[directhex]

The "slow" issue.

Rhythmbox does not scale. The reason it does not scale is that for every track in your library, a ListStore entry is created for the track - every track causes that object to grow, and for huge libraries, we're talking a LOT of memory.

Banshee works around this issue through a very clever custom widget (written in C#) which only ever contains as many tracks as you see on the screen, plus 10 in either direction. When you scroll, the custom list is throwing away and repopulating its mini-list, a "viewport" if you will, of your total library. As a result, there is no RB-style bloating with library size due to the list object.

However, the trade off is that the constant refreshing of the object uses more CPU time. That's the trade-off.