Installing Audacity 1.3.2 beta on Kubuntu
What is Audacity?
Audacity is an audio manipulation program. It can be used to record onto the computer with a microphone (my wife and I recorded the sound of our baby's heartbeat this way). Many people use it to record, edit, and produce podcasts. My main use of Audacity is to grab sound clips from DVDs, CDs, or almost anything else that can be played on my computer. For more information, visit the Audacity home page.
Why install Audacity beta?
The newer, beta version (1.3.2) of Audacity has some new features that might appeal to hard core audio users. (For a complete list of new features, visit the New Features page
The new version has a much better look to it as well.
For me, upgrading to the beta version was necessary for it to record sounds coming from the computer. I'm not sure why this is, exactly. The older version worked fine on other distributions of Linux, and it worked on an older version of Kubuntu (6.10). Maybe it's the sound card, maybe it's system. But the new beta version works fine.
Installing the Program
Install the required packages.
Audacity needs the following packages to compile correctly.
sudo aptitude install audacity libwxbase2.6-0 libwebase2.6-dev /
libwxgtk2.6-0 libwxgtk2.6-dev wx-common /
libmad0 libsndfile1 libogg0 alsa-oss
Download and compile the zipped package
Download the package
wget http://audacity.sourceforge.net/beta/audacity-src/audacity-src-1.3.2.tar.gz
Be sure to run the wget in the directory you want to download it to.
Extract (unzip) the package
tar -xvzf audacity-src-1.3.2.tar.gz
Compile the program
cd audacity-src-1.3.2-beta
Configure the compiler for your machine:
./configure
Then compile the program
make
Compiling will take a while (now is a great time to get a snack)
Once the compliation is complete (if you followed the instructions, you should have no errors) you can install the program onto the computer
sudo make install
Running Audacity Beta
For some reason, the ALSA sound program and the OSS sound program don't like to play together on Kubuntu. Most of the time this isn't a problem, but for Audacity it is. To correct it, we installed the alsa-oss package, and Audacity needs to run through this program in order to work.
aoss audacity
Install the required packages
Open the package manager. KMenu -> System -> Adept Manager
Kubuntu will prompt you for your password. After you type it in, the Adept Package Manager will open.
Search for the following packages. Select them for installation by right-click on the package name, then selecting Request Install (see screeshot).
- audacity
- libwxbase2.6-0
- libwebase2.6-dev
- libwxgtk2.6-0
- libwxgtk2.6-dev
- wx-common
- libmad0
- libsndfile1
- libogg0
- alsa-oss
Once you've selected all the packages, press the Apply Changes button (see screenshot).
Download and compile the zipped package
Download the package
The file can be found at: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/beta_source
Extract (unzip) the package
Once you have the package, you can extract it by finding the package in Koquerer, right-clicking on it and selecting Extract -> Extract here (see screenshot).
Compile the program
When you extract the package, it will create a folder called audacity-src-1.3.2-beta. Enter this folder.
From this point on, you'll need to be in command line. Pressing F4 should open a terminal in the folder you're currently in.
First, configure the compiler for this package:
./configure
Then compile the program
make
Compiling will take a while (now is a great time to get a snack)
Once the compliation is complete (if you followed the instructions, you should have no errors) you can install the program onto the computer
sudo make install
Customizing Audacity's Icon
If you already had the old version Audacity installed (and the instructions above had you install it) then you should already have a menu selection for Audacity. KMenu -> Multimedia -> Audacity
For some reason, the ALSA sound program and the OSS sound program don't like to play together on Kubuntu. Most of the time this isn't a problem, but for Audacity it is. To correct it, we installed the alsa-oss package. We just need to tell Kubuntu to use this program when running Audacity.
Right click on the KMenu button (the panels must be unlocked to do this) and select Menu Editor
Find Audacity under "Multimedia" and select it
Change the "Command:" line so that it reads:
aoss audacity
Select "Save" (Edit -> Save or the "Save" button) and close the Menu Editor (see screenshot)
Congratulations. You're finished. Select KMenu -> Multimedia -> Audacity to try it out.
Add a Comment