Hi, there, I am writing a book about music software and want to do at least a chapter about amarok and linux.

Feature-wise, I'm impressed by Amarok 2.5 on Ubuntu 12.04, but it crashes and freezes often -- especially with large playlists.

I probably will post some specific questions, but first, I want to ask something more general.

I just realized 10 minutes ago that 2.5 isn't the latest stable version by a long shot. But there are ways to do a backported upgrade to 2.7 (see http://community.kde.org/Amarok/GettingStarted/Download/Kubuntu#Amarok_2.7

Is this recommended? What are the risks?

I'm on 64 bit Ubuntu 12.04 with 3 gigs of RAM. My main goal is upgrading is not so much its new features but having more stability and better performance. Given these conditions, would an upgrade be helpful?

Let me add that I'm running Unity and probably won't be upgrading to 12.10 or beyond. (In addition to personal use, I'm using this computer to test a web server on 12.04).

Thanks.

Robert Nagle
aka idiotprogrammer

lots of bus have been fixed since 2.5 so I would advise upgrading

change logs thru 2.7, not to mention that 2.8beta 1 is now available

Code: Select all

VERSION 2.7
  CHANGES:
    * Files page has been made more intuitive by making Places the root view
      and significantly improving breadcrumbs behaviour.
    * Make dropping large directories into playlist more responsive by reading
      track metadata asynchronously in a background thread.
    * Harmonize keyboard, mouse and context menu behaviour of the Files pane
      so that it matches Local Music and Saved Playlists panes. (BR 307386)
    * Last.fm Skip button re-added after being removed in Beta by error. (BR 311733)
    * Podcast episodes are now loaded asynchronously on startup to reduce delays.
    * Removed alpha state and not really working spectrum analyzer applet.

  BUGFIXES:
    * Fix a regression where stream metadata would be forgotten on start. (BR 305389)
    * Fix scrobbling of plain files streamed over http. (BR 309976)
    * Fix scrobble-before-play behaviour when playing Last.fm streams.
    * Fix double-scrobbling when playing Last.fm streams. (BR 311852)
    * Fix The size of rating stars should not change in inline editing (BR 209684)
    * Various improvements that should result in more stable Audio CD playback
      (modulo phonon-vlc BR 313046). (BR 305708, BR 308084, BR 311446)
    * Fix queued track indicator overflow, patch by Riccardo Ferrazzo. (BR 253802)
    * Fix Amarok crashes when selecting song with Enter [@ Playlist::PrettyListView::trackActivate] (BR 312439)
    * Fix amarok starts at beginning of playlist if you previously stopped during a track (BR 312183)
    * Audio CD: fix crash due to no composer being set. (BR 293698)
    * Audio CD: fix track recreation on startup. (BR 312685)
    * Fix incorrect display of folder names containing & (ampersand) in File
      browser breadcrumbs. (BR 244817)
    * Fix Media Sources pane growing in size when navigating in it. (BR 246029)
    * Fix Media Sources breadcrumb items sometimes appearing as new windows. (BR 285712)
    * Fix editability and drop-ability of playlist folders.
    * Make track announcements via KDE Notifications instant. (BR 263952)
    * Fix dynamic playlist progress bar.
    * Fix Last played bias is ignored or doesn't work. (BR 311906)
    * Fix amarok dynamic play list with biases EchoNest similar artist gives no
      results. (BR 291162)
    * Fix When I try to create a dynamic playlist by Last.fm similar songs
      creation takes a lot time. (BR 301716)
    * Fix updating of Amarok database playlists then track uid changes. (BR 312128)
    * Fix hangs and inappropriate messages when trying to play a track from
      a saved playlist that has been deleted in the mean time. (BR 308371)
    * Fix existing files preventing complete transfer of tracks to collection. (BR 312001)
    * Fix crash then doing Last.fm love with uninitialized Last.fm plugin. (BR 311857)
    * Fix Last.fm streams not being correctly recreated on startup. (BR 305576)
    * Fix Ampache albums & track not being shown, a recent regression. (BR 310862)
    * Fix crash in Network Requests Viewer. (BR 311760)
    * Definitely prevent crash when using File Browser breadcrumbs. (BR 265626)
    * Prevent crash in ServiceBase::setModel triggered by Last.fm rewrite. (BR 311723)
    * Fix incorrect display of Last.fm tags and other items. (BR 244555)

VERSION 2.7-Beta 1
  FEATURES:
    * Track dragging support in Unique Tracks tab of the Synchronize Statistics action;
      allows you to do a "diff" between collections and transfer missing tracks. (BR 237266)
    * Amarok now scrobbles tracks in streams if the stream correctly updates
      meta-data. (BR 240732)
    * When scrobbling to Last.fm, Amarok announces suggested tag corrections
      (configurable). (BR 309697)
    * Ability to scrobble recently played tracks from iPod (and the like) to Last.fm.
    * Synchronization of labels and rating between Last.fm and Amarok collections;
      play count can be synchronized one-way from Last.fm to Amarok. (BR 206249)
    * Statistics synchronization between collections, supports rating, first / last
      played time, play count and labels.
    * New APG constraint: Specify a total file size for playlist. (BR 283618)
    * Amazon store: Added support for Amazon MP3 in Italy and Spain. (BR 307981)
    * Mark downloaded podcast episodes to keep, even when purge is enabled. (BR 261062)
    * Nepomuk plugin: Play and manage tracks using the Nepomuk database.
    * Support for reading and writing tags from/to mod, s3m, it and xm files.
      Patch by Mathias Panzenböck.
    * Amazon store: It is now possible to add items to your shopping cart using amarok:// URLs.
    * Amazon store: Use the context info applet to show further infos about a selected item.
    * New argument --debug-audio to enable Phonon debugging.
    * Amazon store: We now ship a utility to handle downloads from Amazon.

  CHANGES:
    * Dependencies raised, Amarok now depends on Qt >= 4.8 and kdelibs >= 4.8.4.
    * When configuring Last.fm plug-in, the changes are now applied immediately
      in most places. (BR 311331)
    * If liblastfm is provided, it is strongly recommended to use version 1.0.3 or newer
      for fixes of bugs that otherwise prevent iPod scrobbling and synchronization.
    * Configure Amarok dialog gets new Metadata tab to grab some weight from the
      Collection tab and to configure statistics synchronization.
    * APG now saves its presets each time it's run, to lessen preset loss if
      Amarok crashes. (BR 294743)
    * APG playlists no longer limited to 100 tracks. (BR 301829)
    * The confusing "Local Collection Backends" category of plugins was removed
      from the Configure dialog. All backends are enabled from now on.
    * Statistics of tracks outside of collections are only read/saved to file
      tags (if enabled) instead of being kept in the database.
    * Last.fm Skip button removed; Last.fm API no longer provides it. (BR 305576)
    * Optional liblastfm dependency raised to 1.0.0. (BR 302597)
    * Add composer button to wikipedia applet (BR 272982)
    * New optional dependency for Amazon downloads: clamz.

  BUGFIXES:
    * Fix empty collection when using DynamicCollection=false (BR 265419)
    * Fix suboptimal KWallet usage in Last.fm plugin. (BR 292096)
    * Fix crash in Last.fm plugin caused by sloppy KWallet usage. (BR 306134)
    * Fix WMA files interpret Album as Album Artist (BR 276015)
    * Fix after adding next slash previous one disappears in organize collection (BR 296136)
    * Fix Dynamic Collection and other features not working if the database was
      initially created by a very old Amaork version. (BR 302837)
    * Fix incorrect "Stop after current" indicator behaviour in some cases. (BR 253822)
    * Fix untranslatable texts in preset dynamic playlists. (BR 276023)
    * Better Last.fm scrobbling behaviour and error reporting due to rewrite,
      should fix long-standing problems. (BR 293320, BR 285820)
    * Update stream meta-data correctly even with phonon-gstreamer back-end. (BR 300189)
    * Fix available transcoding encoders detection with ffmpeg 1.0. (BR 309454)
    * Fix playback resuming with phonon-gstreamer; raise phonon-vlc dependency
      to at least 0.6.1 as a side-effect. (BR 290612)
    * Create collections even for SD/MMC/etc. cards on PCI-connected slots.
    * Fixed some incorrect logic in the PlaylistLength constraint, which was
      causing the APG to create playlists that were shorter than expected.
      (BR 293616)
    * Improve Duplicate files found dialog. (BR 308762)
    * Fix crashes in SqlRegistry because of its false thread-safety. (BR 230991)
    * Fix crash on malformed DAAP reply. (BR 284186)
    * Fix first & last played time not remembered for files outside of collection.
    * Nepomuk plugin now makes Nepomuk ratings visible in Amarok. (BR 174630)
    * Fix some track tag modifications not being updated until restart
      (e.g. changing disc number from 1 to 0).
    * Repeat playlist correctly with a single track playlist. (BR 290955)
    * Don't append playlist when pressing enter while editing. (BR 305203)
    * Fix track transfer to iPods in de (and perhaps other) locale. (BR 305134)

VERSION 2.6
  BUGFIXES:
    * Fix problems when sql server is not reachable (BR 298425)
    * Fix crash with exporting playlists with invalid tracks (BR 303056, BR 302607, BR 297816)

VERSION 2.6-RC
  CHANGES:
    * Show all audio and video files in file browser. (BR 303253)
    * Remove codec install support. It's long ago been implemented in phonon.
    * Prevent lags with large Saved playlists. (BR 301700)
    * Increase minimal required ffmpeg version up to 0.7.
    * Use audio-x-generic icon for bit rate, not a generic one. (BR 302753)
    * Add Amarok.Playlist.playMediaList() script bindings for API symmetry.
    * Building the spectrum analyzer applet can now be disabled with a CMake
      argument.

  BUGFIXES:
    * Fix a regression where play count would be increased by 2. (BR 299890)
    * Don't loose statistics, labels and lyrics upon collection scan in some
      circumstances, e.g. when disk holding colleciton is swapped. (BR 298275)
    * Don't loose statistics, labels and lyrics when changing metadata of a
      track (not tagged by afttagger) followed by moving it. (BR 292245)
    * Fix Amarok.Playlist.{add,play}Media() and addMediaList() Qt script
      bindings methods not being able to add playlists. (BR 232697)
    * Add "Last Played" back to the Edit Filter dialog. (BR 302746)
    * Correct rounding for rating in Track Details dialog. (BR 273363)
    * Fix Context view not being fully formed on startup. (BR 292895)
    * Fix memory leaks and a string zero termination issue in MP3tunes.
    * Don't poll for mounts every second, solid notifies us. (BR 289462)
    * Fix inconsistent Last.fm scrobbling in some cases with GStreamer
      backend.
    * Use colors from KDE style in Dynamic Playlist strip. (BR 301303)
    * Finally fix crash on startup in addCollapseAnimation. (BR 258741)
    * Don't hit "too many open files" when copying covers to iPod. (BR 301207)
    * Don't crash if iPod's eject button is hit twice. (BR 301208)
    * Don't crash even if the iPod is connected and quickly ejected. (BR 301166)
    * Play the correct track when adding tracks to a sorted playlist. (BR 244595)
    * Provide full-size covers via MPRIS1 if available. (BR 278550)
    * Fix serving out of embedded images via MPRIS. (BR 301399)

VERSION 2.6-Beta 1
  FEATURES:
    * Amazon store: improved album search
    * Support for transcoding when copying tracks to USB Mass Storage devices;
      per-device transcoding preference can be saved, too.
    * Provide Repopulate and Turn off link in "Dynamic Mode Enabled" bagde.
    * Support for setting cover images for albums on USB Mass Storage devices.
    * Support for setting and unsetting cover images for iPod albums, can
      write back covers to file meta-data too, respects configuration.
    * Amazon store: ability to check out an item directly without using the Amarok
      shopping cart. (BR 288808)
    * Amarok now includes the Free Music Charts service by default.
    * The maximum dimensions for embedded covers are now configurable. (BR 279493)
    * Small configuration dialog for iPods that shows troubleshooting information
      and allows to change iPod name.
    * Improved usability of iPod playlists: iPod collection automatically transfers
      tracks dropped to iPod playlists to iPod when it is needed.
    * Tracks can now be transcoded when transferring them to iPod. (BR 291722)
    * A diagnostic dialog reporting versions of Amarok, Qt, KDE and phonon libraries
      as well as the used phonon backend and status of plugins and scripts.
      Patch by Andrzej Hunt.
    * Ability to move track position bookmarks by dragging; patch by
      Jasneet Bhatti. (BR 214721)
    * Amarok can now remember whether and how to transcode tracks when
      transferring them to a particular collection. (BR 264681)
    * "Crop playlist" functionality implemented using drag & drop. (BR 267729, 211811)
    * Added keyboard shortcut for "Edit Track Information..." (BR 173814)
      Patch by Jasneet Bhatti.
    * Support for embedded album covers in non-collection tracks and
      in USB Mass Storage collection.
    * Hold the Shift key when dragging tracks to collections to move them
      instead of copying.
    * New search filter for absolute date
    * Named UMS collections
    * Albums with same name but different album artist are now correctly
      separated in USB Mass Storage, iPod and various online service collections.
    * Support for detecting compilations in USB Mass Storage collection.
    * Support embedded covers for ogg (read only) and flac files. (BR 288752)
    * Track meta-data can be edited in USB Mass Storage collection.
    * Support for album artists in USB Mass Storage collection.
    * album artist (if differs from artist), BPM, labels, last played time and
      bitrate are now shown in playlist track tooltip (if not already displayed
      in playlist)
    * Volume normalization: ReplayGain is now converted to iPod Sound Check and
      vice versa. (BR 142579)

  CHANGES:
    * Builds with ffmpeg 0.11.
    * Database structure (lyrics table) was updated. Starting Amarok for the first
      time after the upgrade may take up to one minute as the data is migrated.
    * Amazon store: try to show a sensible default in the country selection.
    * Only offer delete action when Shift key is pressed in Collection context menu.
    * Only offer move action when Shift key is pressed in Collection context menu.
    * Remove context view video applet. Unmaintained and broken. (BR 242793)
    * Album cover images are written in background to prevent freezes. (BR 298332)
    * Make keyboard & mouse behaviour of saved playlists browser same as of the
      collection browser, including the delete key.
    * Delete and Shift + Delete keys now work as expected in collection browser.
    * Preserve statistics when copying or moving tracks to Local Collection.
    * Common album actions such as Show cover, Show under Various Artists are now
      available for all collections that support it, not just Local collection.
    * When copying files to iPod, ensure target directories exist.
    * When writing covers to files, all existing covers will be replaced.
    * PulseAudio status in diagnostic dialog.
    * optional libgpod dependency raised to 0.8.2 to support newest iPods.
    * Amarok now prevents accidental unmounting of iPods in (small) time-frames
      when iTunes database on iPod is not yet updated.
    * Amarok detects when iPod is to be ejected from system and gracefully
      disconnects it when it occurs.
    * Hitting the eject button on iPod collection ejects it also from the system.
    * iPod collection now detects whether iPod is safe to write and marks iPod
      as read-only if not. This prevents "iPod shows 0 tracks" problem.
    * Correct progress bar advancement when transferring tracks to iPod. (BR 139454)
    * iPod Collection supports multiple simultaneous cancellable transfers.
      (BR 219963)
    * Improved dialog to initialize iPod. (BR 279797)
    * Load tracks in playlists asynchronously using proxy tracks. (BR 295199)
    * It is now possible to transcode tracks when moving them. (BR 280526)
    * Drag & drop of tracks and playlists to Saved Playlists works in all cases.
    * Don't show unmounted USB Mass Storage devices and make it clear when
      the device is not "activated" yet.
    * "Devices" in Amarok configuration -> Plugins is with other related strings
      renamed to "Local Collection Backends" to reduce user confusion.
    * Enable keyboard activation of PlaylistBrowser items.
    * Don't use `mysql_config --variable=pkgincludedir`, find mysql include
      directory manually by looking up mysql.h.
    * Album artist is now guessed for tracks that do not belong into any
      collection and tracks from USB Mass Storage collection. Guessing uses the
      same algorithm as Local Collection.
    * When hovering iPod, UMS or MTP collection in collection browser,
      "1.2 GB free" is shown instead of "85% used"; thicker capacity bar.

  BUGFIXES:
    * Fix crash on startup due to EngineController. (BR 300659)
    * Fix problem building tests with google mock 1.6.0 on Ubuntu
    * Fix dynamic playlist album play bias with MetaProxy::Tracks.
    * Transcoding: fix compatibility with libav's ffmpeg. (BR 300551)
    * Saved lyrics are preserved when the track is moved. (BR 242350)
    * Lyrics, labels and album actions are correctly displayed for tracks
      from main and saved playlists on Amarok startup. (BR 299150)
    * Lyrics applet scrolls more intelligently. Patch by Alexander Potashev.
      (BR 283601)
    * Fix crash on startup related to ContextView. (BR 258741)
    * Fix dragging of "No Labels" and "Various Artists" collection tree items.
    * Don't add duplicates to playlist when dragging from collection. (BR 254411)
    * Fix crash related to DAAP collection. (BR 280774)
    * Fix crash on startup related to Audio CD collection. (BR 256585)
    * When turning dynamic playlist on, immediately populate playlist and clear
      any possible playlist sorting. (BR 220558)
    * Fix transcoding with ffmpeg >= 0.10; patch by Julian Simioni.
    * Fix crash on start when Qt is build with debugging assertions. (BR 285720)
    * Fix URLs in MP3tunes, gpodder.net and Last.fm config dialogs. (BR 299088)
    * Fix drag & drop in playlist layout editor, filename layout editor and
      filter editor for non-english locales. (BR 215402)
    * Fix bug where MySQL password could not be set to 'password'; patch by
      Lachlan Dufton. (BR 272346)
    * Detection and elimination of stale and orphaned iPod tracks now works
      correctly; users are notified about these when iPod is plugged in.
    * iPod playlists now work correctly. (BR 289304)
    * Show correct error when transferring unsupported files to iPod. (BR 234876)
    * Fix m4a tracks transferred as mp4 videos to iPods. (BR 268238)
    * Combination of double click and context menu actions caused multiple
      delete of downloaded podcast actions, etc. (BR 297092)
    * Prevent merging tracks with same title but different track (disc) numbers;
      patch by Alexey Neyman.
    * Prevent crash on very quick drag and release of tracks. (BR 295275)
    * Prevent occasional tag corruption on multi-byte UTF8 characters in tags.
    * Do not double-transcode tracks when importing from an audio CD. (BR 263775)
    * Fix resulting filetype when copying a track from Jamendo. (BR 296000)
    * Playlists with a dot in name can now be saved to Playlist Files on Disk. (BR 290318)
    * iPod playlists now appear even when plugged in while Amarok is running. (BR 289303)
    * Show in Media Sources actions no longer reset the collection sorting to artist/album. (BR 231858)
    * Don't mark audio-CD tracks as unplayable (greyed out). (BR 285885)
    * Don't misbehave when track is dropped directly to saved playlist. (BR 293295)
    * Don't report collection of USB Mass Storage tracks as None.
    * When adding, changing and removing tracks in USB Mass Storage collection,
      actually update the user interface to show it.
    * Remove empty folders when deleting tracks from USB Mass Storage collection.
    * Don't copy tracks to USB Mass Storage collection in move operation.
    * Fix defunct aborting of transfers to USB Mass Storage collection. (BR 290448)
    * Allow ripping of CD tracks with special characters in name tranks to
      Björn Steinbrink. (BR 224437)
    * Don't allow tracks to be dropped to their own collection and to
      non-writable collections; indicate the fact visually. (BR 291068)
    * Fix scrollarea following keyboard navigation. (BR 259791)
    * Fix crash when trying to save custom equalizer presets. (BR 286227)
    * Fix crash due to my silly method order error. (BR 291968)
    * Fix favored random track playing picking recent played songs (BR 244442)
    * Fix crashes with Bookmarks (BR 283753) thanks to Charles Reiss
    * Fix memory leaks in USB Mass Storage collection where track objects were
      never freed due to circular references.
    * Fix rare APG solver crash. (BR 290533)
    * Compilations are handled more consistently on iPods. (BR 232072)
    * MPRIS2 compliance: don't use track ids that start with /org/mpris/
    * MPRIS2: be better about emitting the Seeked signal
    * MPRIS2: fix the mpris:artUrl metadata property
    * MPRIS2: make sure that the Seeked signal is sent out when the track time
              moves backwards (eg: when the track changes)

ps - 2.8beta 1 change log

Code: Select all

VERSION 2.8-Beta 1
  FEATURES:
   * Added a function for resetting the GUI layout back to default state. (BR 300753)
   * Pressing enter when searching collections now adds found tracks to the playlist and
     clears the search bar, this is a very convenient way to populate your playlist.
   * Allow to transcode only certain (different format, playability) tracks when
     transferring them to a collection; patch by Anmol Ahuja. (BR 312407)
   * Added support for .asx playlists; patch by Tatjana Gornak. (BR 170207)
   * Add Radio GFM radio streams to Cool Stream Script. (BR 317978)
   * Added options to pause playback on system suspend and to inhibit automatic suspend
     if playing a track (enabled by default); patch by Anmol Ahuja. (BR 259862, 222571)
   * Playlist files are now read asynchronously when possible; patch and great deal of
     refactoring by Tatjana Gornak. (BR 291934)
   * Added support to filter tracks to scrobble to Last.fm by label. Patch by Vedant
     Agarwala. (BR 140198)
   * Added transcoding support for Opus codec if ffmpeg is compiled with support for the
     libopus library, patch by Martin Brodbeck.
   * Added keyboard shortcuts for small 2 s seeks (Ctrl + Left/Right) and long 1 minute
     seeks (Shift + Left/Right) in addition to standard 10 s seeks. Durations are now
     configurable in amarokrc, see Amarok Handbook. Patch by Anmol Ahuja. (BR 177258)
   * Added support for files in Opus codec if Amarok is compiled against recent enough
     TagLib (post 1.8), patch by Martin Brodbeck. (BR 312905)
   * Added Ctrl+H shortcut to randomize playlist, patch by Harsh Gupta. (BR 208061)

  CHANGES:
   * When a new collection plugin is enabled, its collections appear immediately without a
     need for restart.
   * Update the MusicBrainz tagger to MusicBrainz web service 2, make it show some more
     good suggestions for tagging, and add some options to help choosing the best results.
   * Add note about generating .mood files into Moodbar Options; patch by Harsh Gupta with
     tweaks by Matěj Laitl. (BR 289483)
   * Amarok now depends on Qt 4.8.2.
   * Add prepareToQuit() signal to Amarok.Window script bindings; patch by Anmol Ahuja.
     (BR 241066)
   * Data CDs are now recognized in Amarok; patch by Anmol Ahuja. (BR 316128)
   * On-Screen-Display now uses the system font instead of hardcoded sans-serif.
     (BR 248707)
   * On-Screen-Display fades in/out smoothly.
   * Fancy behavior of some context menus showing different actions when Shift key is held
     has been reverted. All entries are now shown all the time.
   * The dynamic playlist behavior has changed. It will no longer generate "pretty good"
     playlists that do not fulfill the given biases. Instead it might add no song at all
     if given impossible-to-fulfill conditions.
   * The "tracks have been hidden in the playlist" warning when filtering the playlist is
     now displayed inside the playlist. (BR 260352)
   * Update tag widget for Layout edit, filter edit, organize collection and guess tag
     dialog.
   * When fadeout and/or Replay Gain isn't possible, gray-out related UI elements in order
     not to fool users.

  BUGFIXES:
   * Fix `amarok --queue` which didn't actually queue the tracks. (BR 317385)
   * Fix suboptimal initial MusicBrainz tag dialog size by remembering it. (BR 269454)
   * Fix file-browser becoming empty when a file was moved to trash. (BR 317944)
   * Fix `amarok --play file.mp3` option didn't actually start playback.
   * Reason why a particular track is not playable is now shown in playlist tooltip; patch
     by Anmol Ahuja. (BR 313649)
   * Pre-apmlifier in equalizer is now only enabled if it is actually supported; patch by
     Harsh Gupta. (BR 301311)
   * Fix Amarok crashed while doing "Organize Files" (BR 317980)
   * Fix Crash on very long artist names [@ Meta::SqlArtist::SqlArtist]. (BR 276894)
   * Clarify message when Last.fm streams are not available. (BR 315771)
   * Don't remove common labels when editing the tags of multiple tracks. (BR 316043)
   * Fix vertical positioning of On-Screen-Display. (BR 269788)
   * Prevent inability to save Last.fm password in corner cases. (BR 315306)
   * Fix crash when quitting Amarok with Statistics Synchronization open. (BR 315525)
   * Fix items moving around when expanded in collection browser. (BR 305602)
   * Fix bumpy fade-out when first used. (BR 312062)
   * Fix subtle bugs when a long fade-out is initiated near the song end.
   * Don't try to fade-out with phonon backends that don't support it. (vlc)

Happily I can report that the upgrade to 2.7 is complete on 12.04

There is a warning/error message about an I/O error upon startup, but after that goes away, everything works fine (and perhaps a little better than before).

I haven't had time to determine whether performance is better, but I'll be sure to report it if it happens. Thanks!

you should find start up much faster

you could post the error/warning maybe someone can comment on it, Google first then start a new thread

We have just released a bugfix version 2.7.1, as there is a problem with QtWebkit <-> Gstreamer interaction when the Wikipedia page of an artist contains an audio tag. It is highly recommended you upgrae to 2.7.1, should be available in the Kubuntu backports PPA AFAIK.