Slashdot Mirror

Add me to the list. It is so heavy and slow, but losing working Shoucast station integration was the last straw for me. Before Amarok I was using Songbird, until that died, then I went to using Exaile under KDE. Excellent player. Clementine is supposed to be Amarok-lite (based on the KDE 3.5 version), but I now use Guayadeque which is snappy and has all the functionality I need.

Phillip.

Have you tried Exaile yet? Exaile is a music manager and player for GTK+ written in Python, uses about 100 MiB resident memory with my ~8500 song library and a bunch of loaded plugins. It's surprisingly fast despite being a Python program. The UI closely resembles the old Amarak 1.x series although it carries less eye candy which you probably like as a GNOME user.

My other favorite for older systems or a laptop running on batteries is ncmpcpp, an ncurses based MPD client written in C++, similar to ncmpc but with a bunch of nice extra features like a flexible search form. Also, the name ncmpcpp has to be the pinnacle of FOSS marketing & branding! That name basically melts on your tongue!

If you use Gnome and liked Amarok 1.x, you could also take a look at Exaile. It's pretty much Amarok 1.x for Gnome, except that it's still actively developed. It doesn't feel as bloated as Songbird either.

I'm not quite sure what your point is. You don't need iTunes to put music on your iPod, either.

Not testing, not getting their requirements right, not fixing bugs.
Choose any arbitrary combination of the above.
Fortunately I discovered Exaile, and since then I have not bothered about Amarok any more.

I've been running Exaile for a while now. It feels a lot like Amarok but looks great in Gnome. Plus it's written in Python, which in my mind makes it sexy.

Which is just not possible.

It's possible, it's just not desirable. I don't see the issue with mixing apps from different frameworks anyway.

Where is the music player that beats Amarok?

Ugh. Just any single one? I'd rather use windows media player through wine...luckily I don't have to because of rhythmbox.

Believe it or not, my point here isn't that Amarok sucks. You obviously like it a lot, which means they've done something right. My point is that people have different tastes and want to use different stuff. I hate Amarok, but I don't think everybody else should quit using it. You like it, a lot of other people like it, yay for you. I don't like it, I shall use rhythmbox and stay away from amarok. Choice is good. What I think sucks is the exact same software you think is the best one available. I'm sure we could find examples that go in the other direction if we tried.

He had localized GNOME in Dutch, and when KGPG pops up...everything was in English. The localization settings are stored in different places...

Don't see a problem with that either, I've configured my desktop both under gnome and kde to get things the way I like them for all apps I use. If that type of stuff bothers you, then I guess you should try to avoid using programs from another desktop. If it bothers enough people that there's no gtk amarok, somebody should make an amarok-like player in gtk. Apparently they are doing that with Exaile. Might not be good enough yet (or it might be. I haven't tried it because I have no desire for amarok-like programs), but it'll get there, I'm sure.

Not that I wouldn't encourage both teams to collaborate where possible in order to increase compatibility between frameworks, that would be great. However, I certainly wouldn't want either KDE or gnome to disappear (or for qt or gtk to disappear) for the same reasons I outlined above. I like the ability to pick and choose what I prefer and the choices I make won't necessarily be the same choices you'd make. Somebody is going to be unhappy.

The native Gnome music organiser is Rhythmbox. If you do literally want a GTK Amarok clone, there's one called Exaile (currently beta).

for a GTK version of amaroK, take a look at http://www.exaile.org/ (still missing some features, but it's being heavily developed)

Exaile is basically Amarok for Gnome, no need to use KDE.

I use Amarok in Kubuntu, but there is an excelent Gnome clone called Exaile http://www.exaile.org/

• Be an ID3 tag-nazi - No player can compensate for 750 GB of badly named media. MP3Tag is your friend for batch editing ID3 tags.
• Sort all your files using a resonable naming system. I use '/path/to/archive/%Artist%/[%Year] %Album%/%02Track% - %Title%.%Ext%'. This comes in real handy for writing scripts to deal with an archive to large to manage by hand.
• Backup. Backup. Backup.

If a GNOME-ified version of amaroK existed, I'd install it in a heartbeat and kiss KDE goodbye.

Voris support on non-Linux systems is rather poor. Under Windows I use Zinf which is decent. Winamp >3 has pissed me off far to many times to ever bother with again. Foobar 2000 is alright, though the interface is an eyesore. Under OS X, you're out of luck. VLC is about the only decent choice and it's really only good for video.

I originally ripped over 400 cds into Vorbis format, but I've since had to re-rip them all into MP3 (LAME-encoded). The reasons were:

1) I needed a laptop and didn't want Windows. After weeks of searching, I bought a PowerBook (it dual boots with Ubuntu since Fink pissed me off one too many times). iTunes seems to be the only decent media player and it lacks support for Vorbis. The project that enabled support didn't work with the version of QuickTime Tiger ships with.

2) I wanted a portable player. I spent months looking for a player over 40G that supported Vorbis. No luck. I ended up getting a 60GB iPod.

So, I had to spend a few weeks re-riping my music collection.

I'd really prefer to use Vorbis as it's an excellent codec, but on non-Linux systems and portable players the support sucks. Xiph really needs a marketing department. For now, though, I have to put up with ~224b MP3's (I use lame's standard preset) instead of the ~160b Vorbis files I used to use. I buy music online now, too, but I only use services that support MP3 (eMusic. primarily).

Anyway, my primary OS is Linux and my media player of choice is Exaile. Look at it's screen shots. It has a very good interface and still blends in with the desktop. If you use Linux and Gnome, give it a try. If you use KDE, give amaroK a try (Exaile is a clone of amaroK, but designed for Gnome).

Winamp -> XMMS

1. Many Windows don't know what "Winamp" is. They use Windows Media Player or iTunes. Please point people to alternatives such as Exaile (Gnome) and amoroK (KDE).
2. Please advocate something modern. XMMS still uses GTK1 and feels very out of place on a modern desktop. It does not compete with a modern Winamp in terms of functionality. Please point people towards modern Winamp-like programs such as Beep Media Player and Audacious.

While amaroK rocks (it's the first of it's kind that got me to switch from xmms/beep-media-player), I'd highly recommend Exaile. It's very similar and incorporates much of the functionality, but it's designed for Gnome. It fits in much better with the desktop. I've been using it for a few months now and have been very satisfied. They provide many packages for different distributions as well.

If you're using Gnome, give it a try. If you using KDE, stick with amaroK.

The newer versions of Winamp suck, but at least it still sucks less than the alternatives. However, when I use Windows I usually use iTunes.

XMMS is pretty much deprecated. I mean, it still uses GTK1 . If you want something XMMS/Winamp like, give Beep Media Player or Audacious a try. Both of those support XMMS and Winamp skins, have a good amount of plugins, and are modern.

Personally, though, I think the current best two are amaroK (KDE) and Exaile (Gnome).

Personally, I like my interfaces to be fairly consistent. This is my current choice.

Have you tried exaile? It's like amarok, but using gtk. I've only recently discovered it myself, so I can't say if it works better than amarok, but it's worth a try.