so’ is in that list. If it is missing from the list, then start over at step 1 and make sure you do it right this time!

  6. chris Says:

    That’s really comprehensive Keith. I’m sure new users will find your instructions really easy to follow. Thanks for taking the time to do that ;-)

  7. Jesse Says:

    Perfect….I have been beating myself over this for days now and this works! Thanks!

  8. Dann Says:

    works these with KDE?

  9. ubai Says:

    hai, i use opensuse 10.2 and i done as what you write, but it is still not work for me, when i click paly on my banshee then the banshee dissapear form may desktop. any suggestion on this problem?

  10. Akcium Says:

    I have the same problem lile ubai.
    Also I use don’t Gnome UI. I use KDE. In this system very popular XINE Engine. And I think I need to integrate this .so file their. But I can’t make it by my self. Can someone help me. I want to use Amarok audio player for play mp3.
    Thanks,
    Iliya

  11. ubai Says:

    finally..try to use helix bansee, this work for me :)

  12. albert Says:

    Hi I just installed it as you said but its not working.whenever I wanna open mp3 file it just close the banshee window.Please give me some suggestion.

  13. D Martin Says:

    Oh great… So if i used GNOME, and ditched KDE, I can make this work. Too bad neither this forum or novell has a solution for KDE.

    WAIT! I got one! Reformat, install the new slackware, that has the codec.

    never again novell… you burnt a fan, I’m done with your bullsh*t operating system. Stop screwing the end user because you’re too f*ckin lazy to make a real fix.

  14. Peter Cooper Says:

    Reply to D Martin comment:

    1. The lazy one is you.

    2. I have been using KDE since ver 2 and I have not had any problems with MP3 playback.

    3. Solution, install xine-amarok engine, works perfectly.

    4. I quite happily play all types of DVD’s, CD’s on my system including DRM encoded ones.

    5. Stop bitching and blaming Novell/OpenSuSe for perceived problems. Go blame the proprietary owners of the codecs and tell them to release GPL versions.

    6. As for all new users, take heart, linux is continually improving and is now a completely viable desktop. I do all my business and personal use in it. Yes, unfortunately, if you like playing games, then a good percentage of the time you are forced to use Microsoft’s product. One hopes that will one day be fully remedied.

    7. To the OSS community, keep up the good work.

  15. Gerbs Says:

    If having trouble or using kde..

    put it in /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10

    works perfect

  16. Nickolay Says:

    IF it will be in Russian, it will be better.
    Thanks!!

  17. Orhan Toprak Says:

    mp3

  18. Filozofia Says:

    Great, works fine, thanks!

  19. Mikle Says:

    я так понимаю эту биб-ку libgstflump3dec.so на кинуть в /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10 и все заработает !??

  20. Hendrik Maryns Says:

    да!

    In newer distributions, the directory to copy it to will be /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/.
    That is lib64 on 64-bit systems. You can find out by doing ‘locate gstreamer’.

  21. Amarok can't play MP3 - openSUSE Forums Says:

    [...] I rebooted twice but Amarok still prompts me that I need to install codecs. Also, I have tried: Just Uber Blog Archive MP3 on openSUSE – 5 Minute Fix And I have installed xine-extras But none seem to work Any [...]

  22. Greg Hub Says:

    Thanks Gerbs (#15), the suggestion worked great

  23. bambDuethah Says:

    Excellent web pages Successes and prosperity to you!

  24. Neil Timm Says:

    3 hours later, I parked the .so in a few places, having created the directory orginally called for b/c it wasn’t there. Beginning UNIX person I am NOT!! What I didn’t read was Hendrik Maryn’s comment, although by brute force I found that directory and moved the .so there too for good luck. Please modify the original instructions. Also NOVELL IS LETTING US ALL DOWN WITH ITS LACK OF MEDIA SUPPORT. Does anyone know is FEDORA has it?

  25. Немного для SUSE 11.1 « jTux - весёлый пингвин Says:

    [...] из коробки. Можно конечно воспользоваться советом: MP3 on openSUSE – 5 Minute Fix, но так делать не рекомендуется т.к. при обновлении эта [...]

  26. Molotov Says:

    Ну а что еще писать шоб не потерли? :)

  27. wal_fredo Says:

    I CAN DO I !!! but before I must to reinstall Opensuse. With the old installation didn’t work it, but with the new from “0″ run well in both graphic desktop (Kde & gnome).
    In Kde firstly we must copy the gstreamer-0.10 directory from /opt/……/gnome.

    I can explain better in spanish my mother languaje. write me at my name in yahoo brazil (yahoo.com.br)

    And remember if you love (like me) write commands in the consola so use the older mpg123 (mpg123.rpm), the simple and best command mp3 player.

    Thanks at alls for your help.

    wal_fredo

  28. gdrori Says:

    I think a good way for GNOME and KDE is to go to opensuse-community.org Restricted Formats page

  29. Семен Соколов Says:

    Жесть. С нетерпением ждем новых сообщений по этому же поводу :)

  30. Maximus Says:

    Many thanks to “Peter Cooper” really works for KDE in Amarok if just install xine engine.

  31. szukalski Says:

    Worked great for openSUSE 11.2 right out of the box. Wunderbar!

  32. Tom Says:

    Sorry guys. This is a joke.

    First I don’t see why I have enter my email address on the download page before I am allowed to get the mp3 codec. Everybody who ever complained about Microsoft spying and collecting data, this is no better.

    Second: Half of the postings here give the exact reason why Linux is still a product for freaks: Come on, command lines to install a package for doing the simplest task line playing mp3s? And then the package doesn’t work for a lot of people?

    Every time I give Linux another chance, it just ends up in anger being forced to read endless how-to’s before I can even think of starting to work with it.

    I have tried it for 10 years and it’s not getting better.

  33. mtelesha Says:

    The reason for all the problems is PATTENS and PROPERITY issues. This is not a Linux issue to me. Also why not just install the rpm from Fluendo? It works great and you don’t have to do any commandline if you don’t want to. personally I like commandline but I digress.

    In terms of asking for email address for the download. You are purchasing a product. Fluendo is giving the mp3 decoder away for free but it is still a business transation. You can get mp3 through other less “lawfull” ways.

    Personally I would like Banshee to have a KDE integration but I know how weird that is and the such, but Banshee is great for me but everything else gnome makes me sad.

  34. John Says:

    Just use kubuntu or ubuntu all you do is double click on the mp3 file and it prompts you to search for a codec enter your password and 10 seconds later your good to go. or just install the restricted-extras so really there is no excuse for this

  35. John Says:

    this is only some just give a better distro a chance ive been using linux for years and found it very reliable in the old days i can remember mp3s working out of the box but seriously its not linux’s fault.

  36. Steve Says:

    Okay, here is how I (FINALLY – after two months of nothing useful and about three hours of hunting down file locations in openSUSE tonight) got Banshee to work in openSUSE 11.2.
    After downloading the mp3 codec from fluendo, do this:

    cd /home/[your name]/Desktop/fluendo-mp3-10.x86

    Then, do the following copy command to the following file location:

    cp libgstflump3dec.so /usr/lib64/gstreamer-0.10

    Thanks to Chris and Keith for some hints.

  37. Tiago Says:

    I’m gonna rephrase what an user said here before: half of the postings here give the exact reason why Linux is still a product for freaks: Come on, command lines to install a package for doing the simplest task line playing mp3s? And then the package doesn’t work for a lot of people (including me)?
    Every time I give Linux another chance, it just ends up in anger being forced to read endless how-to’s before I can even think of starting to work with it.. This is the 3rd distro i’ve tried and it ain’t getting no better, except for Ubuntu that makes everything VERY easy, compared to openSuse/Fedora etc…
    peace out

  38. Giorgi Says:

    Yes, I’m absolutely agree with Tiago, I’ve tried a lot distributions of Linux, I had fedora, mandrake, Kubuntu… as for openSUSE, I had versions 9.2, 10.0, 11.0 and now I’ve downloaded 11.2 but still (although I’ve downloaded the released version) with no success to get fun. I’m Computer engineer and software developer (but on .NET platform) but as just man who loves everything related to computer science, I’m curious about Linux operating system, but I’m becoming frustrated too fast.

    As for playing .mp3 files, I’ve already installed all the packages related to Amarok and Banshee players, also GStreamer plugins and I’ve downloaded this fluendo MP3 decoder and installed it, but with no success, I’m still unable to play my favorite music on open SUSE 11.2 x86_64 and I’m getting mad about this, I’m feeling just like ordinary computer ‘User’ who knows nothing but switching on and off the computer, I can’t stand the feelings like this.

  39. Dan Says:

    For openSUSE 11.2, I used the following command (from root directory):

    # sudo cp home/owner/Download/fluendo-mp3-10.i386/codecs/libgstflump3dec.so usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/

    Note: This may have been said already, but this fix only works for Banshee and not Kaffiene or Amarok.

    Sure, it took longer than 5 minutes, but that’s because I just installed suse yesterday and I’m still adjusting to using the command line and learning how this file system is organized. This is also my first linux OS I’ve ever used.

    But what was the most frustrating and time consuming was learning that this fix does NOT work with Kaffiene as well as Amarok. I had to download Banshee, which was a little confusing because the Banshee website says its preinstalled with openSUSE 11, but that must be only for the Gnome desktop and not the KDE one.

    But in the end it was well worth it because, well, it works! I’m listening to Ace of Base right now, lol…

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