I use minitube on my pentium 4 as it supports 720p (whereas browser too slow) and has easy to use interface for my kids.

Recently it quit working, showing search results but not actual playing videos, and research online tells me I need version 3.1 to solve this.

Ubuntu repos have 2.5.2 or something old.

Official Minitube website only has 3.1 as 64-bit deb for Ubuntu 18.10.

So I tried to build 3.1 myself on 32-bit 18.04 base. It requires libmpv-dev version 29, which has a whole bunch of other dependencies (as I first just tried installing that manually) not in bionic repos. So I cheated - I changed bionic to cosmic in my apt sources.list to install sudo apt install libmpv-dev (then restored sources file back to bionic).

Minitube make was successful. However, when I execute, I get the initial search screen, then segfault.

For further experimentation, since I now have the necessary libs installed, I installed minitube3.1-1_i386.deb from debian sid, and it does the exact same thing as the one I built, intro screen then segfault. For the heck of it I also tried version 2.9-1_i386.deb from debian buster and that runs without crashing, but it has the same issue as the one from ubuntu repos.

Any ideas?

Hello

You hacked it little bit. I doubt someone here will reproduce your issue. I know that minitube app and the author apparently get rid the 32 bit version.

My answer is:
1. Are your old PCs for your kids really too old with no 64 bit support? My experience is, many too old CPUs are 64 bit. In this case, try to install Bodhi 64 bit.
2. Try another app. I use smtube which is a part of smplayer media player. It is fine, although your videos will open in extra media player. Not embededly like in minitube.
3. Post your outcome if you run minitube from terminal. Maybe it will lead somewhere.

Stefan

Yeah I realized using the cosmic repo was a hack but a lot easier than downloading each and every dependency and as far as I know result in the end the same anyway. The author implied it can be compiled for 32-bit in comments, and for 18.04 if necessary libs installed, plus latest version is built for debian 32-bit in debian sid repos (as mentioned, same result as when I build tho), its only the author that didn't bother to build 32-bit, and ubuntu repos often seem to have old versions of lots of stuff.

1. Pentium 4 is 32-bit only. athlon64 I tried 64-bit, I've tried installing 64-bit version twice, both times same experience, lockups and weird glitches.

2. I did actually look for another app and couldn't find anything. I'll look into smtube.

3. It only gives me segfault/core dump after the qt message that I see alot and assume not important. But I'll edit and add a screenshot from that pc shortly.

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Does minitube use youtube-dl as its backend?
If so you need to install youtube-dl directly (not via package manager) and update it OFTEN.
If not, you should switch to sth that uses youtube-dl as its backend.

I don't think so, no. It uses mpv apparently based on the mpv-dev library it needs. I cross posted on ubuntu forums, and someone said it should build if I using libmpv-dev from a PPA they recommend. I'm preparing to try that now on my other legacy machine, so will see what happens with that attempt.

As make is now running on both legacy machines, I wanted to document what I did here.

This PPA has necessary libs for bionic: https://launchpad.net/~mc3man/+archi...u/bionic-media

On my Pentium, to overwrite my cosmic install, after adding the ppa, I did this crazy command to reinstall the package I installed from cosmic and it's dependencies.:
Next post if it runs - or still segfaults, but make may take a while.

No luck. Pentium still segfaults with new build. Athlon doesn't segfault - it just plays audio only, no video.

And I think I still have some cosmic stuff installed. I noticed my libc6 version is 2.28 and that's newer than it's supposed to be. So that magic command didn't work as hoped.

What about smtube? Have to tried?

Ouch. That's a crucial package. Sounds like you might have a Frankenbuntu there.

Yes most definitely. I think I figured out exactly which packages are the wrong ones, by looking apt installed list, every package whose name ends with ubuntu but didnt come from bionic repo. So I'll manually fix it when I get a chance. It doesn't actually seem to be causing any obvious problems, but since it didn't do what I hoped it would do, should probably get it back normal.

I did end up reinstalling bodhi completely to avoid the frankenbuntu situation.

That ppa I mentioned now includes minitube itself, so installation or build are both easy.

However, it doesn't work. Athlon works but no video (only audio); Pentium segfaults. Also tested both machines under lubuntu to be sure not bodhi related, and same thing.

I just now tried smtube briefly on my 64-bit to see if it'll work for my kids, and the one in repos looks like ok interface but says "it wasn't possible to find the URL for this video" but I'll play with it a bit to see if I can figure it out.

minitube requires a Googlwe API key to work.
smtube seems to work; it seems to be a frontend to the youtube website. I had no problems using it. My youtube-dl is up-to-date.

I do have my own google api key, and used it when I built minitube. I was previously using the 2.52 version from ubuntu repos successfully and used a profile.d script to set the api key, until google changed in a way that nothing worked anymore, which is why I need a newer version.

I did update smtube to the latest from their website and it's now working. Looks like this is a viable alternative.

I've set up smtube on my kids computers and it's ok, but minitube was better for my use case (little kids who cant read much).

First biggest issue is it doesn't save search history. Minitube shows the last 10 or so searches on its initial screen, which allowed my kids to just click something easily I'd typed for them before (i.e. abc songs, phonics, unicorn coloring, etc). Whereas SMTube starts slowly and brings up a screen full of "popular" videos. I'd rather it didn't.

I spent quite a bit of time playing with smplayer and vlc command lines. By using o- top and one-instance play-then-exit and a few other switches, I at least made it so if they click another video while its playing, it switches, and when its done, it exits media player. Didn't seem like I could make it automatically play the next video (like minitube does).

But my bigest annoyance was window size. Minitube was convenient as it played everything in its own window. With SMtube, I can't seem to get it to behave the way I want, and I've played with various size and position settings. I have 1280x1024 screen resoultion and smtube set to prefer 720p. When something is actually 720p, it should be full width, and that works ok. For example when a video is like 480x360 I'd prefer to have it doubled in size with right side of window on right side of screen. Basically everything that's widescreen scaled to fit 1280 width and if not, scaled to use most of the screen but pegged to the right (so search results still visible on left).

I can only find settings that make me happy for a particular video resolution, but not something that does what I want regardless of video's resoultion. But anyways it's better than non functional, and I guess it'll teach my kids learn to resize and move windows. But still really wish I could make minitube work again.

Little kids who can't read much watching youtube unsupervised?

They watch just educational channel