Couldn’t be more agree with you. I guessed all the dependencies would be included in the AppImage, that’s why that technology was created.
2 Likes
I’d just like to +1 this as well. Plexamp is currently the only way we can have mpris (desktop integration) support for playing media from plex, which is a must nowadays.
If you cannot spend the time required for bundling pango just open source plexamp and we will gladly do it for the community. Or even better, upgrade the bundled electron, which seems to be the root cause of the problem.
Thanks!
5 Likes
Did anyone ever resolve this? I’ve just jumped to Fedora 31 and have ultimately lost PlexAmp. There don’t seem to be any earlier versions of pango in the repos to revert to. My own fault- should’ve just stuck with Fedora 30 where everything was working fine.
No, as of right now Plexamp is broken on Linux, if you can’t go back to earlier pango versions you’re out of luck until Plex updates Plexamp.
Good morning @Elan
There is an approximate date for when the new version of the program will be available
Not at the moment, sorry; but not too long.
I’m not intending to come off as a jerk here, but it’s taken the Plex team 5 months so far to respond to and fix an issue that affects ALL up-to-date distributions of Linux, and ultimately involves adding a single library to the appimage as a completely viable interim fix.
Forgive me for being skeptical of the statement you made about “focusing all [your] energy” on this.
1 Like
They said they’re focusing on “getting the new version out”, not on fixing this specific bug. Software releases take time.
I agree that 5 months is a long time, and would certainly like a more precise ETA regarding this bugfix (I’m now completely unable to use Plexamp) - however that’s just how it is being a minority of affected users for a closed-source project, it’s not like we can fix this ourselves, and we can’t tell how easy the fix is or how long it will take, and obviously we don’t know what issues are involved so it is unfair to say this would be an easy fix, no matter how easy it may look from the outside.
@elan Plexamp is basically the only viable way to use Plex on most Linux distros, especially if you care about gapless playback as I do. It certainly is the most pleasant, by far, and the most functional, I was thrilled to see it work so well on Linux when the appimage came out.
Right now we’re pretty frustrated though because it simply does not start up and I can’t help but feel like this is being treated like a low priority bug because Linux represents a small percentage of users. Now, I understand that’s just a reality of software development - but Plexamp simply does not work at all for a lot of us right now and we’d appreciate a proper response from the Plex team regarding this 5 month delay because to us this is the opposite of a minor bug.
1 Like
I apologize it’s taken so long. The new version is essentially a complete rewrite, hence why it’s taken longer than usual.
Adding back mpris is one of the items on the list remaining.
1 Like
On manjaro/arch I’m still using this to downgrade pango every time I want to start plexamp, and then I immediately update after launching. Plexamp continues to run after re-upgrading pango (but you’ll need to downgrade again if you close plexamp).
Having said that… it’s absurd that we still have to do this 4 months later. Working on a rewrite is no excuse for allowing your latest official release to be completely broken for months.
Thanks for the serious reply elan, good luck with the rewrite.
Hello fellow Arch users, and those affected by this library issue.
I have a crude but workable solution to this problem, which allows for using an older pango library without obstructing the rest of the system. It works for me, YMMV, etc.
Thanks to @EquateBrand for determining what pango lib was necessary.
I did the following:
cd ~
mkdir .mylib
cd .mylib
wget https://archive.archlinux.org/packages/p/pango/pango-1%3A1.44.1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz
xz -d pango-1\:1.44.1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz
# tar doesn't like the colon, and I was lazy:
mv pango-1\:1.44.1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar pango-1--1.44.1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar
tar xpvf pango-1--1.44.1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/hesperaux/.mylib/usr/lib/:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH ~/Downloads/plexamp-1.1.0-x86_64.AppImage
Obviously you can change where you extract stuff, and fix the paths how you like. But this will override the system library path for pango. I did a quick test and PlexAmp does run fine.
When I don’t set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH, this still happens:
╚═══ [03:36:46 PM] $ ~/Downloads/plexamp-1.1.0-x86_64.AppImage
installed: X-AppImage-BuildId=1eb65ac0-f46d-11a8-2a14-3f03bf545e72 image: X-AppImage-BuildId=1eb65ac0-f46d-11a8-2a14-3f03bf545e72
(plexamp:104862): Pango-ERROR **: 15:36:50.217: Harfbuzz version too old (1.4.2)
and:
╚═══ [03:37:28 PM] $ pacman -Qs pango
local/pango 1:1.44.7-1
…which tells me it’s doing its job.
This is a crude workaround; I’d still like to see the real fix (no holidays, Plex Labs guys! 
). But do enjoy the holidays first. Happy holidays all.
4 Likes
This works for me, thanks for providing a concise guide.
This issue perfectly demonstrates how Open Source software is not only better, but worth more money.
I feel completely conned having payed for Plex, the consistency with which issues are ignored and or blamed on incorrect things is astounding. Every penny I have spent on Plex is wasted, as this project will fail to stand the test of time.
You don’t contribute back to open source, as far as I can tell, and you provide much worse support than any single open source project.
Taking without giving and failing to adhere to even the loosest standards and best practices will only make this worse and worse as time goes on, as if it’s not already bad enough.
What am I paying you for?
Thank you very much @hesperaux, plexamp works again, but I have a problem, I can’t read what it puts on the menu. Here is the image
1 Like
I’m glad to hear this is getting attention. Thanks for the work put on this, MPRIS is certainly a must-have feature for many of us linux users.
Glad it helped. Unfortunately, I have the same problem with the system tray icon. I just work around it I’m afraid… I’m not sure what the problem is. Missing font? Dunno…
Would love to hear if anyone knows why this is happening. It would be nice to have the system tray context menu.
So are we going anywhere with this? Are you going to release the source so we can properly develop this?
I’m going to stop paying for Plex Pass due to this, out of principle. This can’t stand.
1 Like
I wish, at the very least, we could have some indication of when this problem will be fixed. As far as I know, the rewrite of Plexamp has no release date and they clearly don’t want to fix the dependency issue anytime soon Every couple of months I come back to this thread and hope to see action from the developers but here we are, six months later with no fix.
I’m gradually moving away from plex and setting up my own stuff in various OSS manners. Plex handles itself now like any lingering company does.
There’s some commentary here about the state of Plexamp.
