ProjectM

This page contains the instructions to install ProjectM, a library that adds more visualizations. You can either compile it manually, or use your distro's pre-packaged version.

Vendor-specific instructions

The following distributions have pre-packaged version of ProjectM available:

Debian and Ubuntu

Install the package libvisual-projectm and all its dependencies, in this way:

1apt-get install libvisual-projectm

Gentoo

1emerge libvisual-projectm

Arch Linux

Arch Linux has prebuilt packages available for ProjectM and its integration into libvisual in the [extra] repository (enabled by default). To install the packages using pacman:

1pacman -Sy projectm libvisual-projectm

openSuse

ProjectM 0.99 has been packaged for openSUSE 10.2. Add the installation source http://software.opensuse.org/download/home:/wstephenson/openSUSE_10.2 and install the libvisual-projectM package.

Step by step instructions for compilation

If you want to compile ProjectM manually, first of all visit the projectM homepage and download the 0.97.5 tarball and extract it.

In the extracted directory, first compile the base library:

1cd src/projectM
make clean
make

Then make and install the libvisual plugin:

1cd ../lv-projectM
./configure --prefix=/usr --x-includes=/usr/include/X11 --x-libraries=/usr/lib/X11
make
sudo make install

If you have problems finding required X11 headers in Gentoo or Kubuntu try: ./configure --prefix=/usr --x-includes=/usr/X11R6/include/ --x-libraries=/usr/X11R6/lib in place of the above.

ProjectM

Once all of that is complete, you are all set. Fire up Amarok, open the Visualizations panel, and start enjoying the opengl iterative visualizations (obviously, you'll need Amarok compiled and installed with libvisual and opengl - no need to compile with xmms support though)!

The real genius behind ProjectM is that it is fully compatible with all the Milkdrop visualizations. Many are packaged with ProjectM, but they are all available on the milkdrop site. Sadly they are packaged as an NSIS archive and must be extracted in windows. A place to find more visualizations (and in zip format) is the winamp milkdrop forums. Edit December 2012: The Milkdrop website is apparently no available anymore.

To install any presets that you find, extract the .milk file and copy it to your /usr/share/projectM/presets directory. In Amarok, you can select Tools-->Visualizations-->projectM to start the visualization, and hit F1 to show the projectM menu.

Enjoy!