Slashdot Mirror
Winamp Alpha for Linux
nerdguy0 writes "It appears that Winamp isn't just for Windows anymore. Nullsoft has a Linux alpha of Winamp3 out on their site. Hopefully it doesn't overshadow all of the hard work the XMMS people have done." Does winamp have better playlist controls then xmms? I've taken to using freeamp just because it has decent playlist controls. I say decent, not good. I want something with a tivo type of intelligence, but everything that claims to do something like this, well, doesn't.
Hopefully it doesn't overshadow all of the hard work the XMMS people have done.
Who's to say the winamp people haven't done hard work either? Just because they have corporate sponsorship and their software is closed-source doesn't mean the software is 'bad'. Besides, if there are already good players available for linux, I doubt people would switch to a closed-source solution that does the exact same thing, unless it offered superior features of some kind. Anyway, this should be considered a good thing, as linux needs as much support as it can get when it comes to multimedia applications, and especially ones from big companies (in this case, AOL)
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Complaining on and on about how Company X won't provide Software X for Linux, followed (immediately upon release by Company X of Linux version) of complete deriding of that software (comparing its features to some previously created Linux software) is not good encouragement for other software companies looking into the possibility.
Not to say software shouldn't be allowed to compete against other similar software so that the best can win, but the immediate, relentless bias towards the earlier-compatible software serves no one.
Why would I so unique about Winamp that I would want to switch? Last time I used Windows, Winamp was a nice player that did it job without being annoying. (Quite an achievement for Windows software, BTW). But what does Winamp have that popular Linux players, such as XMMS and Freeamp lack?
Recently there have been a few projects using a subset of wine to support some subset of Win32 for some specific purpose (codecs, games etc). This looks like a possible application for this technology. I wouldn't be surprised if WinAMP itself is being ported with the aid of winelib.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
IDNOAT, but I hear Tivos have a "thumbs up" and a "thumbs down" function to allow you to give feedback to it about what you like.
The interesting part is that half of that user interface is already in an mp3 player, they just need to take advantage of it.
Consider...
I have about 4000 tracks in my mp3 library. I leave xmms on shuffle play. There are tracks that I almost always skip. Sometimes it is a weak track on an album, sometimes it has especially inflamatory lyrics and isn't appropriate for the office, sometimes it is an artist that has ticked me off (Randy Newman isn't getting played much lately).
The player should keep track of which tracks or artists I habitually skip reduce their probability in the play list. If I stop skipping them then it should start reducing their penalty. (Say Randy Newman drops his suit against mp3.com and apologizes, I might stop skipping his tracks.)
There, no complicated user interface required. Just a player that pays attention and learns a wee bit. For bonus points, add a "i like it" button to the user interface and allow tracks to acquire 'thumbs up' points as well.
What if the developers' strengths are in developing multimedia applications? Or GUIs? Do you want them to develop MySQL until *you're* ready to use Linux as a desktop? Not me. What about the StarOffice, AbiWord and Ximian developers? Do you want them to abandon their projects so they can work on something you approve of?
I for one use Linux as my desktop for 70 hours a week rebooting to Windows only when I need to check my email in Lotus Notes (and that's only because I haven't loaded the RPM yet).
Its not up to you to decide how the rest of us use Linux. It already is a desktop-suitable OS.
Intelligent Life on Earth
The name has to be changed to Linamp.
No sig for you.
Not just that, but it requires a very bleeding edge Linux system (Glibc 2.2, libfreetype, libstdc++-libc6.2)
Personally, I feel they should release this as a completely static binary, this way it can be run on any Linux system. Linking to such bleeding edge libraries (We are a Redhat 6.2 shop) is unwise since few people will go through the trouble of upgrading glibc just to try this.
I'll just stick with xmms.
Deep breath.
This is not a release. It's an alpha version, fergawdsakes. You don't release precompiled binaries of alpha versions.
And yes, it's bleeding-edge: of course. The fact that it was compiled with bleeding-edge libraries is probably a reflection of the libraries Nullsoft have on their Linux boxen.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore