Just started using linux & amarok yesterday - so far they are everything I had hoped that they would be ....

two basic questions:

1 - I see that MYSQL is harder to use but ultimately better than SQL lite.  Are there step-by-step instructions somewhere that show me how to implement MYSQL?  (I have no idea what I am doing!)

2 - I'm used to iTunes, and iTunes likes to have all the music in one drive or folder or area.  I gather that this is NOT the case with Amarok - in other words, I can have music scattered all over the place on many different drives, and it doesn't matter to Amarok.  If that's the case, I really don't need to use RAID (the way I do in iTunes), I can just have the library on four different hard drives, rather than having all the hard drives RAIDed together to make it easier (for iTunes).

I also need to somehow get the Mac and the Linux machine on the same network so that they can share music files - does anybody know how to do that?

thanks!

w

1. Sure, on the amarok wiki there's a mysql setup page - http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/MySQL_HowTo
It's not really harder to use, the main issue would probably be whether the copy of amarok you're using has mysql support built in. You can easily check by going to Amarok settings and looking on the Collections tab. There's a pulldown menu that should currently say sqlite - if mysql is also on that list you're rocking. If not, you may have to compile amarok yourself - a whole new ballgame!

2. What I do here, is set up linux as a file server using samba. This is an implementation of microsoft's smb protocol, and allows drives to be shared with windows - handily, OS X uses the same protocol The actual setting up is beyond the scope of this forum, and you should probably have a look at your distro's docs for that.
I gather it's just a matter of poking around the mac to share the directories in the other direction - to be honest I've never bothered.
Once your files are shared the way you like them, make sure the drives are mounted, then in Amarok simply select the different directories in the Collection config.

thanks again.

my version of amarok seems to be the latest, and it does have MySQL support built in, but it doesn't really tell you how to set it up.

Will check the wiki page you recommend and see if I can do it.

Setting up the network looks like it's complicated - I installed a couple of SAMBA utilities but am not sure how they work...

thanks for your much-appreciated help!

w