End of road for Rhythmbox

[b3n87]

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/rhythmbox-devel/2009-February/msg00023.html

Doesnt look hopeful, I really like Rhythmbox. I know its very simple, but the Music library is rock solid, I love the fact it "watches" my music folder and automatically adds / removes files as they are created / deleted.

If this is the end of Rhythmbox (lets hope not), what could replace it? Banshee has a ridiculous amount of dependencies and Exaile is based on python :/ Amarok is QT so thats not gonna happen.

Thoughts?

[ghindo]

I like Rhythmbox too. It's simple, but very effective. Rhythmbox really doesn't get as much respect as it deserves.

I would hope that somebody else takes over the project, but if not - who knows?

[b3n87]

I do feel GNOME lacks slighty in the media department. Will have to see where Banshee goes. Not sure if a desktop full of Mono apps is good tho :S maybe im just being cynical

[animestudiogeek]

I use Banshee so this won't affect me very much. Truth is, I never got to give Rythmbox much of a chance. My hard drive fails hard at a whopping 4 GB :(

That means I've got to use a removable 80 gig one and in turn, whenever it gets pulled out, Rythmbox deletes all of my music :( Ergo, Banshee.

[Simian Man]

Well that's sad, I love Rhythmbox :(.

I would be willing to go for Banshee, having no problem with Mono, but I wonder about the iPod support. Is it drag-n-drop easy as it is under Rhythmbox? I don't want "synching" like that mess itunes.

I notice Banshee doesn't use libgpod, hence my question.

[binbash]

I like Rhythmbox, it is sad to hear that....

[kk0sse54]

I was never a big fan of rhythmbox so I it doesn't really sadden me to see it go however it was a nice and simple generic default music player.

[FuturePilot]

I was never really a fan of Rhythmbox but it's still sad to see a core component of Gnome die. I wonder what they will replace it with.

I personally love Banshee.

[23meg]

I was never really a fan of Rhythmbox but it's still sad to see a core component of Gnome die. I wonder what they will replace it with.

Rhythmbox is not a core component of GNOME. It's just another audio player for GNOME (probably the most popular one), and happens to have GNOME SVN and GNOME Bugzilla modules, like many other GNOME related projects that live in those places.

And the fact that the current maintainer is planning to drop maintainership doesn't mean the project is dying. Someone else will probably take over. Or maybe the constraints (http://mail.gnome.org/archives/rhythmbox-devel/2009-February/msg00029.html) that the current maintainer sees as permanent blockers will be amended by patches from others, and he will continue maintainership.

[animestudiogeek]

but I wonder about the iPod support. Is it drag-n-drop easy as it is under Rhythmbox? I don't want "synching" like that mess itunes

For Banshee, you just click on the iPod and click manually manage music or something to that effect. Then you can drag songs on nice and simple :)

[Rem0te C0ntr01]

I am also sad to hear this news. I love Rhythmbox! I even switched from amarok to rhythmbox after my music library got to big that amarok was slow to find my searches. Rhythmbox has been speedy even after 60 gigs of music. I will be sad to see it go. I have not tried Banshee or Exaile. I hope they work well with large libraries.

[Keyper7]

Exaile is based on python

So?

Not arguing, just asking.

[b3n87]

Python can be slow and is more dependancies that needed to be run on the PC. Theres nothing *bad* about it, its just programs like Rhythmbox which is written in C are a lot more efficent and run faster with less memory

[Keyper7]

Python can be slow and is more dependancies that needed to be run on the PC. Theres nothing *bad* about it, its just programs like Rhythmbox which is written in C are a lot more efficent and run faster with less memory

More efficient? Probably. A lot more efficient? I don't know.

Exaile is mostly what, GTK and GStreamer? For both the Python versions are actually bindings to C libraries.

Good programming can probably ensure that the overhead is not very large.

[doorknob60]

Rhythmbox is one of the only 3 media players I can stand using on Linux. My top 3:
3. Rhythmbox
2. Amarok
1. Exaile

Sad to see it go I guess, but Exaile is good for GTK users and of course there's still Amarok (I'll stick with 1.4 until 2.x gets good. Sometimes it feels like it has no hope for it to be good. Then I think back and that's exactly the way I thought when KDE 4.0 came out. Now look, I'm using KDE 4.2 full time on my desktop, so Amarok 2 has amazing potential.) Banshee never worked right for me though. The reason Exaile is #1 is because it allows me to put media buttons in the system tray, genious! I can use hotkeys, but often the buttons are more convinient (I use both regularly).

[gnomeuser]

Not going to miss it, it was always unstable to me and the pace at which features are added can best be described as glacial. It e.g. still does not do proper portable player syncronization.

I am hoping this will spell wider adoption of Banshee, it is a great player with a fast paced development that quickly gets us fixes, features and bling.

[directhex]

Not going to miss it, it was always unstable to me and the pace at which features are added can best be described as glacial. It e.g. still does not do proper portable player syncronization.

I am hoping this will spell wider adoption of Banshee, it is a great player with a fast paced development that quickly gets us fixes, features and bling.

I'd feel much better about a formal s/rhythmbox/banshee/ proposal for the desktop team if Banshee had true parity with ALL RB features - for example, it has no daap server (only client), and no online store

It's the player app I use, but changing default app needs SERIOUS thought

[gnomeuser]

I'd feel much better about a formal s/rhythmbox/banshee/ proposal for the desktop team if Banshee had true parity with ALL RB features - for example, it has no daap server (only client), and no online store

It's the player app I use, but changing default app needs SERIOUS thought

On the other hand, Banshee will quickly catch up and it has already surpassed Rhythmbox on so many fronts. 100% regression free upgrades are nearly impossible.

I think Scott just demoed a full DAAP server for banshee and I have seen the first work being done on a magnatune pluigin. I have no idea where those are in terms of development though.

[hoboken]

Guys, this is open source. It's not dead, just changing hands.

Relax.

[directhex]

Guys, this is open source. It's not dead, just changing hands.

Relax.

Perhaps. Perhaps it might even be a good thing - new blood, fresh excitement, faster development, etc

But it unavoidably causes people to reassess their reliance on a project with apparently no active upstream development

[CarpKing]

The reason Exaile is #1 is because it allows me to put media buttons in the system tray, genious! I can use hotkeys, but often the buttons are more convinient (I use both regularly).

Try Gnome Music Applet (apt://music-applet). It serves as a launcher that turns into control buttons when the app is launched, and supports everything from Rhythmbox to VLC.

[3rdalbum]

I hate Banshee. The version available for Hardy had lots of features and was good. The version for Intrepid has fewer features than most console-based players. I mean, you can't change the metadata for audio CDs before ripping them - so if your disc's song titles aren't found or are incorrect, you are STUFFED. You have to rip them and then manually rename and retag them afterwards.

Banshee now feels like an MPD client, and I assure you that's not a good thing.

Incidentally, Banshee's dependence on Mono means it will never ship as part of the Gnome core. Mono-dependent programs are banned from the Gnome core. I think Rhythmbox will continue anyway, I just shouldn't expect them to implement simultaneous CD ripping; the only feature remaining in Banshee that I like.

[directhex]

Incidentally, Banshee's dependence on Mono means it will never ship as part of the Gnome core. Mono-dependent programs are banned from the Gnome core.

Ever heard of Tomboy?

[gnomeuser]

Incidentally, Banshee's dependence on Mono means it will never ship as part of the Gnome core. Mono-dependent programs are banned from the Gnome core.

No, that is patently false. Tomboy is a core desktop component as relies on Mono. Additionally components like ndesk-dbus are approved external libraries to use in the core platform. No such ban exists, please check your facts.

[fwojciec]

Banshee now feels like an MPD client, and I assure you that's not a good thing.

Sounds like a very good thing to me ;) Maybe I'll try it out.

[pt123]

Guys, this is open source. It's not dead, just changing hands.

Relax.
As much as this is thrown around it rarely happens.
There are far too many instances of "reinventing of the wheel" in Linux apps. especially in music players.

A shame I really like RB, it's fast, smooth and has a good UI.

[ballin]

Mixed feelings personally.

I love RB and use it as my sole audio player, however bug fixing is currently slow so as long as the project doesn't die, which I doubt it will, I think as said a fresh set of eyes could help it along again.

[bubwitmaingay]

I like Rhythmbox too. It's simplistically beautiful on my desktop. Is it true that it will not be upgraded or whatever? I just read the thread title and read some posts - I'm sad.:icon_frown:

[chucky chuckaluck]

not being developed further also could mean 'not screwing it up'.

[notwen]

not being developed further also could mean 'not screwing it up'.

Cheers to that, that's certainly one thing that can happen w/ open source, someone takes the code and screws it up to their personal liking and releases it hoping to be the next big thing.

[docus]

I'm enjoying Songbird a lot. It has all sorts of features I don't use but the core program seems solid and it's intuitive to use (for me anyway).

[directhex]

I'm enjoying Songbird a lot. It has all sorts of features I don't use but the core program seems solid and it's intuitive to use (for me anyway).

The non-GTK+ UI might work against it - e.g. accessibility is a concern for the desktop team (large fonts etc). Plus, it needs to shed a few pounds of bloat.

[ssam]

i do like the rhythmbox interface. what would be perfect would be a mpd/xmms2 client modelled on rhythmbox.

[stormtrooprdave]

Rhythmbox is my default player - I love it! When I first moved to linux I tried all sorts of media players and RB was my favourite. Combine it with Desktop Art (http://www.nedrebo.org/code/rhythmbox/desktop_art) and you've got a great player

[Rokurosv]

I'm using Rhythmbox right now :D. So far it works great and it's the only media player I use besides Amarok on KDE. I don't mind if it's not developed anymore, as long as it keeps playing my music I'm happy with it.

[sydbat]

I've found that Rhythmbox plays the vinyl I record (into FLAC, or any other format) without a problem, while Amarok, for some reason, will not play those specific files without skipping or garbling the sound.

The only problem I have with RB is the random crashes...

[NTolerance]

Hopefully this doesn't slow down the project much. In recent times Rhythmbox has become (IMHO) the single Gnome music player that makes an attempt at providing a full music album experience:

1. Gapless playback was added recently. Still needs some some serious work, but at least it makes an attempt.
2. An album art plugin bug was recently fixed so it now reads folder.jpg files correctly.

Again, IMHO these two features are essential for any true music player. Unfortunately the alternative players end up adding fluff like video and web streaming instead.

[mamamia88]

so is it really done or is this just speculation?

[hessiess]

I like rithmbox, but the UI contains a lot of useless garbage, and its vertually impossable to controal without a mouse, so ive started to like cmus more.

[Dragonbite]

This is a good example of open source at work.

A project dies (or does it?...) but there are 3-4+ other applications able to replace it functionally (Banshee, Exaile, Listen, Songbird, Amarok, Xmms(?) and more).

The project may be picked up at just about any time by just about anybody. This couldn't happen so easily with closed-source applications.

"And the beat goes on.." :lolflag:

[cmay]

it would be sad to loose rytmhbox. i use elisa and xine-ui and rytmh box. i use totem once in a while for movies too but i like to use xine better. xine can just not stand there playing random tracks from the music folder like rytmhbox can do. i had songbird on my open-solaris installation when i used that but i quickly got rytmhbox installed instead. i like that musicplayer very much. i think i will gry if its not the default in gnome.

[Vadi]

It's not going away - the program will still be usable, it won't degrate in quality or etc. So there's no reason to switch - unless you find something better.

Nevermind that it's open-source and anyone can pick up the project to continue developing it.

[directhex]

Nevermind that it's open-source and anyone can pick up the project to continue developing it.

But will they? Most people are consumers, not producers

[Vadi]

Even if they don't - it's not like Rhythmbox will stop launching and playing music.

[Orlsend]

Rhythmbox is good but we need something more like Songbird (Except of the built in browser, that a bit overkill) but the customization its the best out of all players.

[directhex]

(Except of the built in browser, that a bit overkill)

It's a XulRunner app. It's got a built-in browser whether you see it or not

[Therion]

Poor little Rhythmbox... So simple! So stable!

It truly doesn't get the love it deserves, IMO.

[Kareeser]

Rhythmbox is my default player - I love it! When I first moved to linux I tried all sorts of media players and RB was my favourite. Combine it with Desktop Art (http://www.nedrebo.org/code/rhythmbox/desktop_art) and you've got a great player

Whoa. Didn't even know something so awesome existed. Thanks for the suggestion! Looks great against my desktop.

In any case, I use Rhythmbox exclusively too. I wasn't a fan of their music library at first, but after getting used to it, it's MUCH easier to organize my music, as opposed to my previous method of playing individual files on Winamp (on XP)

[Namtabmai]

No, that is patently false. Tomboy is a core desktop component as relies on Mono. Additionally components like ndesk-dbus are approved external libraries to use in the core platform. No such ban exists, please check your facts.

I think a few of you are confusing Gnome with Ubuntu.

Either way, as others have said, this doesn't mean Rhythmbox is dead. The best thing about open source is if there are enough people who want this someone will take up the task.Look at XMMS, dead maybe, dropped from most distrobutions, yes. But there are been a least two forks as well as some people continuing to package it for modern distros.

Then again I'm an Exaile user, and if someone does branch Rhythmbox will you at least change the name, I've got a blind spot when it comes to spelling rhythm. ;)

[b3n87]

I've found that Rhythmbox plays the vinyl I record (into FLAC, or any other format) without a problem, while Amarok, for some reason, will not play those specific files without skipping or garbling the sound.

The only problem I have with RB is the random crashes...

The random crashes could be gstreamer, had that issue in hardy 8.04 I think it was

[imaginashawn]

I only had a month to enjoy it. Used it every day.
Anyways, why dosn't somebody "pick up the ball?"

[regonzal]

I truly feel comfortable with this application since it does what it is supposed to do without a lot of the hassles of other players. It just works :)

[Wolki]

I think a few of you are confusing Gnome with Ubuntu.

Since there seems to be some confusion:

Release notes from when Tomboy was added to GNOME: http://library.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/2.16/#rnfeatures-tomboy

Still in the Release Suite for the next version: http://live.gnome.org/TwoPointTwentyfive/Desktop

gtk# in the bindings:
http://live.gnome.org/TwoPointTwentyfive/Bindings

That said, 3rdalbum's terminology was a bit unclear, as there is no GNOME core release suite, and it is thus not quite clear what it is supposed to be referring to. If it's the platform, the statement may well be correct, but that does not say a lot since there are no desktop applications in the platform. There is, however, a gnome-core metapackage in the ubuntu repositories, on which a "no mono" restiction may well exist. That package only depends on the bare essentials (nautilus, panel, wm, terminal, text editor, yelp, eog) and no multimedia applications, so if a mono-based application could not be included here it would not change anything with regards to banshee.

Personally, I somehow like Banshee, but find its performance to be unsatisfactory, with ram usage substantially higher than rb, and ui responiveness when selecting and searching much lower. I'm looking forward to the next releases to see if they can fix this. Banshee's architecture seems to be very flexible, which makes different interfaces (such as the muine-like one that landed some time ago) possible. That a common core can support different models of media player usage seems like a good thing to me.

[gnomeuser]

Personally, I somehow like Banshee, but find its performance to be unsatisfactory, with ram usage substantially higher than rb, and ui responiveness when selecting and searching much lower. I'm looking forward to the next releases to see if they can fix this. Banshee's architecture seems to be very flexible, which makes different interfaces (such as the muine-like one that landed some time ago) possible. That a common core can support different models of media player usage seems like a good thing to me.

Please file bugs (with upstream naturally) we would love to fix this. Also note that performance is better with newer releases of Mono due to improvements there.

[Father Marc]

I use Exaile, which bills itself as "Amarok replacement." I loved Amarok when I used KDE 3.5 and I do find Exaile to be a suitable replacement.

I never like Rhythmbox OR Banshee.

Is there something I'm missing about Exaile? Someone says it is Python? So? Is that a bad thing? What difference does it make?

I'm not being argumentative... I really would like to learn more about this sort of thing and I don't understand why something like that would be a valid criticism.

Hope somebody can clear it up for me... maybe even in another thread or private email if my question is too far abroad from this thread topic.

Pax Christi

[Wolki]

Please file bugs (with upstream naturally) we would love to fix this. Also note that performance is better with newer releases of Mono due to improvements there.

I would, but there's at least one bug about bad performance already and it makes no sense to have duplicates.

Good to hear about better performance with newer mono, gives me more to look forward to for Jaunty.

[pt123]

Is there something I'm missing about Exaile? Someone says it is Python? So? Is that a bad thing? What difference does it make?

I found the UI to be counter intuitive, you have to perform numerous actions just to rate a song, while with Rhythmbox it's one click.

RB also has drag and drop cover art.

[Dragonbite]

I'm suprised I haven't heard anybody list Listen (http://www.listen-project.org/), although I may have just missed it.

[Grant A.]

TBH, Listen Music Player supersedes Rhythmbox, and it is for GNOME. :)

[pt123]

^lol that project has been dead for 2 years

[cmat]

Not dead but done.

Anyways, you'll see someone fork these projects soon enough.

[pt123]

Not dead but done.

Anyways, you'll see someone fork these projects soon enough.

I don't think so, it rarely happens. Forks usually happen when there is high level of development activity, and two different ideas emerge as to where the project should head.

[Dragonbite]

^lol that project has been dead for 2 years

It looks like there is some activity going on recently in the Timeline (http://www.listen-project.org/timeline) link. There are tickets being closed as recently as 2/25/2009.

Hope not, I just installed it! #-o

[Kareeser]

Someone will probably take over.

The interface to Rhythmbox, I think, is very polished and smooth. I'd be pretty a bit bummed if someone messed around with it.

[Kareeser]

Just a heads-up... today's update in Jaunty contained an update candidate for Rhythmbox :)

[Tibuda]

Someone will probably take over.

The interface to Rhythmbox, I think, is very polished and smooth. I'd be pretty a bit bummed if someone messed around with it.

I love Rhythmbox interface too. You should check Banshee, they are very similar.

[Yownanymous]

This is a shame. I really like rythmbox. It is definitely my music player of choice.

[b3n87]

I completely forgot about Listen, thats an awesome player. New version in the works too.

http://www.listen-project.org/

if anyone downloads and wants to build version x0.6 you do the following



cd ~
svn checkout svn://listen-project.org/listen/trunk listen-trunk
cd listen-trunk
sudo apt-get build-dep listen
sudo apt-get install python-pyinotify
make clean
make
sudo make install


I think thats all right - Ive just done that off the top of my head :)

[Dragonbite]

songbird 1.1 is out too.

[Mehall]

songbird 1.1 is out too.

It doesn;t even have an EQ.

[b3n87]

Songbird is also awesome - some heavy development going on in that project

[joey-elijah]

I've only just heard about this and i am sad. Rhythmbox is a wonderfully 'gnome ethos' player - it was simple to use and just worked.

It works flawlessly with lastfm and i having so many computers/different OSes it's DAAP feature is second-to-none.

Not everyone wants or needs a player than gives you wikipedia info, youtube videos etc as you listen to music. Sure it's nice, but if you're not online you have a 'dead' looking player.

I'm sure i'll keep using RB tho - it has some awesome plugins - like music applet, lastfm recommendations, music store.

EDIT: Oh and i totally forgot it's 'fade' tracks into one another feature - something even iTunes can't do properly.

[Twitch6000]

Well if rythmbox does become a dead project I hope banshee becomes the default. Mainly because it is another easy to use music player and is very much like WMP :).

[Changturkey]

Can we have something like AIMP2 for Linux?

[ghindo]

The only issue I've ever had with Rhythmbox is that the Last.fm plugin doesn't register tracks as "now listening." Other than that, it's been great!

[Changturkey]

http://ario-player.sourceforge.net/index.php

MPD client that looks a lot like Rhythmbox.

[jimi_hendrix]

I do feel GNOME lacks slighty in the media department. Will have to see where Banshee goes. Not sure if a desktop full of Mono apps is good tho :S maybe im just being cynical

whats so bad about mono...its open source...

[23meg]

Rhythmbox is not dead or dying. It has three more maintainers (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Talk:Features/BansheeAsDefaultMediaplayer#FUD), and the current one hasn't exactly given up on it; he has only mentioned some deeply rooted technical limitations due to which he isn't considering to continue maintainership.

[k2t0f12d]

mpd FTW

[jocheem67]

Please someone , continue Rhythmbox...it has such great library handling....
I don't care 'bout players like amarok, with all these "features"
I just want a clear view on my music, and RB provides for it..

[Zlatan]

Rhythmbox is not dead or dying. It has three more maintainers (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Talk:Features/BansheeAsDefaultMediaplayer#FUD), and the current one hasn't exactly given up on it; he has only mentioned some deeply rooted technical limitations due to which he isn't considering to continue maintainership.

+1 that's whats happens (this threadd) when there's whinning without checking information source itself

[gnomeuser]

Rhythmbox is not dead or dying. It has three more maintainers (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Talk:Features/BansheeAsDefaultMediaplayer#FUD), and the current one hasn't exactly given up on it; he has only mentioned some deeply rooted technical limitations due to which he isn't considering to continue maintainership.

Rhythmbox, where getting proper portable player syncronization working takes 4 years and counting (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=310774).. not technically stagnant?

Their last release is closing in on being a year old, as a result distros are shipping SVN snapshots. If this is not indicative of some kind of problem with their development process then I fail to see what would be.

As for the Fedora page, being the one who proposed that feature. Bastian, the Fedora maintainer for Rhythmbox and upstream developer, managed to derail a technical discussion by labelling my proprosal of FUD instead of actually sticking to the subject at hand. He then proceeded to lie about me, my motives in public (https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-desktop-list/2009-February/msg00060.html), refusing the apologize (https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-desktop-list/2009-February/msg00063.html) after being corrected (https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-desktop-list/2009-February/msg00062.html) and he defaced the wiki page. I'm sorry, I lost all remaining respect for Rhythmbox and it's developers after that.

[23meg]

Rhythmbox, where getting proper portable player syncronization working takes 4 years and counting (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=310774).. not technically stagnant?

I didn't say that it wasn't technically stagnant (I'm not really qualified to comment on that); I meant that it wasn't dead in the sense that there are still people working on it and maintaining it.


As for the Fedora page, being the one who proposed that feature. Bastian, the Fedora maintainer for Rhythmbox and upstream developer, managed to derail a technical discussion by labelling my proprosal of FUD instead of actually sticking to the subject at hand. He then proceeded to lie about me, my motives in public (https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-desktop-list/2009-February/msg00060.html), refusing the apologize (https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-desktop-list/2009-February/msg00063.html) after being corrected (https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-desktop-list/2009-February/msg00062.html) and he defaced the wiki page. I'm sorry, I lost all remaining respect for Rhythmbox and it's developers after that.

Yes, I read through the whole discussion and know of the happenings afterwards. Both sides seem to have valid arguments, on different points, as usually is the case. I won't comment further on it, in an effort not to derail this thread.

[3rdalbum]

Their last release is closing in on being a year old, as a result distros are shipping SVN snapshots. If this is not indicative of some kind of problem with their development process then I fail to see what would be.

FFMPEG almost never does releases; they encourage distributions to ship SVN snapshots. Network Manager went nearly a year without a proper release, too. So that's two examples without mentioning the D word :-)

[pt123]

Rather strange: 0.12 version got released today with many changes

http://projects.gnome.org/rhythmbox/news.html

They really could do some work on the website, there is very little there to keep users interested. While Banshee on the other hand really know how to do this.

[gnomeuser]

FFMPEG almost never does releases; they encourage distributions to ship SVN snapshots. Network Manager went nearly a year without a proper release, too. So that's two examples without mentioning the D word :-)

And we probably both remember how much trouble that has caused for developers. NM 0.7 has meant a lot of different APIs depending on what snapshot was released in which distro at which point in time. FFmpeg has moved to a time based release cycle now simply because asking consumers to depend on SVN snapshot wasn't viable and helped make them a much hated point of pain for developers.



Rather strange: 0.12 version got released today with many changes

http://projects.gnome.org/rhythmbox/news.html

They really could do some work on the website, there is very little there to keep users interested. While Banshee on the other hand really know how to do this.


For something that is nearly a year in the making (8 months, 10 days) what did we get, the required gnome-vfs to gio transition, better error handling and integration with brasero. Changes to use new gtk stock widgets instead of libsexy stuff. Nothing major, also no really new features, nothing impressive.

In comparison 3 months, 12 days in between Banshee 1.2 and 1.4 gave you:
Improved device support as well as new device support for android powered phones, OS X support, More bling, New track editor, tools for keeping your files orderly and properly named depending on updates to your metadata. A more configurable UI, Regain playback support, collection indexer, A new secondary ui (Muinshee), improvements to podcast support and smart playlists along with 196 bugs fixed.

If Banshee can do that in 3½ months, as well as continue to release bugfix updates to their releases. I am entirely unimpressed with what more than twice that time buys Rhythmbox in terms of improvements. In the future this disparity of development pace will just continue, Rhythmbox is stalled.

[ghindo]

I'm not sure I entirely agree with your assessment. I appreciate that Rhythmbox is simple, straightforward and easy to use. All the features I need are there. I don't need or want "bling;" in fact, I often disable many Rhythmbox plugins after a fresh install. I'm sure I'm not the only user who feels this way. Don't get me wrong, I definitely am impressed by the pace of Banshee's development recently (and am actually downloading it right now to try it out), but I'm not sure development of the pace or the scale you're talking about are really a necessity for a quality music player.

Just a personal opinion. I'm not a developer or anything, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

[bigbrovar]

I really love Rhythmbox. its just the way i want a music player to be. simple and just works (at least for me) it doesnt try to take over the work or make breakfast for you. works well and hardly crashes. I love banshee too just that it can be very unstable at times and its also a memory hug. but most of all MONO

[gnomeuser]

I love banshee too just that it can be very unstable at times and its also a memory hug. but most of all MONO

Did you file bugs, if you don't tell us it's broken we can't be expected to fix it. Aside that stop reading BoycottNovell.

[gnomeuser]

I'm not sure I entirely agree with your assessment. I appreciate that Rhythmbox is simple, straightforward and easy to use. All the features I need are there. I don't need or want "bling;" in fact, I often disable many Rhythmbox plugins after a fresh install. I'm sure I'm not the only user who feels this way. Don't get me wrong, I definitely am impressed by the pace of Banshee's development recently (and am actually downloading it right now to try it out), but I'm not sure development of the pace or the scale you're talking about are really a necessity for a quality music player.

Just a personal opinion. I'm not a developer or anything, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

It's not just about bling. I happen to like a little subtle animation here and there, something pretty to look at, I find that it makes it easier to use applications if they make an effort to use the technology to display it's capabilities. Primarily for me it is about features I need such as flexible podcasting support and proper support for my portable players.

When I plug in my iPod I don't want to have to manually seek out the new tracks since the last time it was inserted. It should do all that in the background. Things like that should just work. I also care about support for multiple media types, when a podcast happens to include video elements I'd like that to actually be supported. I care about being able to organize my music from one interface

As for simplicity, sure that is for some people, I will grant that there are people who will like that better. Also there are very valid use cases where you might want a minimal ui such as for a netbook where the screen is small. You could also imagine that for interfaces where you interact with a touch screen would have other needs yet again to make it easy to control with your fingers.

This is one beautiful aspect of Banshee, they did proper design of the backend and storage parts of the program so that the user interface is entirely replaceable. This is good because it lets us reuse pretty much all the code thus lowering the risk of a bug occuring, you call into the underlying stack which remains 100% the same. There is already two alternate modes available: minimal and muinshee.

This allows Banshee to adapt to any use case you might have. Thus if you find the standard cluttered, I would encourage you to create a mock up of what you would like to see and the very active banshee community will certainly be able to come up with a version for you.

[motang]

Well that just sucks.

[chris4585]

I could care less if rhythmbox died or not, I don't even use it. If you ask me bmpx would be a nice replacement for the masses. Personally I use quodlibet. <3

update:

I take back what I said about bmpx :<

I never actually used it for my library, only for radio. For radio its good, but for my actual library it sucks...

[Kizsde]

This is a bit off-topic, but as I can see there are a lot of music player enthusiasts here so I will throw my question in :)
I'm looking for a player that can do the following:

-Has album art download capability (I think almost all of the players do now)
-Has Lasf.fm scrobbling (same, almost all have)
-Has a nice compact view (some players are all over the place)
-and the most important thing: has a browser that shows the folders and songs in the exact same structure as they are on the hard drive). I just don't like when it sorts my music as artist, albums, genre etc. I just want to have it the way I organized them on the drive. Also it would be nice if it would update the structure automatically, whenever I make changes to it.

Now, I don't know if Exaile, Banshee, Rhythmbox or any other have these capabilities in them already. I have checked Banshee and Rhythmbox but couldn't really find the file browser view. Now I'm using gmusicbrowser as it has this feature, but it's again sitting all over my desktop and the last.fm scrobbling is a bit funky too.

Please don't flame for asking this, I'm pretty new and would appreciate some useful suggestions :lolflag:

Thanks in advance,

Kizsde

[Rainstride]

they could always create a new fork and restart all development, and redesign rhythmbox to get out of the dead end.

[directhex]

they could always create a new fork and restart all development, and redesign rhythmbox to get out of the dead end.

Are you volunteering, then?

[Dragonbite]

I just tried out the Rythmbox in Jaunty and it works fine for me. Even allows me to add songs on my networked server without having to have the drive mounted!

[directhex]

I just tried out the Rythmbox in Jaunty and it works fine for me. Even allows me to add songs on my networked server without having to have the drive mounted!

I think that comes for free with GIO (the latest replacement for GNOME VFS)

[mc4100]

-Has album art download capability (I think almost all of the players do now)
-Has Lasf.fm scrobbling (same, almost all have)
-Has a nice compact view (some players are all over the place)
-and the most important thing: has a browser that shows the folders and songs in the exact same structure as they are on the hard drive). I just don't like when it sorts my music as artist, albums, genre etc. I just want to have it the way I organized them on the drive. Also it would be nice if it would update the structure automatically, whenever I make changes to it.

http://sonata.berlios.de/
Sonata will do all those, but you need to configure mpd to use it.

Decibel (http://decibel.silent-blade.org/) has structured browsing, album art and scrobbling but no mini-mode.

[Kosimo]

Latest Rythmbox 0.12.1 is on getdeb

http://www.getdeb.net/app/Rhythmbox

If finally fixes the iPod album art transfer. Now works PERFECTLY, much much better than in the latest Banshee, (Banshee doesn't really transfer the images correctly as they have some image quality decrease).

[crl0901]

I use Rhythmbox and I like it a lot. I've tried several others, but none have run as smoothly as Rhythmbox in Jaunty. I also like it's desktop album art plugin, very sleek looking and easy to configure.

[Kizsde]

Hi! Thanks for the suggestion. Sonata is driving me crazy, I just couldn't configure mpd so that Sonata will play my music, changed mpd.conf and all, but it seems I'm still too amateur to do it right. If you have a clean, simple how-to guide, please share with me :) Decibel is nice, maybe I'll try it out later.
I checked Exaile and it has basically everything that I wanted, but I think it's a bit of a resource hog. I'll stick with it anyway, until something better comes up or if I manage to fire up mpd+Sonata :)
Still, thanks for the input!!

K

[gnomeuser]

-and the most important thing: has a browser that shows the folders and songs in the exact same structure as they are on the hard drive). I just don't like when it sorts my music as artist, albums, genre etc. I just want to have it the way I organized them on the drive. Also it would be nice if it would update the structure automatically, whenever I make changes to it.

Banshee can do this, though the other way around. You can specify the layout you want say genre/artist - album or whatever. Then set update on metadata change and copy on import. That should do what you ask.

There is an inotify plugin so you should be able to drop in new tunes into the directory and voila instead of importing them using banshee itself if you prefer that solution.

[mc4100]

Sonata is driving me crazy, I just couldn't configure mpd so that Sonata will play my music, changed mpd.conf and all, but it seems I'm still too amateur to do it right. If you have a clean, simple how-to guide, please share with me :)
All I did was configure the path in which to find my Music, leaving everything else untouched; but I'm not using pulseaudio anymore, and that might complicate things.
All I can do is refer you here (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mpd+on+ubuntu) and here (http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Configuration).

[Kizsde]

Thanks, I'll give it a shot a bit later and see how it turns out.

[Maupertus]

Now, I don't know if Exaile, Banshee, Rhythmbox or any other have these capabilities in them already. I have checked Banshee and Rhythmbox but couldn't really find the file browser view. Now I'm using gmusicbrowser as it has this feature, but it's again sitting all over my desktop and the last.fm scrobbling is a bit funky too.

Kizsde

Just went over from Rhythmbox to gMusicbrowser to try it out. I have to say that the learning curve is a bit steep, but if you fool around a little you'll learn soon enough. That's why I can say that gMusic has a lot of different 'views' and a handful of them come in a compact mode (which I don't use, I like the quod libet way and just use one desktop for gMusic)

Don't know about Last.fm support, but scrobbling is working fine for me, without a hitch, but if your having trouble, you can look at the report in the plug-ins list.

Give it another fiddle and I'm sure you can grow to love that sweet-headphone-wearing camel. ;)

[Johnsie]

Spotify is way better than any of those media players, at least for music discovery anyway. Linux missed the boat when it came to Itunes.

[SuperSonic4]

Spotify is way better than any of those media players, at least for music discovery anyway. Linux missed the boat when it came to Itunes.

How is Apple choosing not to make a linux port missing the boat?

As for Rhythmbox I really couldn't care less especially since I don't want more GNOME deps than necessary, I'll stick with amarok 1.4 until 2 becomes reliable

[Kizsde]

@Maupertus: Hehe, I liked gMusicbrowser, as it had a lot of features, but the layout was a bit chaotic and bloated for me. I may tinker with it later on if something starts to annoy me in Exaile :) My ultimate goal is still to get Sonata to work, but I didn't have the chance to dig deep on how to configure mpd correctly. I got some good advices from the guys here, still I'll need to take a closer look on mpd+sonata. I just love the sleek, simple, elegant view of Sonata and from the screenshots and feature list it seems that it just has the things I need, nothing more and is light on resources.

p.s.: Nice signature :D

[joey-elijah]

So what is the current status of Rhythmbox, then? No more active development and just maintenance?

[23meg]

So what is the current status of Rhythmbox, then? No more active development and just maintenance?

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6912530&postcount=78
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6787754&postcount=9

[joey-elijah]

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6912530&postcount=78
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6787754&postcount=9

Thanks but i already had read those hence asking for the current status; thinking there may have been further updates in the last 3 months.

[monsterstack]

@Maupertus: Hehe, I liked gMusicbrowser, as it had a lot of features, but the layout was a bit chaotic and bloated for me. I may tinker with it later on if something starts to annoy me in Exaile :) My ultimate goal is still to get Sonata to work, but I didn't have the chance to dig deep on how to configure mpd correctly. I got some good advices from the guys here, still I'll need to take a closer look on mpd+sonata. I just love the sleek, simple, elegant view of Sonata and from the screenshots and feature list it seems that it just has the things I need, nothing more and is light on resources.

p.s.: Nice signature :D

Try Ario. I do believe it tries to do a lot of the configuration for you. In any event, I recently came across some mpd issues myself, which stemmed from having to run it as root after I first installed it. The sound wouldn't come out at all at first, and then my mpd client just hogged all of the sound. Have a look here (http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=7215092&postcount=4) if any of this sounds familiar.

[23meg]

Thanks but i already had read those hence asking for the current status; thinking there may have been further updates in the last 3 months.

You'll want to browse the rhythmbox-devel (http://mail.gnome.org/archives/rhythmbox-devel/) archive.

[Tomfitzy]

y does my rhythmbox only hold 70 songs

[Dex73]

I use Decibel Audio Player. Your given a sidebar with your music folder in it. I have always keep my music in order by artist so I love it.

[Saint Angeles]

so like, banshee and exaile crash like crazy on my computer. rhythmbox is rock solid.

also, some default setting banshee i believe copyied my entire music collection over to my home partition, i ran out of room, and things sucked until i could figure out why...

[skymera]

Haven't used Rhythmbox since 7.04, I stopped using it because of the absence of an equaliser.

So, in 9.04, is there an equaliser? I used Exaile in 8.04 but it was buggy, i find myself using Banshee now.

[knopper67]

Haven't used Rhythmbox since 7.04, I stopped using it because of the absence of an equaliser.

So, in 9.04, is there an equaliser? I used Exaile in 8.04 but it was buggy, i find myself using Banshee now.

Theres an equalizer in Banshee if thats what you mean. Or are you talking about a system-wide one?

[konnorrigby]

I think rhythm box is great, simple and effective. but if i oesnt get improoved i think its gonna beh banshee rather than rhythm box. i lyke gom on mi windows partition. if they could port that to ubuntu i think it wud work pretty gud.

[Viva]

Why is exaile being based on python a bad thing?

[Major_Kong]

That sucks. Any chance of Amarok offering a GTK port ? :P

[mamamia88]

i love rythmbox i'll just keep using current version

[Tibuda]

That sucks. Any chance of Amarok offering a GTK port ? :P

Like Exaile?

[directhex]

Why is exaile being based on python a bad thing?

It's about 33% heavier than Banshee, and 100% heavier than Rhythmbox. The bigger an app gets, the more it needs to justify the engorgement to the guys making a distro

[Kingsley]

Rhythmbox is my current media player of choice, but I strongly recognize Banshee as the future. I plan on switching after a couple of bugs are fixed and when they fully support last.fm features.

[BDNiner]

I am going to continue to use rhythmbox. It is sad that the current maintainer wants to move on, and I hope that someone else picks up development or forks the code. It is the only media player that has worked with my creative Zen and it supports my 40GB library over the network a lot better than any of the other players. I can even rip CDs directly to my NAS using rhythmbox.

Oh well hopefully something great can come of this.

[TenPlus1]

Maybe gejengel will pop it's head up and bring a new music player to view:

http://gejengel.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/web/index.html

[Major_Kong]

Like Exaile?

It's not a complete replacement... It would be so much easier if there was only one major DE for linux. :(



Maybe gejengel will pop it's head up and bring a new music player to view:

http://gejengel.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/web/index.html

Sometimes i think more would be achieved if more developers worked together instead of making a brand new player.

[pt123]

Sometimes i think more would be achieved if more developers worked together instead of making a brand new player.

Yes on Linux there are about a 100 average music players.

I dislike music players with small sliders (Banshee & Gejengel) , the longer the slider the easier it is to jump to a specific point in a song.

[Tom9729]

That sucks. Any chance of Amarok offering a GTK port ? :P

Unlikely... Qt is more than just a widget toolkit. Porting it to GTK would either bring in a lot of Qt/KDE dependencies or would be about as much work as just writing a new player from scratch.

[markharding557]

exhaile is excellent superb give it a go

[Major_Kong]

Unlikely... Qt is more than just a widget toolkit. Porting it to GTK would either bring in a lot of Qt/KDE dependencies or would be about as much work as just writing a new player from scratch.

I thought as much. Still, it's a shame, amarok really differentiates itself from other "jukebox" audio players.


PS: How about the other way around, standardization between DEs ? :P (i know even less likely)

[Tibuda]

PS: How about the other way around, standardization between DEs ? :P (i know even less likely)

This have potential to a flame war... The main problem is not the "DEs", but the toolkits. Gnome apps work very well in XFCE, and I think KDE apps also work in a lighter Qt DE. QGtkStyle (Qt apps looks like Gtk) and Qt-Gtk-Engine (Gtk apps looks like Qt) can help with this.

[Major_Kong]

This have potential to a flame war... The main problem is not the "DEs", but the toolkits. Gnome apps work very well in XFCE, and I think KDE apps also work in a lighter Qt DE. QGtkStyle (Qt apps looks like Gtk) and Qt-Gtk-Engine (Gtk apps looks like Qt) can help with this.

Yeah, i know (i was talking about both DEs having the same dependencies). It was just an offtopic remark, no need to expand on it.


Ontopic:
Well, let's hope developers still pick up on the project*, there are contenders, but i still think rb to be the best overall jukebox player for gnome. If rb dies, then banshee will probably take it's place, but the larger resource footprint will be a drawback that won't go away. :(


*just adding a few new features, like cue file support or tweaking the UI a bit would be enough to keep the app evolving

[gjoellee]

I like Rhythmbox, but I prefer Banshee.

[coldReactive]

I don't really care for a playlist system. I prefer opening files one at a time and listening to one on repeat for several repeats. Hence why I continue to stay with totem.

[RiceMonster]

So why don't banshee or rhythmbox allow you to have multiple directories as your library? Such a simple thing, yet neither of them do it, which makes them almost unusable for me because I have music on my onboard and external harddrive (except on my laptop inwhich I use rhythmbox because I only have one music directory, it was the default in Fedora, and I don't listen to music on it enough to install another). The don't even work with symlinks like mpd does.

[kickwin]

If you want a simple light-weight player, try moc (http://moc.daper.net/)

[coldReactive]

If you want a simple light-weight player, try moc (http://moc.daper.net/)

can it be set to not use a playlist, can it repeat music files forever?

[khelben1979]

One of the features that I have seen with Rhytmbox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhythmbox) is the fact that it's very efficient at playing mods, way more efficient than uade when it comes to the cpu power it requires.

Rhythmbox has never been able to play packed modules from what I've seen from it, unlike uade (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UADE).

I have never been especially excited by the user interface of the program myself, so maybe Songbird (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songbird_%28software%29) already is a good replacement?

[kickwin]

can it be set to not use a playlist, can it repeat music files forever?

I do not have a playlist. I just added all music files to the player when I used it for the first time and every time the player starts it remembers the files added. And yes it can play forever.

But by default, player doesn't do the above. You have to use the config file to do it. Here (http://polishlinux.org/apps/cli/moc-console-audio-player-for-linux/) is some instructions about using the config file and here (http://fullcirclemagazine.org/moc-config/) is a sample config file. You can also change other options such as turning shuffle on, repeat on, background etc. using the config file. I found about about this player on the Full Circle Magazine. (http://fullcirclemagazine.org/issue-26/)

Oh! I forgot to mention it is a command-line player.

[Major_Kong]

I don't really care for a playlist system. I prefer opening files one at a time and listening to one on repeat for several repeats. Hence why I continue to stay with totem.

Yeah... gnome lacks a foobar2k type player (with say almost the same features :P ). Now that would be a killer gnome app.

[psychok7]

exaile is a good program, it has potential, but unfortunately i find it kinda slow compared to rhythmbox, maybe because its written in python.. and for large playlists like mine it freezes kinda often..maybe porting it to C or C++ wouldnt be a bad ideia

[adelphos]

exaile is a good program, it has potential, but unfortunately i find it kinda slow compared to rhythmbox, maybe because its written in python.. and for large playlists like mine it freezes kinda often..maybe porting it to C or C++ wouldnt be a bad ideia

Isn't the most distinctive aspect of Exaile that it's written in Python? It makes it easier to edit the source for a lot of people. If you want to devote energy to a C/C++ player, you might as well fork or add features to Rhythmbox.

[MooPi]

I vote for a Xmms2 client :D

[sirtom4321]

I have recently upgraded to 9.10 and tried to use rhythmbox it plays all mp3's, notices my ipod etc, however it does not play any sound. Sound works on all other parts of the e.g. youtube. Any ideas on how to fix it?

[The Real Dave]

If Rhythmbox could sync videos to my iPod, I'd marry it :) I like it interface, quick, and nice and sleek if you turn off the text below the icons :)

[mamamia88]

sorry to drag up a dead thread but i compiled that moc program somebody mentioned but under my music folder it only shows wma files and when i try to play them i get an error saying "fatal error can't receive the value from the server. does anyone know how to fix this?

[RevengeOfTheToxicRodent]

Is it still dead?

[mamamia88]

Is it still dead?

haven't seen an update in months. tried exaile didn't care for it. looking for something with active development to replace it. don't care for exaile

[Dragonbite]

I would be surprised if it is totally dead, since Ubuntu just integrated the UbuntuOne Music Store.

On the other hand Banshee (1.7)now integrates the Amazon Music store which has a larger selection of music (at least of the music I am interested in).

[mamamia88]

banshee implements amazon? sweet

[RevengeOfTheToxicRodent]

I would be surprised if it is totally dead, since Ubuntu just integrated the UbuntuOne Music Store.

On the other hand Banshee (1.7)now integrates the Amazon Music store which has a larger selection of music (at least of the music I am interested in).

Banshee is pretty good, I just don't like the playbar. It's too small.

[SunnyRabbiera]

haven't seen an update in months. tried exaile didn't care for it. looking for something with active development to replace it. don't care for exaile

Give Banshee, Guayadeque and Clemintine a shot.

[Spice Weasel]

This is some sad stuff. I really hope someone could take over the project. ;)

I'll carry on using it even if it is ridiculously outdated. :D

[scouser73]

There's a PPA for Rhythmbox, so it's still being updated.

https://launchpad.net/~m-buck/+archive/rhythmbox

[violence.of.the.clams]

There's a PPA for Rhythmbox, so it's still being updated.

https://launchpad.net/~m-buck/+archive/rhythmbox (https://launchpad.net/%7Em-buck/+archive/rhythmbox)

that is an archive ppa and the packages havent been updated since june last year.

[LowSky]

banshee has a plugin for the Ubuntu One music store too in the repos.

so if we lose one, we have another.

Kinda cool how flexible banshee is, and how I can use 2 different stores if I want

[Ric_NYC]

Overview of changes in Rhythmbox 0.13.0 "Albatross"
================================================== ==

* Improved GStreamer codec installation (Jonathan Matthew)
* New metadata fields: comment (Josh Green), BPM (Mattias Eriksson),
Album artist (JM)
* MMS and RTSP streams should work properly now (Robert Ancell)
* Always visible on startup when started manually (JM)
* New implementation of the MPRIS D-Bus interface spec (JM)
* Creates nested folders on MTP devices (JM)
* Installs header, VAPI and pkg-config files for external plugins (JM)
* DAAP plugin now uses libdmapsharing (W. Michael Petullo)
* Library, playlist and podcast syncing for media players (based on Paul
Bellamy's Summer of Code project)
* Fixed interaction with Brasero for CD burning (Philippe Rouquier)
* New application icon (Lapo Calamandrei)
* Displays HTML podcast episode descriptions using WebKit (JM)
* Updates for Magnatune's new purchase process (Adam Zimmerman)

Date: Fri Jul 2 15:46:49 2010


I hope that doesn't disappoint the Mono "crowd".

[mamamia88]

so far i've tried banshee, clementine, amarok, and guadalupe none with as good of interface as rhythmbox.

[Frak]

I've looked at contributing to Rhythmbox, but I've ended up just contributing to Banshee. Since Banshee implemented the Amazon Music Store, I see no reason to support/use/fix/etc Rhythmbox anymore anyhow. It feels like a dead predecessor.

[KiwiNZ]

This thread can be put to rest .

Lets feel the Rhythm .