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You can add music visualisations to Banshee easily by installing some extra packages via apt.

Can you do it without root privileges?

bitmask
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  • possible duplicate: http://askubuntu.com/questions/339/how-can-i-install-a-package-without-root-access –  Oct 01 '12 at 08:04
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    This is not a duplicate since it seems he know the fact but want to know whether it is possible in banshee to add visualizations. Because most player support adding visualizations from their menu – Anwar Oct 01 '12 at 08:09
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    @Anwar: Yes, exactly. – bitmask Oct 01 '12 at 10:01

3 Answers3

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The short answer: Yes.

The long answer: Yes, but it's not practical.

In general, banshee allows to create and run user specific extensions in a directory in the user's home folder. However, there are two problems with that:

  1. It is not straightforward and cannot be done with the debian packages, since using apt-get requires root.

  2. You will need to compile the extensions yourself, since this option is by default disabled at compile time, and for that you need the whole mono development environment, and to install that you also need root, so back to square 1.

January
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The simple answer: No.

Banshee uses the /usr/bin, /usr/lib, and /usr/share folders. These folders are created and owned by root when the system is installed. Unless you've ran chown on these folders (or on the Banshee directory/files within each folder), you'll have to run sudo, be logged in as root, or try maythux's suggestion to install it.

Notes from the comments:

apt-get will always require root.

It is not recommended to change the owner of the /usr/bin, /usr/lib, and /usr/share folders.

Community
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Sly
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    I think it should be noted that the permissions and/or ownership of those directories should not be modified. And running apt-get cannot be done without root either. – Dan Oct 01 '12 at 08:02
  • Updated with the above. – Sly Oct 01 '12 at 08:07
  • Well, obviously I cannot actually install it through apt. I was more thinking of some way to tell Banshee that the extensions live in my ~. – bitmask Oct 01 '12 at 08:20
  • @bitmask See the link that I put in, named "maythux's suggestion", or see maythux's comment under your question. There is a method there that you can attempt. – Sly Oct 01 '12 at 08:21
  • It'd be even easier to use a virtual machine with a minimal ubuntu to install the packages (using apt) and have banshee access that /. But I have no idea how to tell it where to look for the extensions. I don't want to run it inside the vm as I still want the status bar notification and hardware access. Getting the packages isn't the problem, telling banshee to use them is. – bitmask Oct 01 '12 at 08:41
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Since many player support adding visualizations directly from their menu, you may be interested to know whether such options are available in banshee too (In these cases, the plugins are stored in user's home folder, such as adding plugin in Firefox etc)

The answer is No, You cannot add visualization in such way in banshee like other player

Anwar
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