Open Discussion on Users against Banshee in 11.04

[oscalation]

I wanted to start this thread to see a more organized discussion specifically regarding Rythmbox and banshee, and the next default media player for 11.04.

I for one am against banshee for various reasons, and I prefer rythmbox and the new up and coming media player Guayadeque. http://www.guayadeque.org

Without a doubt, I would choose to keep rythmbox over banshee.

[lisati]

Thread moved to The Community Cafe.

[Khakilang]

For me I don't see a point in this discussion. Since you can install and remove whatever software you want or need from the software center. But of course that apply to users with good internet connection. Sorry, I may sound a bit harsh. But thats the way I see it.

[czr114]

As long as ubuntu-desktop doesn't depend on it, what's the big deal? Removing an unwanted player takes all of about a minute.

[yetiman64]

Khakilang, +1.

Rythmbox is currently the default and I haven't heard of any proposal to change that. If there is such a proposal I would be interested to read it. Do you have a link to such info OP ? Otherwise this really is a moot point, sorry to say.

[Spr0k3t]

I'm not for or against either way. I am for the slimming down of the distro to make room on a standard CD though. If that means mono and the associated apps must go to make room for something larger fine, as long as they are available somehow through the repos. Just wish gnote would sync with the cloud stuff already so I can get rid of this last mono app.

[uRock]

As long as ubuntu-desktop doesn't depend on it, what's the big deal? Removing an unwanted player takes all of about a minute.
I feel the same way. I do like Rhythmbox, but I have never tried Banshee. Either way one can be removed while the other is installed with one line in a terminal.

[Garthhh]

is this going to be like the "open" discussions here http://guayadeque.org/forums/index.php?p=/discussion/25/an-open-discussion-of-the-potential-benefits-of-an-official-site/#Item_5
you might mention your position as admin on that site
guayplay started out as a stripped down app & gets more bloated by the update
besides the technical issues
Why is there a rift in the community?
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=10141187#post10141187

[czr114]

I'm not for or against either way. I am for the slimming down of the distro to make room on a standard CD though. If that means mono and the associated apps must go to make room for something larger fine, as long as they are available somehow through the repos. Just wish gnote would sync with the cloud stuff already so I can get rid of this last mono app.

Why sack something very useful like mono to make room for games, wallpapers, and the like?

There are so many things more superficial than mono which could be getting the axe first.

The mono runtime is going to be vital for encouraging Windows programs and Windows talent to migrate to the Ubuntu desktop.

[uRock]

Keep the thread on topic.

[Ric_NYC]

Keep Rythmbox!

[beew]

Who cares. You can always install whatever you want and I want neither. VLC rocks.

[NightwishFan]

What matters in the default install at least a few important points.


A good first impressions for new users.
The application on the CD is likely to be the most used one since it is the new default.
Functionality for folks that do not have the Internet to download a new program. (I assure you they are a minority but they exist. I was one until this year. I luckily was experienced enough to manually download packages from my local library, which as a hassle until I learned about apt-on-cd).
Space on the installation media is important as well to help the above points.



Personally I think Banshee will offer a good experience since it is a bit more full featured, handles portable devices and tags a bit better, and scans for music quite a bit faster. Though I do like the simplicity and interface of Rhythmbox.

Overall I support the change. If you know enough that you do not want it as the default than the defaults should certainly not matter to you. The main thing the Ubuntu Desktop package is useful for its updating to a new release cleanly. You can remove it safely it will not remove other packages. For instance I remove f-spot and install Shotwell on 10.04.

[zer010]

Functionality for folks that do not have the Internet to download a new program. (I assure you they are a minority but they exist. I was one until this year. I luckily was experienced enough to manually download packages from my local library, which as a hassle until I learned about apt-on-cd).

I had been a "netless" user for quite some time as well. The options of using apt-onCD and keryx were not really viable for me because our local library doesn't allow downloads, least of all installing software to their PCs. Patrons aren't even allowed access to optical drives or USB ports. So, in a way, default software can be a big issue. Personally, I have gotten used to Rhythmbox and haven't used Banshee, but I can see how it can be an issue to some. I do agree that for those with an internet connection, it's a moot point as long as the DE isn't heavily integrated with it like Evolution and GNOME.

[Elfy]

Does Banshee deal with multiple libraries yet?

[NightwishFan]

O_o I don't even know what a "multiple library" is. It sounds like something designed to complicate things uselessly.

[Elfy]

Not everyone has their music in one partition ... they may have multiple partitions with their music - multiple libraries :)

Rhythmbox will deal with multiple libraries (afaik) - not particularly easily - but nevertheless.

[NightwishFan]

It may. I guess that was not complicated after all. I misunderstood because consider my whole music collection one library with many different remote and local locations. I am not sure if it updates other local folders though.

[Helkaluin]

@'multiple libraries': will soft links work?

On topic: Don't care. Normally I just throw my entire music collection at mpd and tell it to play in shuffle.

[directhex]

Does Banshee deal with multiple libraries yet?

It does multiple locations as part of a single library... I'm not too sure on the distinction from a user perspective.

[slackthumbz]

It'd be nice if the default music player (whichever one they end up using) had a little setup wizard on first-run that let the user choose what plugins they wanted enabled before, for example, enabling DAAP sharing across the local network when you REALLY don't want it to. I also don't have any use for any of the stores, internet radio, Amazon, last.fm or Miro podcast directory. All of which are enabled by default.

Banshee also tried to scan my entire home folder on first startup which I wasn't particularly impressed with. I'd appreciate it if the application asked me where it was meant to look for files rather than assuming it knew better and trying to scan all of my private data.

Apart from that it seems like a decent application, I've got no problem with mono apps (please can we end this constant whinging about mono, C# and mono are open standards and protected by a non-aggression pact by MS, MS benefits from programmers using C# on other platforms because it means there are more coders familiar with the core language for .NET as well.)

[m4tic]

As long as it beats windows media player 9 i'm down for anything. Currently rhythmbox loads 3gigs of my music on the first run at over 3minutes till the cpu gets to normal speed, old wmp9 on winXP for some reason manages 40 seconds. I hope this new player is decent enough.

[Simian Man]

Banshee is a much better program to use as the default media program. It offers many more features than Rhythmbox, looks better, and, because it can handle videos, is a full media player as opposed to just a music player. I'd recommend adding Banshee and cutting out both Rhythmbox and Totem.

[m4tic]

Banshee is a much better program to use as the default media program. It offers many more features than Rhythmbox, looks better, and, because it can handle videos, is a full media player as opposed to just a music player. I'd recommend adding Banshee and cutting out both Rhythmbox and Totem.

i like what i'm hearing

[orador]

I gave banshee another shot and installed it and I still cannot see the value in it. Ubuntu has a unique opportunity to get rid of mono from the installation CD (that would mean minus 40MB of deps gone)- Tomboy can be replaced by Gnote (Fedora has already done that). I'm not saying that Banshee doesn't have more features, but is every default app in Ubuntu the feature-richtest? Default app should do one thing and do it right, Rhythmbox is just like that - simple and intuitive music player.

Right now, Banshee can do more things, but it cannot replace Totem as someone here suggested.

And don't forget what just happened (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ODgxMw) to Novell. They were bought by Attachmate Corporation - a company no one ever heard of in open-source ecosystem. What will they do with Suse? The Banshee development could be seriosly slowen down... Or not, the point is - no one knows.

Also, lot of Novell patents is going under Microsoft control now. What will happen to mono? Could Microsoft somehow attack open-source mono apps with these new patents? Again, no one knows. This is simply no time to switch to Banshee.

A few final thoughts on Banshee:
1) I can't speak for other languages, but Czech translation for Banshee is really weird.
2) Look at UI - is it really better than Rhythmbox? It just doesn't fit in with other deafault apps. That short progress bar with long empty space behind?
3) Video experience is fairly limited, cannot replace Totem.

[Swarms]

I see no reasons not to use Banshee really.


Also, lot of Novell patents is going under Microsoft control now. What will happen to mono? Could Microsoft somehow attack open-source mono apps with these new patents? Again, no one knows. This is simply no time to switch to Banshee.

Stop FUDding around, seriously getting tired of this!

[orador]

You're right, Swarms. I'm not usually doing that, but I read today about Novell being sold and it freaked me out a bit, I had nothing against Novell supporting Mono, it was independent linux-oriented company. Well, not independent anymore.

All legal issues aside, I still think Rhythmbox is more suited to be Ubuntu default music player. Do you really think, that it fit in with other Gnome applications? Totem, Rhytmbox, Cheese, Sound Juicer, Shotwell etc. etc. looks like they're following common UI paradigm and once you understand it, you can quickly get acquainted with new Gnome application. It looks to me, that Banshee is breaking that paradigm. And consistency is one of the main benefits of the linux desktop. Moreover, gnome applications are usually designed to manage one task, banshee is trying to add video playback capabilities which can be cool for some people, but it shouldn't be default in Ubuntu, banshee means doing things the OpenSuse way, not Ubuntu way.

Plus, wouldn't it be nice to have 40 MB space on installation images for other great apps?

[Zlatan]

I'd vote for Rhythmobx here. Would be nice to use Gnome apps whenever it is possible- like Gnumeric, Abiword, etc., while helping to get them better (e.g. handling MS Office formats).
Using Gnome libraries (we all know Ubuntu is and will be using Gnome for a while) would help to save space on CD and make couple of apps better. Of course, design things should be done easier as well- I mean looks, theming and etc.

Would vote for KDE apps if that was a Kubuntu-related thread;)

[directhex]

Tomboy can be replaced by Gnote (Fedora has already done that).

Gnote still has no note sync, making it significantly less useful for Ubuntu. It's been a while, but nobody's stepped up to write all the OAuth stuff in C/C++ for Gnote.

[Zlatan]

Gnote still has no note sync, making it significantly less useful for Ubuntu. It's been a while, but nobody's stepped up to write all the OAuth stuff in C/C++ for Gnote.

but could Canonical guys step up here?

[Paqman]

Banshee is a much better program to use as the default media program. It offers many more features than Rhythmbox, looks better, and, because it can handle videos, is a full media player as opposed to just a music player. I'd recommend adding Banshee and cutting out both Rhythmbox and Totem.

I agree, although in my experience Banshee doesn't run well on less powerful hardware (such as my netbook). Rhythmbox would be a better choice for UNE.

[Simian Man]

Right now, Banshee can do more things, but it cannot replace Totem as someone here suggested.
Why not? Not that Linux should mirror other OSs, but Windows (and Mac?) offer an integrated media solution for all formats. And, in my opinion, Banshee is even better than WMP or iTunes.


They were bought by Attachmate Corporation - a company no one ever heard of in open-source ecosystem. What will they do with Suse? The Banshee development could be seriosly slowen down... Or not, the point is - no one knows.
So? What corporation is sponsoring Rhythmbox? Banshee already has eclipsed Rhyhmbox despite being a far younger project. The fact that it's written with modern tools is more important to its rapid improvement than its Novell sponsorship. Rhythmbox isn't exactly a fast moving piece of software ya know :).


I'd vote for Rhythmobx here. Would be nice to use Gnome apps whenever it is possible- like Gnumeric, Abiword, etc., while helping to get them better (e.g. handling MS Office formats).
So you'd really rather have Gnome software than other GTK+ applications? What about Agnubis vs. Impress? Epiphany vs. Firefox? gThumb vs. F-Spot/Shotwell?

Besides, Banshee is actually a full Gnome project. It's listed on the project page (http://projects.gnome.org/) and its bugzilla (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/browse.cgi?product=banshee) is hosted by Gnome.

[Zlatan]

So you'd really rather have Gnome software than other GTK+ applications? What about Agnubis vs. Impress? Epiphany vs. Firefox? gThumb vs. F-Spot/Shotwell?

Besides, Banshee is actually a full Gnome project. It's listed on the project page (http://projects.gnome.org/) and its bugzilla (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/browse.cgi?product=banshee) is hosted by Gnome.

Hi mate:) Yes, I'd use Epiphany only if company's CRM would be webkit friendly. Agnubis or gThumb can be preferred too and if some functionality is missing, it can be added by Gnome or Canonical developers. Reasons for that (I am not any kind of guru so it is only my speculation) were already mentioned in my previous post.
My 0.02$:)

[zekopeko]

I gave banshee another shot and installed it and I still cannot see the value in it. Ubuntu has a unique opportunity to get rid of mono from the installation CD (that would mean minus 40MB of deps gone)- Tomboy can be replaced by Gnote (Fedora has already done that). I'm not saying that Banshee doesn't have more features, but is every default app in Ubuntu the feature-richtest? Default app should do one thing and do it right, Rhythmbox is just like that - simple and intuitive music player.

Gnote doesn't to any sort of syncing. A deal breaker for Ubuntu.



Right now, Banshee can do more things, but it cannot replace Totem as someone here suggested.

Not yet at least. This could be a long term plan.


And don't forget what just happened (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ODgxMw) to Novell. They were bought by Attachmate Corporation - a company no one ever heard of in open-source ecosystem. What will they do with Suse? The Banshee development could be seriosly slowen down... Or not, the point is - no one knows.

The fact that Novell was bought is irrelevant. Banshee's development is only getting faster and faster thanks to using a modern framework. Losing Novell means nothing since there are plenty of contributors that aren't involved with Novell.


Also, lot of Novell patents is going under Microsoft control now. What will happen to mono? Could Microsoft somehow attack open-source mono apps with these new patents? Again, no one knows. This is simply no time to switch to Banshee.

This is also irrelevant since there are numerous protections around Mono. The FUD against Mono was always that if MS owns patents and it's going to use them to attack Mono. 9+ years and it still hasn't happened.
Those patents are more of a threat to other projects then to Mono since those projects don't have the Community Promise or ECMA RANDZ terms.



A few final thoughts on Banshee:
1) I can't speak for other languages, but Czech translation for Banshee is really weird.

Excellent. You just found out were you can contribute and make it un-weird.


2) Look at UI - is it really better than Rhythmbox? It just doesn't fit in with other deafault apps. That short progress bar with long empty space behind?

Yes it is. That seek bark can be now expanded by the user to any length.


3) Video experience is fairly limited, cannot replace Totem.

This is related to number 2. You assume that Banshee today is the one that is going to be shipped with Ubuntu. That is completely not true. The Banshee upstream is very welcoming and they are hyped to be included in Ubuntu, that includes fixing all the bugs Ubuntu thinks should be fixed so users have the best possible experience.

[Simian Man]

Hi mate:) Yes, I'd use Epiphany only if company's CRM would be webkit friendly. Agnubis or gThumb can be preferred too and if some functionality is missing, it can be added by Gnome or Canonical developers. Reasons for that (I am not any kind of guru so it is only my speculation) were already mentioned in my previous post.
My 0.02$:)

First off, as I said, Banshee IS an official Gnome project. Secondly, have you ever used Agnubis? It's not that it has some missing functionality, it's practically vaporware. Shipping applications and reinventing the wheel just because they're a part of Gnome regardless of quality is insane.

[ivanovnegro]

I followed this thread now with many interests.
For me its totally irrelevant what app would be the default, I will choose anyway my preferred applications.
With respect to Banshee or Rhythmbox, first Im not envolved in the discussion about Mono and I think for me there is no interest in this but if Mono could mean to include more software that people are using in Windows to use this in Ubuntu, I think its a good idea.
Second, when I see Banshee I think, yeah, it looks more modern as Rthythmox does, but for me both are unusable with my large music library that is even stored on an external USB device and I have issues with Banshee to scan my music folder, the program refuses to do it, with RB I have better experience. Both in general are too slow and bloated for me and I dont like that all players in Linux want to be a bad copy of iTunes, and I dont like iTunes neither, I know most new users want a replacement for iTunes in Ubuntu.

[gnomeuser]

Gnote doesn't to any sort of syncing. A deal breaker for Ubuntu.


And repeated explanations of this issue has not yielded any other response than "Canonical should do it". Tomboy was set up to use U1 by the community. The Tomboy community in general offload a lot of effort by default and are good about handling both bugs and feature requests. The history of stability also makes it an appealing choice and makes it costly to switch to the supposedly compatible GNote



Not yet at least. This could be a long term plan.


Definitely, we already have work on going to add DVD and subtitle support (I think we count on these being ready for Natty) to make up for some of the feature gap. Also these are highly requested features from users in general.



The fact that Novell was bought is irrelevant. Banshee's development is only getting faster and faster thanks to using a modern framework. Losing Novell means nothing since there are plenty of contributors that aren't involved with Novell.


All Banshee's developers, including me, are unpaid volunteers. Novell outside of the cases where they pay for a specific feature or bugfix for their supported products (like any other distribution could pay a developer for these services) has nothing to do with Banshees development.



This is also irrelevant since there are numerous protections around Mono. The FUD against Mono was always that if MS owns patents and it's going to use them to attack Mono. 9+ years and it still hasn't happened.
Those patents are more of a threat to other projects then to Mono since those projects don't have the Community Promise or ECMA RANDZ terms.


Amen brother Z.



Yes it is. That seek bar can be now expanded by the user to any length.


As can the search box btw. Personally I find this kinda weird and would prefer it to be computed for optimal use of the header space but the grippable slider/search seems popular so I guess I will bow to the majority.



This is related to number 2. You assume that Banshee today is the one that is going to be shipped with Ubuntu. That is completely not true. The Banshee upstream is very welcoming and they are hyped to be included in Ubuntu, that includes fixing all the bugs Ubuntu thinks should be fixed so users have the best possible experience.

We are indeed very committed to fulfilling a number of requests from the Ubuntu team. Recently entirely new SQLite custom bindings were written to save space specifically for the Ubuntu LiveCD. We work with the Ubuntu team to identify important bugs and the aim for this cycle is to polish and fix Banshee up to be the best most stable experience, as well as a great platform for making the media experience rock on Ubuntu.

We may only have limited resources but we are working hard on growng them and using what we have to provide users with truly amazing Banshee for Natty and beyond.

I am working on gathering a list of common Banshee questions here:
http://live.gnome.org/Banshee/CommonQuestions

Also Friday (the 26th of November) will be an Ubuntu Banshee bug day, and we will have a Papercut round dedicated to Banshee as well. Both of which are being worked on with involvement of upstream Banshee team members. So feel free to come and hammer at our code, we normally hang out in #banshee on irc.gimp.org. Don't ask to ask, just ask and be polite and patient. We can't both fix bugs and monitor the IRC channel at every moment.

Generally it is preferred that all testers are running the daily ppa, they are perfectly safe and make it a lot easier for us to deploy fixes and get feedback quickly than releases. Especially at this point in the development cycle.

(btw. users of the daily snapshots can try running Banshee with --smooth-scroll for some sexy action)

[NightwishFan]

I saw "last post gnomeuser" and I was like.. I wonder how much full of win this post was going to be. :D

[Zlatan]

First off, as I said, Banshee IS an official Gnome project. Secondly, have you ever used Agnubis? It's not that it has some missing functionality, it's practically vaporware. Shipping applications and reinventing the wheel just because they're a part of Gnome regardless of quality is insane.

RB works very well for my needs with playing music so I see no point to take another 40MB on Ubuntu CD just to promote expandable search bar and future chances to play video. Same story with Gnome office- as I said, would vote for including Gnumeric and Abiword as well as helping to fix non-relevant apps.
My point is that appsshould be as compact as possible and use same libraries. I assume that taking 40MB more for Banshee just to play music and reinventing the wheel is totaly unreasonable, insane as you say:)
Nothing personal to you mate, just my 0.02$ as always.

[gnomeuser]

RB works very well for my needs with playing music so I see no point to take another 40MB on Ubuntu CD just to promote expandable search bar and future chances to play video. Same story with Gnome office- as I said, would vote for including Gnumeric and Abiword as well as helping to fix non-relevant apps.
My point is that appsshould be as compact as possible and use same libraries. I assume that taking 40MB more for Banshee just to play music and reinventing the wheel is totaly unreasonable, insane as you say:)
Nothing personal to you mate, just my 0.02$ as always.

The official livecd size blueprint said that prior to any of the current alterations Banshee has done the difference was 4.7 MB, now I believe it is less than 1 MB.

Your 40 megs is an untruth.

[Zlatan]

The official livecd size blueprint said that prior to any of the current alterations Banshee has done the difference was 4.7 MB, now I believe it is less than 1 MB.

Your 40 megs is an untruth.

That means that my source could be wrong. Sorry if it is so. But again- why Banshee instead of RB?

[gnomeuser]

That means that my source could be wrong. Sorry if it is so. But again- why Banshee instead of RB?

Off the top of my head:

Mutliple UIs which is important for deployments of the same code in the netbook as well as the desktop sized screens. Don't like the standard interface, try Muinshee, or the MeeGo interface. Banshee is extremely adaptable. In fact a new UI is being written using webkit as well. The code is logically separated and even a complex interface can be done in only about 2000 lines of code.

Strong library functionality that Rhythmbox nor any viable competitor provides. This code is also logically split out and shared so that other projects can benefit from it, such as f-spot which is basing it's next generation release on this. Again Banshees superior design shines through, everything is basically a mono addin and can be overloaded, replaced at will. This e.g. is how a newcomer with no knowledge of the Banshee codebase was able to provide a shuffle mode based on last.fm in the matter of an evening.

Advanced feature support such as last.fm fingerprinting (automatically corrected song information) and music similarity for playlists (akin to iTunes' Genius feature I would suspect though I have never used iTunes). Music sharing and streaming with your contacts (via Telepathy, used in Empathy our default IM client).

A vibrant community which has shown itself capable of growing and supporting itself, remaining responsive to bugs and feature requests. This is extremely important when it comes to picking a default mediaplayer, as you want an active place to put your bugs rather than /dev/null.

A more visually pleasing experience (more bling if you will).

A bet for the future, while RB has been at an absolute standstill for years Banshee has continued to advance and bring desirable functionality to users. Again it's superior design allows for growth and flexibility now and in the future.

A one stop media player that does everything, music, podcasts, audiobooks, video, online stores (of which we have support for several).

It's less buggy than Rhythmbox (currently bugzilla stats give 695 bugs against Banshee, 797 against Rhythmbox), while delivering more features.

Banshee as a project is motivated to deliver changes Ubuntu wants to see and has the modern tools to do so.

But for me most of all Banshee is fun to be part of.

[ivanovnegro]

Off the top of my head:

Mutliple UIs which is important for deployments of the same code in the netbook as well as the desktop sized screens. Don't like the standard interface, try Muinshee, or the MeeGo interface. Banshee is extremely adaptable. In fact a new UI is being written using webkit as well. The code is logically separated and even a complex interface can be done in only about 2000 lines of code.

Strong library functionality that Rhythmbox nor any viable competitor provides. This code is also logically split out and shared so that other projects can benefit from it, such as f-spot which is basing it's next generation release on this. Again Banshees superior design shines through, everything is basically a mono addin and can be overloaded, replaced at will. This e.g. is how a newcomer with no knowledge of the Banshee codebase was able to provide a shuffle mode based on last.fm in the matter of an evening.

Advanced feature support such as last.fm fingerprinting (automatically corrected song information) and music similarity for playlists (akin to iTunes' Genius feature I would suspect though I have never used iTunes). Music sharing and streaming with your contacts (via Telepathy, used in Empathy our default IM client).

A vibrant community which has shown itself capable of growing and supporting itself, remaining responsive to bugs and feature requests. This is extremely important when it comes to picking a default mediaplayer, as you want an active place to put your bugs rather than /dev/null.

A more visually pleasing experience (more bling if you will).

A bet for the future, while RB has been at an absolute standstill for years Banshee has continued to advance and bring desirable functionality to users. Again it's superior design allows for growth and flexibility now and in the future.

A one stop media player that does everything, music, podcasts, audiobooks, video, online stores (of which we have support for several).

It's less buggy than Rhythmbox (currently bugzilla stats give 695 bugs against Banshee, 797 against Rhythmbox), while delivering more features.

Banshee as a project is motivated to deliver changes Ubuntu wants to see and has the modern tools to do so.

But for me most of all Banshee is fun to be part of.

Really Im glad to see one of the envolved people here describing everything and it sounds amazing.
The problem I have at the moment is that I cannot find a really decent app to organize my music and I like before everything else music, not video support and shops, I want to be able to organize and listen to music without glitches and performance problems.
I have the will to improve Banshee again on my system thanks to you but Im not sure if its worth to install, always had problems with Banshee. The biggest problem was the slowness in my opinion and that I had not the opportunity to use drag and drop properly in Banshee.
And Im scared that every player converts to a bloated iTunes alternative, in my opinion. I want a decent Linux audioplayer capable to handle big, really big music collections.
So, which version do you recommend me to test? The daily PPA? I tried the stable version and the "normal" PPA without success.

[gnomeuser]

Really Im glad to see one of the envolved people here describing everything and it sounds amazing.
The problem I have at the moment is that I cannot find a really decent app to organize my music and I like before everything else music, not video support and shops, I want to be able to organize and listen to music without glitches and performance problems.
I have the will to improve Banshee again on my system thanks to you but Im not sure if its worth to install, always had problems with Banshee. The biggest problem was the slowness in my opinion and that I had not the opportunity to use drag and drop properly in Banshee.
And Im scared that every player converts to a bloated iTunes alternative, in my opinion. I want a decent Linux audioplayer capable to handle big, really big music collections.
So, which version do you recommend me to test? The daily PPA? I tried the stable version and the "normal" PPA without success.

My recommendation is to run the daily ppa, get a bugzilla.gnome.org account and idle in #banshee on irc.gimp.net when you are online.

When you have a problem, file a bug on bugzilla.gnome.org (not launchpad we don't monitor that and all bugs have to be forwarded anyways). If you are available on IRC the feedback loop is very short. No problem is to small to deserve a report and if you need help filing a bug we are at hand to help (please in these cases put your log on pastebin.com and include the URL in your question - just ask away, we won't be upset).

Generally useful hints:

banshee-1 --debug --redirect-log is a good default to run for the daily builds, the overhead is fairly small and if you have a crash, before restarting Banshee copy ~/.config/banshee-1/log somewhere safe and file a bug. Attach it and we generally have all the information we need.

For performance issues a separate log from banshee-1 --debug --debug-sql --redirect-log might be useful, but please do remember to keep these separate as they are very verbose. Slowness is typically down to an SQLite problem or suboptimal queries. These we need to get fixed. The more precise you can make your report the better (doing X makes Banshee feel slow rather than Banshee is slow basically).

I assure you and everyone else that at least one person will read your bug report, namely me. I spend hours every day ensuring that your problems are in the best condition to be solved.

To keep up on what is new in Banshee the easy way is to read OMG Ubuntu, I write for them nearly exclusive about Banshee.
www.omgubuntu.co.uk/author/dnielsen

[ivanovnegro]

My recommendation is to run the daily ppa, get a bugzilla.gnome.org account and idle in #banshee on irc.gimp.net when you are online.

When you have a problem, file a bug on bugzilla.gnome.org (not launchpad we don't monitor that and all bugs have to be forwarded anyways). If you are available on IRC the feedback loop is very short. No problem is to small to deserve a report and if you need help filing a bug we are at hand to help (please in these cases put your log on pastebin.com and include the URL in your question - just ask away, we won't be upset).

Generally useful hints:

banshee-1 --debug --redirect-log is a good default to run for the daily builds, the overhead is fairly small and if you have a crash, before restarting Banshee copy ~/.config/banshee-1/log somewhere safe and file a bug. Attach it and we generally have all the information we need.

For performance issues a separate log from banshee-1 --debug --debug-sql --redirect-log might be useful, but please do remember to keep these separate as they are very verbose. Slowness is typically down to an SQLite problem or suboptimal queries. These we need to get fixed. The more precise you can make your report the better (doing X makes Banshee feel slow rather than Banshee is slow basically).

I assure you and everyone else that at least one person will read your bug report, namely me. I spend hours every day ensuring that your problems are in the best condition to be solved.

To keep up on what is new in Banshee the easy way is to read OMG Ubuntu, I write for them nearly exclusive about Banshee.
www.omgubuntu.co.uk/author/dnielsen (http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/author/dnielsen)

Thank you very much for your reply.
I will follow your guide.
And again, your engagement here is great.

[gnomeuser]

Thank you very much for your reply.
I will follow your guide.
And again, your engagement here is great.

No problem, and as for your fear that Banshee might become bloated. Since everything is implemented basically like extensions, you can elect to load the features you care about and leave the rest out.

[ivanovnegro]

No problem, and as for your fear that Banshee might become bloated. Since everything is implemented basically like extensions, you can elect to load the features you care about and leave the rest out.

Thanks again, thats what I realized, and this is good.
Actually Im importing my music with the daily PPA and it didnt crash yet. :D

[beew]

As long as ubuntu-desktop doesn't depend on it, what's the big deal? Removing an unwanted player takes all of about a minute.

I have had removed a few things before that ubuntu-desktop does depend on, it is no big deal, it is just a meta-package.

[Velnias]

NO banshee, because of Mono.
I don't get this Mono thing- Microsoft allowed using their crap for free, thus making Linux stronger competitor. Looks weird at least.

Go banshee go to a Windows world...

[zekopeko]

NO banshee, because of Mono.
I don't get this Mono thing- Microsoft allowed using their crap for free, thus making Linux stronger competitor. Looks weird at least.

Microsoft doesn't make money directly from .NET. They make most of it from selling developer tools such as Visual Studio.


Go banshee go to a Windows world...

Perhaps they should considering the amount of personal attacks and lies from so-called "freedom lovers" and "free software advocates".

[NightwishFan]

You perhaps should not have even bothered to respond to him. Generally folks who offer nothing except a moot opinion should be ignored.

Poster, several great applications are made with mono. I like all of the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

[zekopeko]

You perhaps should not have even bothered to respond to him. Generally folks who offer nothing except a moot opinion should be ignored.

Poster, several great applications are made with mono. I like all of the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

Perhaps, but statements like that should be challenged.

[cariboo]

Please just ignore the anti-mono trolls

[directhex]

Go banshee go to a Windows world...

A stable Windows port would be awesome, so I can use Banshee when I'm booted into GameOS. Are you volunteering?

[saulgoode]

All Banshee's developers, including me, are unpaid volunteers.

Novell employee Aaron Bockover appears to view his job differently, at least he did when he announced (http://abock.org/2007/10/04/superhero-gabriel-burt-joins-novell) that Gabriel Burt had "joined the desktop team at Novell to help work on Banshee" and spoke of their "first joint task on Banshee".

Considering that those two individuals comprise half of the project's leadership (http://banshee.fm/about/) and account for 30% of current contributions (http://bl-log.blogspot.com/2009/10/who-writes-banshee.html) (in the past they accounted for over 70%), it seems somewhat disingenuous to claim that Banshee's development can be attributed to 100% unpaid volunteers.


Novell outside of the cases where they pay for a specific feature or bugfix for their supported products (like any other distribution could pay a developer for these services) has nothing to do with Banshees development.
You fail to mention that Novell is the owner of the project's trademarks. You also omit that Novell is the major copyright holder (http://git.gnome.org/browse/banshee/tree/COPYING) of the code in Banshee. Correct me if I am mistaken, but I believe that Novell, owing to a work-for-hire copyright policy, is the rights holder for all code that has been contributed by Mr Bockover, and to all code contributed by Mr Burt since being hired in 2007.

[gnomeuser]

Thanks again, thats what I realized, and this is good.
Actually Im importing my music with the daily PPA and it didnt crash yet. :D

Not saying it will, actually we have become very good at not doing it but at least one is guarded against eventualities. Be prepared and all that.

[gnomeuser]

A stable Windows port would be awesome, so I can use Banshee when I'm booted into GameOS. Are you volunteering?

Latexer has been working this, slowly but he sends patches every few weeks to improve the situation. We even got an offer on the mailing list to aid with the Windows packaging.

Of course all the major OSes should have the offer of a decent mediaplayer, especially with .NET offering platform independence with relative ease. At the same time the Banshee code base gets better, a win win scenerio.

I think right now it will playback music, it has jumplist integration and does podcasting. Not all the way there but every step is progress.

[Stigmata13]

I have used Banshee since 8.04 and I have been very fond of it. While not only offering the best stability on my system, it has a great interface. So I wouldn't mind at all if it was default; one less package for me to install.
On a side note, people keep talking about the idea of having Banshee also do videos and dropping totem. I think this is a horrible idea; while I'm not completely fond of totem (I prefer other mplayer frontends and VLC) to my experience, Banshee video support is something that's "barely" even there, The sorting of the videos looks ugly, and it doesn't offer any good configuration settings such as subtitles, audio tracks, and output drivers.
If mplayer could be integrated into Banshee, and offer all the needed configurations, I would be fine with that idea.

[zekopeko]

I have used Banshee since 8.04 and I have been very fond of it. While not only offering the best stability on my system, it has a great interface. So I wouldn't mind at all if it was default; one less package for me to install.
On a side note, people keep talking about the idea of having Banshee also do videos and dropping totem. I think this is a horrible idea; while I'm not completely fond of totem (I prefer other mplayer frontends and VLC) to my experience, Banshee video support is something that's "barely" even there, The sorting of the videos looks ugly, and it doesn't offer any good configuration settings such as subtitles, audio tracks, and output drivers.
If mplayer could be integrated into Banshee, and offer all the needed configurations, I would be fine with that idea.

Actually the opposite was suggested on the mailing list. Remove the video support for Natty if it can't be fixed in time.

Long term the best solution would be to make the video (and music) sections plugins so you could disable them at will.

What I would like is for Banshee to have a specialized interface similar to Quicktime X that could transform into a full blown Banshee with video support.

[Docaltmed]

Banshee ftw.

I've been using Banshee and Rhythmbox alternately since 8.10, and I have to say in its most recent iterations, Banshee far outstrips Rhythmbox in all categories. To the point where I dumped Rhythmbox shortly after installing 10.04.

It is fast, stable, flexible, with plugins I can get stuff from U1, Amazon, Magnatune, Jamendo, all the heavy hitters in my little corner of the musical universe. Banshee looks nice, runs nice, sounds nice, it would be plain silly not to make it default.

I wouldn't know Mono if it fell on my head, but I gotta say that I think all of the handwringing over it is a little overwrought. It works, nobody has lost an appendage working with it, and the purist argument just doesn't hold water for this li'l old get-it-done user.

[czr114]

Where does all this anti-mono trolling come from?

The project is in no more danger than every music player listed here which hypothetically runs afoul of dubious software patents covering multimedia formats which may or may not have been subject to a public detente, anyway..




Banshee also tried to scan my entire home folder on first startup which I wasn't particularly impressed with. I'd appreciate it if the application asked me where it was meant to look for files rather than assuming it knew better and trying to scan all of my private data.


Ouch. Did you open a ticket about that?

It's a horrible behavior which ought to be curtailed. That could catch a lot of people off guard if they didn't know about it when first opening a new piece of software found in a new release.

That's why I stick with VLC.

[ivanovnegro]

Where does all this anti-mono trolling come from?




The people read too much in internet about it and now they think that they are very intelligent saying its bad and defending I dont know what. Normal human behavior.

[ivanovnegro]

It's a horrible behavior which ought to be curtailed. That could catch a lot of people off guard if they didn't know about it when first opening a new piece of software found in a new release.

That's why I stick with VLC.

Yes, the scan at start up of the program is not a good choice, dont understand that, especially when you have to load over 200 GB and it even starts automatically to scan the USB devices what is really a pain with the same amount of data and you dont have a progress bar. Maybe there will be improvements.
My first impression was again not very good.

[czr114]

Yes, the scan at start up of the program is not a good choice, dont understand that, especially when you have to load over 200 GB and it even starts automatically to scan the USB devices what is really a pain with the same amount of data and you dont have a progress bar. Maybe there will be improvements.
My first impression was again not very good.

There's also an important privacy angle.

Many library managers attempt to be helpful by submitting media information to any of several online databases to retrieve album art, fill in missing tags, seek recommendations, etc.

If addition to the library upon first execution is automatic, and the program now or in the future accesses online resources to enhance the library's completeness or offer recommendations, then there is the potential for private information to be transmitted without informed consent, as well as the potential for a user to make use of an online service without having had an opportunity to examine its privacy practices.

While some users might not mind, we have to ensure that informed consent is present before any of that might happen. That requires a strict opt-in through an honest and informative dialog, or page within a settings menu item. (hopefully, that dialog will honestly and fully explain the implications of having one's entire media collection blasted across the Internet for whatever features are being used)

Some users might not appreciate having every single media file's name shopped to several online databases, even if the program is trying to be helpful, nor might they appreciate having the library existing to begin with if it begins transmitting usage statistics as part of a yet to be released social metrics or recommendation service.

[Iksf]

Why cant we just have like,

1st time run ubuntu

press music player or w/e

box comes up, asks you to choose if you want rhythmbox banshee or that one with an unspellable name, have all the deb's in the install and have the others cleaned up after

hell, why not have that for most of the choices, like vlc, mplayer, etc

[NightwishFan]

Why cant we just have like,

1st time run ubuntu

press music player or w/e

box comes up, asks you to choose if you want rhythmbox banshee or that one with an unspellable name, have all the deb's in the install and have the others cleaned up after

hell, why not have that for most of the choices, like vlc, mplayer, etc

It might be a case like that eventually though for the sake of simplicity and space on the install media that is not possible at the moment.

[slackthumbz]

Well, having played with banshee for a few hours I went back to rhythmbox. Not just because of familiarity but also I found that rhythmbox doesn't seem to tax my system resources as much (very important on a netbook), performance was smoother in rhythmbox, desktop integration also smoother. Banshee also wanted to index and be the player for my movies, well call me old fashioned if you like but I prefer a separate dedicated video app like totem/mplayer/vlc/flying spaghetti monster/etc... so all in all I find I do prefer Rhythmbox. I would still like to choose what plugins are enabled by default on first startup though. I always find it a little grating when someone deigns to try and choose for me but I understand that (our image of) the Joe User type might find it cool to see all the stores and podcasty stuff, whereas I couldn't care less (take note people, it's "couldn't" care less, not "could", "could" implies that you care at all. I don't. Ok, usage of language rant over).

So in conclusion, prefer rhythmbox but honestly not fussed if Ubuntu makes banshee or anything else the default cos I'll just remove it and install rhythmbox on any new system, same way I remove gwibber, evolution and empathy and install thunderbird and pidgin instead.

[gnomeuser]

Well, having played with banshee for a few hours I went back to rhythmbox. Not just because of familiarity but also I found that rhythmbox doesn't seem to tax my system resources as much (very important on a netbook), performance was smoother in rhythmbox, desktop integration also smoother. Banshee also wanted to index and be the player for my movies, well call me old fashioned if you like but I prefer a separate dedicated video app like totem/mplayer/vlc/flying spaghetti monster/etc... so all in all I find I do prefer Rhythmbox. I would still like to choose what plugins are enabled by default on first startup though. I always find it a little grating when someone deigns to try and choose for me but I understand that (our image of) the Joe User type might find it cool to see all the stores and podcasty stuff, whereas I couldn't care less (take note people, it's "couldn't" care less, not "could", "could" implies that you care at all. I don't. Ok, usage of language rant over).

So in conclusion, prefer rhythmbox but honestly not fussed if Ubuntu makes banshee or anything else the default cos I'll just remove it and install rhythmbox on any new system, same way I remove gwibber, evolution and empathy and install thunderbird and pidgin instead.

Can I convince you to keep Banshee installed and file bugs on the performance issues. I can keep using RB for all I care but I would like to see the performance problems at least filed so we can work on them. It would be very helpful and who knows you may get a cookie.

www.banshee.fm/file-bugs and the quick guide I posted on the previous page in this thread.

[gnomeuser]

Why cant we just have like,

1st time run ubuntu

press music player or w/e

box comes up, asks you to choose if you want rhythmbox banshee or that one with an unspellable name, have all the deb's in the install and have the others cleaned up after

hell, why not have that for most of the choices, like vlc, mplayer, etc

And then a new user sees:

"Apples, Bananas, Race cars, boxers, laundry"

How do they make an informed choice? On what basis do you expect them to?

This is why we pick the best possible default and allow users to replace it after the fact.

[gnomeuser]

Where does all this anti-mono trolling come from?


Uninformed pundits willing to push untruths due to their own ideology, ignoring the truth and facts, with an agenda of their own to push, i.e. Microsoft hatred.



Ouch. Did you open a ticket about that?

It's a horrible behavior which ought to be curtailed. That could catch a lot of people off guard if they didn't know about it when first opening a new piece of software found in a new release.

That's why I stick with VLC.

I think this may be an Ubuntu specific change, I build Banshee from git as a developer and I certainly don't recall it doing this. However it is a bit of a hard situation. You'd want to present a user with his data in the correct applications and in Linux we have the xdg-user directory specification so scanning the Music and Video dirs seems sane. This in no way reads all of your home dir, just the parts where it can be expected that a user would put relevant data.

Banshee doesn't even enable the library watcher by default though, Ubuntu might (I know MeeGo does) switch this one on by default but it is not a recommended default by upstream.

For the truly paranoid Banshee also has a "disable all internet connection requiring functionality" option, readily available in the preferences. This will totally disable all of the services users might have privacy concerns about. Additionally most of the functionality can be disabled simply by disabling the extension that provides it. However we do not as I recall have specific options to disable cover art fetching from specific services (say if you disagree with Amazon's terms but not with last.fm e.g.).

[Dragonbite]

It does multiple locations as part of a single library... I'm not too sure on the distinction from a user perspective.

Great! I keep the "family-friendly" music in a shared directory and the "not-so-family-friendly" music in my /home/Music so I'll have to look at this next time I'm on at home.


Banshee is a much better program to use as the default media program. It offers many more features than Rhythmbox, looks better, and, because it can handle videos, is a full media player as opposed to just a music player. I'd recommend adding Banshee and cutting out both Rhythmbox and Totem.

I have never been able to get Video to play in Banshee yet. All I get is a black screen. I "may" have gotten it once but that was only for a single Ogg Vorbis file (Red Hat's "Truth Happens" video).


And don't forget what just happened (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ODgxMw) to Novell. They were bought by Attachmate Corporation - a company no one ever heard of in open-source ecosystem. What will they do with Suse? The Banshee development could be seriosly slowen down... Or not, the point is - no one knows.

Also, lot of Novell patents is going under Microsoft control now. What will happen to mono? Could Microsoft somehow attack open-source mono apps with these new patents? Again, no one knows. This is simply no time to switch to Banshee.

According to a Tweet by Miguel de Icaza, Mono is going to Attachmate and is thus (likely) not part of the IP sale to the Consortium (link (http://twitter.com/migueldeicaza/status/6732038669340672#)).

I hope this means they'll package the Ubuntu One Music Store plugin with Banshee (combined with Amazon and this is better than iTunes! You get a choice!).

[gnomeuser]

Great! I keep the "family-friendly" music in a shared directory and the "not-so-family-friendly" music in my /home/Music so I'll have to look at this next time I'm on at home.


I am not entirely sure what you want here, but you can have separate databases at least.

the --db= switch is one I use a lot for testing since it isn't always I might want to run with my full database. It may be a bit cumbersome but it can hide your.. adult themed data.

If you want something more exotic, please do file an enhancement request on bugzilla.



I have never been able to get Video to play in Banshee yet. All I get is a black screen. I "may" have gotten it once but that was only for a single Ogg Vorbis file (Red Hat's "Truth Happens" video).


Please do file a bug, how else are we supposed to know that our wonderful media player fails for you (for which we are sorry btw.). See my previous post in this thread for instructions n how to do this best.

For reference I have Banshee managing over 1TB of data, much of this is videos and I have very few problems playing any of them. Though I do agree the management side needs some work. Right now the plan is to get this work in an acceptable state for 2.0 (the release intended for Natty) and if we cannot meet this deadline then disable the Video library in Natty.



I hope this means they'll package the Ubuntu One Music Store plugin with Banshee (combined with Amazon and this is better than iTunes! You get a choice!).

This was actually just debated on our IRC channel, while we do view this as a packaging issuethe Ubuntu maintainers are concerned with moving all of the Banshee Community Extensions package (where the Soundmenu and U1MS integration lives) into Main since this drags with it dependencies like the Tao framework which is not easy to maintain.

So they requested that we move these extensions into Banshee directly which Aaron Bockover sounds willing to do since Bertrand Lorentz (an established Banshee developer) already owns this code.

Whatever the result of this is, Natty will ship with full Ubuntu One Music Store integration and Sound Menu integration. (In fact it already does in Natty as of today)

For the latter feature Ubuntu has requested that we also implement support for the, still unfinished, MPRIS playlist protocol so they can do some of the more advanced things it is imagined can be controlled there.

[ivanovnegro]

Can someone say me why drag and drop does not work with Banshee?
I could post it on Bugzilla but as it seems it is supposed to be so and it is not a bug, I simply ask here.
I like to fill in my tracks with Nautilus and to use the library when I want to browse within my music collection or to explore it but I need drag and drop, Im a little bit of the control fanatics of my music as it is very well in order.
Im testing the program now extensively and I like really the engagement of the developers on the forums. :p

[czr114]

Banshee doesn't even enable the library watcher by default though, Ubuntu might (I know MeeGo does) switch this one on by default but it is not a recommended default by upstream.


Do you think they bothered to switch it?




For the truly paranoid Banshee also has a "disable all internet connection requiring functionality" option, readily available in the preferences. This will totally disable all of the services users might have privacy concerns about. Additionally most of the functionality can be disabled simply by disabling the extension that provides it. However we do not as I recall have specific options to disable cover art fetching from specific services (say if you disagree with Amazon's terms but not with last.fm e.g.).

If it's based on a disabling (opt-out), then there is the possibility that it runs before the user has a chance to disable it, or that it runs before the user knows to go in and disable it.

Is Banshee saving cookies or sharing them with other browsers? This was one of the big problems with WMP that made its use for network lookups practically guaranteed to result in behavior targeting and advertising profiling. A company like Amazon or Last.fm is in the business of profiling and advertising, so we've got to make sure users have an opportunity for informed consent before that can take place.

Another issue which might come up, courtesy of the ever-dastardly RIAA, might be a fishing expedition for music collections of excess size. If there's a player cookie being used, then collections can be cross-referenced by machine (not IP), and music lookup sites become a wealth of information on collections so large as to be presumed pirate.

This sort of issue seems best resolved via a first run dialog that lets those who want to opt-in do so while preserving the ability to understand the ability and implications of participating and make a choice to not participate prior to first run.

Burying it in the preferences runs the risk that it runs first or that a user fails to opt-out because he doesn't understand he has that choice, or why he might want to do so.

I know it might seem like a nitpick, but with so many apps taking advantage of easy Internet functionality, somebody has to raise the issues lest privacy be done in by excess convenience. Although many users see that as a feature, not a data leak, we can serve both world with appropriate UI design. It'd be nice to be able to go back to first running new applications without having to disable eth0 before examining profile pages.


Edit: If Banshee is managing videos, and it does any sort of video information lookups, some users definitely need to be wondering whether my_girlfriend_and_me_get_it_on_in_the_confessional .avi will be shipped off to Amazon for identification. If there is any persistence in the lookups, that could be embarrassing, and with recognition-by-framegrab as a technology on the horizon.....

Another thing to think about, with the state of privacy going the way it is, will some governments go on broad fishing expeditions for presumptive piracy or video files suspicious in name only? Companies like Google and Amazon aren't shy about turning over data. We wouldn't want to be the source of users having to explain to the authorities what was submitted to the network and re-establish their own innocence, especially in countries not as keen on human rights as the US and Western Europe.

Who knows if the Great Firewall of China or network censors in places like Saudi Arabia might eventually get around to using media lookups as a way to open investigations. If Banshee is trying to look up something like Jenna_Jameson_striptease.avi, and that gets caught up in the systems of the Saudi Internet police, that could get somebody a visit from the Mutaween and a possible chance at lashings or prison.

[gnomeuser]

Can someone say me why drag and drop does not work with Banshee?
I could post it on Bugzilla but as it seems it is supposed to be so and it is not a bug, I simply ask here.
I like to fill in my tracks with Nautilus and to use the library when I want to browse within my music collection or to explore it but I need drag and drop, Im a little bit of the control fanatics of my music as it is very well in order.
Im testing the program now extensively and I like really the engagement of the developers on the forums. :p

Long standing bug it seems though it never occurred to me to drag and drop items from Nautilus to Banshee for some reason.

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=563380

[directhex]

I am not entirely sure what you want here, but you can have separate databases at least.

the --db= switch is one I use a lot for testing since it isn't always I might want to run with my full database. It may be a bit cumbersome but it can hide your.. adult themed data.

If you want something more exotic, please do file an enhancement request on bugzilla.

No, I see what he wants.

You know how you have one source for your library, e.g. the "Source" part of the preferences window? He wants multiple entries here, e.g. so multiple folders are scanned by the directory watcher. That way, //server/music is used by all users on the network, and //server/pornmusic is used only by some users, and it works fine.

I think it's a good idea. The U1MS addin needs it, really, so I can watch /data/Media/Music and ~/.ubuntuone/Purchased. I (badly) wrote support for it but never ended up sending the patch, as I had no adequate way to test it.

[ivanovnegro]

Long standing bug it seems though it never occurred to me to drag and drop items from Nautilus to Banshee for some reason.

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=563380

Thanks, I thought it wasnt a bug as Banshee do this a long time.
This really needs an improvement.

[Dragonbite]

No, I see what he wants.

You know how you have one source for your library, e.g. the "Source" part of the preferences window? He wants multiple entries here, e.g. so multiple folders are scanned by the directory watcher. That way, //server/music is used by all users on the network, and //server/pornmusic is used only by some users, and it works fine.

I think it's a good idea. The U1MS addin needs it, really, so I can watch /data/Media/Music and ~/.ubuntuone/Purchased. I (badly) wrote support for it but never ended up sending the patch, as I had no adequate way to test it.

Well, I wouldn't call it pornmusic, just want to keep my 5 year old from listening to Killswitch Engine and Rob Zombie just yet. ;)

Basically, though, yes that is what I am wanting to do; scan 2 different directories and have them combined into the banshee library so I can seamlessly go from a song in either location to another.

They can be visually viewed as one big source, but behind the scenes actually be for different locations. Not sure what that does to duplicate entries though (could get confusing).

[saulgoode]

And then a new user sees:

"Apples, Bananas, Race cars, boxers, laundry"

How do they make an informed choice? On what basis do you expect them to?

This is why we pick the best possible default and allow users to replace it after the fact.

Which prompts the question: what criteria should be employed in determining "the best possible default"? One such criterion might be which choice would result in the fewest number of users having to replace the default after the fact -- in other words, what is currently the most popular music player available.

A quick survey of various polls conducted on the subject produced the following results:


Linux Journal (http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/readers-choice-awards-2010) - Banshee placed fourth, after Amarok, RhythmBox, and XMMS.


sucka.net (http://www.sucka.net/2010/04/the-best-vote-linux-music-player/) - Banshee placed second, after RhythmBox.


LinuxQuestions.org (http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/2009-linuxquestions-org-members-choice-awards-91/audio-media-player-application-of-the-year-780649/) - Banshee ranked eighth, behind Amarok, Rhythmbox, Audacious, Songbird, XMMS, Exaile, and MPD.


Ubuntuforums.org ( 2008 ) (http://ubuntuforums.org/poll.php?do=showresults&pollid=3820) - Banshee ranked third, after Amarok and Rhythmbox.


I could not find a more recent UF poll that included both Banshee and Rhythmbox (nor would I think that an earlier poll's (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=421396&page=38) results would be a particularly fair representation for the then nascent Banshee project). Perhaps a more recent (and fair) poll in these forums would show more support for Banshee, but it should be noted that in all of the above cited polls, the popularity of Ubuntu's current default player, Rhythmbox, was shown to be at least twice that of Banshee.

Of course, popularity amongst users is not the only criterion for choosing a default, but if there are other reasons compelling a change then it is reasonable to examine those reasons, for it seems abundantly clear that to a majority of users in the community, Banshee is not considered the best option.

[zekopeko]

Which prompts the question: what criteria should be employed in determining "the best possible default"? One such criterion might be which choice would result in the fewest number of users having to replace the default after the fact -- in other words, what is currently the most popular music player available.

A quick survey of various polls conducted on the subject produced the following results:


Linux Journal (http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/readers-choice-awards-2010) - Banshee placed fourth, after Amarok, RhythmBox, and XMMS.


sucka.net (http://www.sucka.net/2010/04/the-best-vote-linux-music-player/) - Banshee placed second, after RhythmBox.


LinuxQuestions.org (http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/2009-linuxquestions-org-members-choice-awards-91/audio-media-player-application-of-the-year-780649/) - Banshee ranked eighth, behind Amarok, Rhythmbox, Audacious, Songbird, XMMS, Exaile, and MPD.


Ubuntuforums.org ( 2008 ) (http://ubuntuforums.org/poll.php?do=showresults&pollid=3820) - Banshee ranked third, after Amarok and Rhythmbox.


I could not find a more recent UF poll that included both Banshee and Rhythmbox (nor would I think that an earlier poll's (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=421396&page=38) results would be a particularly fair representation for the then nascent Banshee project). Perhaps a more recent (and fair) poll in these forums would show more support for Banshee, but it should be noted that in all of the above cited polls, the popularity of Ubuntu's current default player, Rhythmbox, was shown to be at least twice that of Banshee.

You couldn't find anymore recent polls?

Here is one: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/10/which-would-you-choose-as-default-banshee-or-rhythmbox-poll/

EDIT: Forgot to mention. That poll pretty much demolishes your "[popularity] at least twice that of Banshee" argument. Apparently Ubuntu users like Banshee. The spread is less then 4 percent.

Of course anti-mono trolls backed themselves into a corner with their constant FUD-ing. Why? Well because we can't really know if people didn't like Banshee as a music player or the language it is written in, does their opinion have merit or is it simply a knee jerk reaction because something is written in Mono.


Of course, popularity amongst users is not the only criterion for choosing a default, but if there are other reasons compelling a change then it is reasonable to examine those reasons, for it seems abundantly clear that to a majority of users in the community, Banshee is not considered the best option.

Majority of users? Really? Your proof being what exactly? Few people making unfounded statements isn't "majority" by any stretch of the word.

Even this thread wasn't started to discuss the merit of the application but about the language it's written in.

[Lucradia]

I'm for totem as the default media player, now, and forever.

I hate playlist based media players.

[zekopeko]

I'm for totem as the default media player, now, and forever.

I hate playlist based media players.

Totem isn't going nowhere (for now).

[czr114]

I'm for totem as the default media player, now, and forever.

I hate playlist based media players.

If Ubuntu would move away from the playlist/library based player, VLC would be a better choice than Totem. VLC is light but packed with functionality.

[zekopeko]

If Ubuntu would move away from the playlist/library based player, VLC would be a better choice than Totem. VLC is light but packed with functionality.

VLC is what gives seizures to usability designers.

[Lucradia]

If Ubuntu would move away from the playlist/library based player, VLC would be a better choice than Totem. VLC is light but packed with functionality.

Does it have a "Repeat Track Forever" Feature? I can't remember, been a long time.

Could always try Parole too (also gstreamer, but for XFCE.)

[czr114]

Does it have a "Repeat Track Forever" Feature? I can't remember, been a long time.

Could always try Parole too (also gstreamer, but for XFCE.)

View -> Playlist -> Loop One/All

[gnomeuser]

No, I see what he wants.

You know how you have one source for your library, e.g. the "Source" part of the preferences window? He wants multiple entries here, e.g. so multiple folders are scanned by the directory watcher. That way, //server/music is used by all users on the network, and //server/pornmusic is used only by some users, and it works fine.

I think it's a good idea. The U1MS addin needs it, really, so I can watch /data/Media/Music and ~/.ubuntuone/Purchased. I (badly) wrote support for it but never ended up sending the patch, as I had no adequate way to test it.

I remember that patch, it looked quite good to me.

I don't know if the proposed solution is sufficient for all users but it seems that it would work.

For now he could put all of his boring music in one dir and all his fun depraved stuff in another containing also a symlink to the mount with the boring stuff.

Then have the regular every day setup load the gconf keys for the boring mount. Meaning everytime kiddo clicks the Banshee icon it starts up in kiddie mode. Then create a separate launcher with takes the --gconf-key= and --db= arguments for the settings and db for his full collection.

all this would take is a copy of .gconf/apps/banshee

So when launching the full collection it would be say banshee-1 --gconf-keys=~/.gconf/apps/banshee-dad --db=~/.config/banshee-1/banshee-dad.db

Not the prettiest solution but it would work today, while we think up the technical solution and the UI for doing this the proper way.

This would also ensure that kiddo using dads machine would never launch a Banshee that knows about his fun stuff.

[gnomeuser]

If Ubuntu would move away from the playlist/library based player, VLC would be a better choice than Totem. VLC is light but packed with functionality.

VLC's one redeeming feature is that it plays everything (just go to their website, it is right there is big bold graphics as the number one selling point)... well if you were to make it the default, that would have to be stripped away for legal reasons. Which leaves VLC with the same level of functionality out of the box as everything else would have. A framework underneath that isn't designed for modularity the way GStreamer is, meaning you can't easily add it back in the way we can now and an UI which makes Santa kill kittens out of pure unspoiled sadness.

VLC can never, by design, become the default media player. Unless you are wanting to create something ugly, unusable and non-functional that is.

[ivanovnegro]

VLC's one redeeming feature is that it plays everything (just go to their website, it is right there is big bold graphics as the number one selling point)... well if you were to make it the default, that would have to be stripped away for legal reasons. Which leaves VLC with the same level of functionality out of the box as everything else would have. A framework underneath that isn't designed for modularity the way GStreamer is, meaning you can't easily add it back in the way we can now and an UI which makes Santa kill kittens out of pure unspoiled sadness.

VLC can never, by design, become the default media player. Unless you are wanting to create something ugly, unusable and non-functional that is.

For me, VLC is definitely the best DVD/movie player but thats all. You can listen to music with it but forget it to organize your music with VLC, I love it, but not for my music collection.

[saulgoode]

You couldn't find anymore recent polls?

Here is one: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/10/which-would-you-choose-as-default-banshee-or-rhythmbox-poll/
Well, my statement directly addressed more recent UbuntuForums (UF) polls, but I recognize your point about the OMGubuntu website's poll as valid (i.e., Banshee placed a very close second in that poll). As an aside, I am more than a little surprised that using a search term of "poll favorite top linux music players" and the like did not result in OMGubuntu's poll appearing in the first four or five pages.


Of course anti-mono trolls backed themselves into a corner with their constant FUD-ing. Why? Well because we can't really know if people didn't like Banshee as a music player or the language it is written in, does their opinion have merit or is it simply a knee jerk reaction because something is written in Mono.

Is such any different for knowing the reasoning of those who voted for Banshee? And if the discussion is focused upon what Ubuntu users prefer for their default choices, does it really matter what their reasoning is?


Majority of users? Really? Your proof being what exactly? Few people making unfounded statements isn't "majority" by any stretch of the word.
I presented some evidence in the form of several popular polls. You yourself pointed to an additional poll which likewise supports the claim that a majority of users prefer Rhythmbox. Nowhere did I cite any "statements" on the subject, unfounded or otherwise.

Any who wish to discount the supplied evidence are free to do so, notwithstanding the fact that no matter how insubstantial the evidence may, there has not been presented even a suspicion of a hint that any evidence exists to support the opposite view.

[gnomeuser]

Thanks, I thought it wasnt a bug as Banshee do this a long time.
This really needs an improvement.

We have 680 some bugs open right now, I am pretty sure that the about half of these that are feature requests all have people feeling like you do about their request. Just saying there is lots of work regardless of how you look at it and we are but volunteers working in our spare time. We get an amazing amount of work done with what resources we have, it is never enough to please everyone though.

http://live.gnome.org/Banshee/CommonQuestions contains means for bribing developers with gifts, as a hint - bug report numbers fit very well on those little gift notes. A happy developer is a productive developer.

Aside that patches are most welcome and we would love to help people get started working on Banshee on any feature. Just pop by our IRC channel (#banshee on irc.gimp.net) and ask away. New developers rock and are always welcomed warmly.

[ivanovnegro]

We have 680 some bugs open right now, I am pretty sure that the about half of these that are feature requests all have people feeling like you do about their request. Just saying there is lots of work regardless of how you look at it and we are but volunteers working in our spare time. We get an amazing amount of work done with what resources we have, it is never enough to please everyone though.

http://live.gnome.org/Banshee/CommonQuestions contains means for bribing developers with gifts, as a hint - bug report numbers fit very well on those little gift notes. A happy developer is a productive developer.

Aside that patches are most welcome and we would love to help people get started working on Banshee on any feature. Just pop by our IRC channel (#banshee on irc.gimp.net) and ask away. New developers rock and are always welcomed warmly.

Thank you again for all your replys, I will do the best I can and send bug reports and feature requests and whatever asap and if I feel really comfortable to use Banshee.
At the moment I need really more improvements but like you said, everyone can begin to report the problems the people have and then moving the project forward.

[gnomeuser]

Do you think they bothered to switch it?




If it's based on a disabling (opt-out), then there is the possibility that it runs before the user has a chance to disable it, or that it runs before the user knows to go in and disable it.

Is Banshee saving cookies or sharing them with other browsers? This was one of the big problems with WMP that made its use for network lookups practically guaranteed to result in behavior targeting and advertising profiling. A company like Amazon or Last.fm is in the business of profiling and advertising, so we've got to make sure users have an opportunity for informed consent before that can take place.

Another issue which might come up, courtesy of the ever-dastardly RIAA, might be a fishing expedition for music collections of excess size. If there's a player cookie being used, then collections can be cross-referenced by machine (not IP), and music lookup sites become a wealth of information on collections so large as to be presumed pirate.

This sort of issue seems best resolved via a first run dialog that lets those who want to opt-in do so while preserving the ability to understand the ability and implications of participating and make a choice to not participate prior to first run.

Burying it in the preferences runs the risk that it runs first or that a user fails to opt-out because he doesn't understand he has that choice, or why he might want to do so.

I know it might seem like a nitpick, but with so many apps taking advantage of easy Internet functionality, somebody has to raise the issues lest privacy be done in by excess convenience. Although many users see that as a feature, not a data leak, we can serve both world with appropriate UI design. It'd be nice to be able to go back to first running new applications without having to disable eth0 before examining profile pages.


Edit: If Banshee is managing videos, and it does any sort of video information lookups, some users definitely need to be wondering whether my_girlfriend_and_me_get_it_on_in_the_confessional .avi will be shipped off to Amazon for identification. If there is any persistence in the lookups, that could be embarrassing, and with recognition-by-framegrab as a technology on the horizon.....

Another thing to think about, with the state of privacy going the way it is, will some governments go on broad fishing expeditions for presumptive piracy or video files suspicious in name only? Companies like Google and Amazon aren't shy about turning over data. We wouldn't want to be the source of users having to explain to the authorities what was submitted to the network and re-establish their own innocence, especially in countries not as keen on human rights as the US and Western Europe.

Who knows if the Great Firewall of China or network censors in places like Saudi Arabia might eventually get around to using media lookups as a way to open investigations. If Banshee is trying to look up something like Jenna_Jameson_striptease.avi, and that gets caught up in the systems of the Saudi Internet police, that could get somebody a visit from the Mutaween and a possible chance at lashings or prison.

These are all excellent points, however I think the way to handle this is not in Banshee's UI. We can have settings for all of this but perhaps privacy controls might fit better in the environment control center. One central place listing what you allowed access to what resources might make more sense.

e.g.
http://live.gnome.org/Design/SystemSettings/PrivacyAndSharing

Regardless for specific cases you are very welcome to open bugs. E.g. like having Banshee ask you the first time it finds music without locally available artwork if you want to request this from Internet services A, B and/or C with links to their privacy statement.

[gnomeuser]

Thank you again for all your replys, I will do the best I can and send bug reports and feature requests and whatever asap and if I feel really comfortable to use Banshee.
At the moment I need really more improvements but like you said, everyone can begin to report the problems the people have and then moving the project forward.

Just out of interest what kind of improvements are you looking for?

[zekopeko]

Well, my statement directly addressed more recent UbuntuForums (UF) polls, but I recognize your point about the OMGubuntu website's poll as valid (i.e., Banshee placed a very close second in that poll). As an aside, I am more than a little surprised that using a search term of "poll favorite top linux music players" and the like did not result in OMGubuntu's poll appearing in the first four or five pages.

You should have used "Rhythmbox Banshee poll" since that is being discussed.


Is such any different for knowing the reasoning of those who voted for Banshee? And if the discussion is focused upon what Ubuntu users prefer for their default choices, does it really matter what their reasoning is?

When you are deciding something on its merit then the quality of one's mind is imperative. Opinion of (dominantly) irrational and ignorant people shouldn't be a factor in deciding something that will impact millions of people.


I presented some evidence in the form of several popular polls. You yourself pointed to an additional poll which likewise supports the claim that a majority of users prefer Rhythmbox. Nowhere did I cite any "statements" on the subject, unfounded or otherwise.

Didn't we have a discussion on how flawed online polls are? Or do you believe moot of 4chan is Times' person of the year? Interesting tidbit. You can vote multiple times on that poll.


Any who wish to discount the supplied evidence are free to do so, notwithstanding the fact that no matter how insubstantial the evidence may, there has not been presented even a suspicion of a hint that any evidence exists to support the opposite view.

If anything that poll shows that including Banshee won't be such a problem. As you said yourself there are a number of criteria that one might use to decide on the default. Popularity is just one and as that poll shows (if we take it as somewhat valid) the difference is minimal. Where Banshee wins is flexibility, bug count, UI and a super friendly upstream.

[czr114]

These are all excellent points, however I think the way to handle this is not in Banshee's UI. We can have settings for all of this but perhaps privacy controls might fit better in the environment control center. One central place listing what you allowed access to what resources might make more sense.

e.g.
http://live.gnome.org/Design/SystemSettings/PrivacyAndSharing

Regardless for specific cases you are very welcome to open bugs. E.g. like having Banshee ask you the first time it finds music without locally available artwork if you want to request this from Internet services A, B and/or C with links to their privacy statement.

How would you like me to open this, if at all? It's not really a bug, since the lookups are behaving as intended (albeit in a possibly ill-behaved and consequence-laden manner).

Maybe it's more appropriate a dev open a discussion on a mailing list.

The issue of privacy is big, and requires agreement on a fundamental approach before we can point and note feature X is lacking.

For example, a central listing might be a good option, provided people can find it, and Banshee is set to fail safe, not fail badly, should that not be able to be called up. That's all governed by the vision laid out.

I'm not a dev on this project, so I'm unsure where the team feels its best to raise a non-bug issue.

At any rate, it's my opinion that anything involving a network call or third party service be subject to clear, informed consent (not just a drive-by checkbox), and I'd like to advocate for user privacy, but in the way the devs feel it most helpful.

[Garthhh]

No, I see what he wants.

You know how you have one source for your library, e.g. the "Source" part of the preferences window? He wants multiple entries here, e.g. so multiple folders are scanned by the directory watcher. That way, //server/music is used by all users on the network, and //server/pornmusic is used only by some users, and it works fine.

I think it's a good idea. The U1MS addin needs it, really, so I can watch /data/Media/Music and ~/.ubuntuone/Purchased. I (badly) wrote support for it but never ended up sending the patch, as I had no adequate way to test it.

not only multiple places to scan, more definition on external drives or across networks.
I keep my music on an external drive, along with files I have converted from LP's, but haven't been chopped into songs & tagged yet. I discovered this, when I was suddenly listening to a unnamed file that was 2 hours long.

I also miss the ability to configure the browser to include genre, I may get used to it as a filter;)

& while I'm on a wish list, I want the labels to be visable on the playlist pane. This would let me do large smart playlists more efficiently, for mp3 players or just my favorites file

[moore.bryan]

Having used many different players with a relatively large music library, I believe the following:
Rhythymbox (http://projects.gnome.org/rhythmbox/) < Banshee (http://banshee.fm/download/) < Guayadeque (http://sourceforge.net/projects/guayadeque/) < Clementine ("http://code.google.com/p/clementine-player/)

As per the default-install, I would suggest the most fully functional player should take default precedence and in my opinion, that would be Clementine and VLC as defaults. I appreciate the opinion "what does it matter because it's just as easy to install a new program," but we need to understand there must be--to some extent--consideration of the "lowest common denominator;" i.e., the beginning user.

I also appreciate the choice of Rhythmbox because of its integration--at varying levels--with the Ubuntu One; however, I'll stick with Clementine.

Also, considering the developers' choice to move--somewhat--away from GNOME with Unity instead of GNOME Shell as the default user interface, I'm not sure why we're staying "married" to GNOME "exclusive" programs.

[moore.bryan]

Also, for video:
Totem (http://projects.gnome.org/totem/) < Mplayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html) < VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/)

[zekopeko]

Having used many different players with a relatively large music library, I believe the following:
Rhythymbox (http://projects.gnome.org/rhythmbox/) < Banshee (http://banshee.fm/download/) < Guayadeque (http://sourceforge.net/projects/guayadeque/) < Clementine ("http://code.google.com/p/clementine-player/)

As per the default-install, I would suggest the most fully functional player should take default precedence and in my opinion, that would be Clementine and VLC as defaults. I appreciate the opinion "what does it matter because it's just as easy to install a new program," but we need to understand there must be--to some extent--consideration of the "lowest common denominator;" i.e., the beginning user.

I also appreciate the choice of Rhythmbox because of its integration--at varying levels--with the Ubuntu One; however, I'll stick with Clementine.

Also, considering the developers' choice to move--somewhat--away from GNOME with Unity instead of GNOME Shell as the default user interface, I'm not sure why we're staying "married" to GNOME "exclusive" programs.

The problem is that Clementine is a KDE/Qt application. It would pull in a lot of dependencies for which there is no room on the CD. The same applies to VLC.

Banshee on the other hand is getting trimmed and will, by the time Natty is released, take roughly the same amount of space as Rhythmbox.

On the matter of VLC I'm strongly against it. It has a horrible interface and would be extremely confusing for end users. Totem on the other hand is very simple and does it's job as advertised. It also uses Gstreamer for playback so it shares dependencies with PiTiVi which is another plus.

[NightwishFan]

We aren't moving away from Gnome at all.

[moore.bryan]

The problem is that Clementine is a KDE/Qt application. It would pull in a lot of dependencies for which there is no room on the CD.
And yet it doesn't pull many extra dependencies and it does a lot more, a lot better than the other aforementioned audio players.


The same applies to VLC.
How so?


Banshee on the other hand is getting trimmed and will, by the time Natty is released, take roughly the same amount of space as Rhythmbox.
Agreed, but the interface and "abilities" are still lacking.


On the matter of VLC I'm strongly against it. It has a horrible interface and would be extremely confusing for end users. Totem on the other hand is very simple and does it's job as advertised. It also uses Gstreamer for playback so it shares dependencies with PiTiVi which is another plus.
How is it confusing? And, besides, it plays nearly everything on Earth.


We aren't moving away from Gnome at all.
GNOME is heading towards GNOME Shell, Canonical is moving toward Unity. That's not necessarily moving away from GNOME--poor choice of phrasing on my part--but it's hard to deny that split doesn't encourage additional divergence.

[zekopeko]

And yet it doesn't pull many extra dependencies and it does a lot more, a lot better than the other aforementioned audio players.

How so?

I suggest you look up the dependencies yourself in Synaptic. For me (no other Qt/KDE app on the system AFAIK) VLC tries to pull some 14MB. Clementine isn't in the repos so can't tell how much it would pull.


Agreed, but the interface and "abilities" are still lacking.

You'll have to quantify what abilities are lacking.


How is it confusing? And, besides, it plays nearly everything on Earth.

There are too many options that are irrelevant for most users. Open VLC's preferences/options dialog and Totem's then compare them. Totem is simple. VLC is a monstrosity.

The fact that it plays "everything" is irrelevant. Gstreamer is practically a standard on Linux distros, it's modular so it's easy to split codecs that Ubuntu can't ship. VLC is basically a ffmpeg GUI and it can't be shipped on Ubuntu for legal reasons.


GNOME is heading towards GNOME Shell, Canonical is moving toward Unity. That's not necessarily moving away from GNOME--poor choice of phrasing on my part--but it's hard to deny that split doesn't encourage additional divergence.

AFAIK Rhythmbox isn't officially shipped as part of Gnome Desktop Suite. Totem is the official player of Gnome for both audio and video. RB is in the same position as Banshee when talking about following Gnome's application choices.

[saulgoode]

When you are deciding something on its merit then the quality of one's mind is imperative. Opinion of (dominantly) irrational and ignorant people shouldn't be a factor in deciding something that will impact millions of people.
When amongst the millions of people impacted, those you'd characterize as "irrational and ignorant" -- a characterization I denounce as shamefully arrogant -- constitute a majority, I'd submit their opinion matters greatly. If Ubuntu has as a goal to satisfy the most people possible with their offering then it doesn't seem particularly prudent to be laying before them a pons asinorum and dismissing their viewpoints.


Didn't we have a discussion on how flawed online polls are? Or do you believe moot of 4chan is Times' person of the year? Interesting tidbit. You can vote multiple times on that poll.

If anything that poll shows that including Banshee won't be such a problem. As you said yourself there are a number of criteria that one might use to decide on the default. Popularity is just one and as that poll shows (if we take it as somewhat valid) the difference is minimal. Where Banshee wins is flexibility, bug count, UI and a super friendly upstream.
And here's an interesting tidbit: all of the polls to which I linked were fairly resilient to being "gamed", while the OMGubuntu one -- the only one in which Banshee faired at all well -- was not. In the UbuntuForums polls, though outdated, members were only allowed to vote but once, and forum members are prohibited from holding more than one account. While for the other polls to which I linked, the polls covered several categories across the broad spectrum of applications, systems, and services. Making it somewhat unlikely that someone would be specifically interested in gaming the audio player vote to the exclusion of their favorite distro, desktop, webbrowser, office tools, programming language, graphical editor, games, et cetera, et cetera.

[czr114]

The problem is that Clementine is a KDE/Qt application. It would pull in a lot of dependencies for which there is no room on the CD. The same applies to VLC.

Banshee on the other hand is getting trimmed and will, by the time Natty is released, take roughly the same amount of space as Rhythmbox.

On the matter of VLC I'm strongly against it. It has a horrible interface and would be extremely confusing for end users. Totem on the other hand is very simple and does it's job as advertised. It also uses Gstreamer for playback so it shares dependencies with PiTiVi which is another plus.
VLC has among the simplest of interfaces.

A user opens something, then it plays.

Users aren't confused by periphery such as libraries, collections, playlists, music store tabs, import functions, tags, recommendations, album art, etc.

VLC has many options in the menus and under the hood, but the average user doesn't need to access those.

VLC plays virtually anything which isn't broken, and much of what is.

I can understand a complaint that VLC has no interface, and lacks the bells and whistles, but to bash the interface as confusing - what interface?

VLC is a set of controls with an optional menu.

[gnomeuser]

How would you like me to open this, if at all? It's not really a bug, since the lookups are behaving as intended (albeit in a possibly ill-behaved and consequence-laden manner).

Maybe it's more appropriate a dev open a discussion on a mailing list.

The issue of privacy is big, and requires agreement on a fundamental approach before we can point and note feature X is lacking.

For example, a central listing might be a good option, provided people can find it, and Banshee is set to fail safe, not fail badly, should that not be able to be called up. That's all governed by the vision laid out.

I'm not a dev on this project, so I'm unsure where the team feels its best to raise a non-bug issue.

At any rate, it's my opinion that anything involving a network call or third party service be subject to clear, informed consent (not just a drive-by checkbox), and I'd like to advocate for user privacy, but in the way the devs feel it most helpful.

You are welcome to post to the mailing list. I have enough on my plate and will not have time to lead any such debate. Try to make the shortest, clearest argument you can and propose a solution, rants tend not to end up being productive.

I still think though that specific bugs being filed would be very helpful. Sniff Banshee (or read the code) and see what information it sends where, examine the destinations privacy and data retention guidelines. Then file bugs on those issues. I would suggest starting with the album art fetching as this is something most users will encounter.

[gnomeuser]

VLC plays virtually anything which isn't broken, and much of what is.

Again, no it doesn't. Not in a version we could ship legally by default. And it's underpinnings are not at all suited for adding codec support after the fact.

Patent license violation is a very expensive offence which you may be committing right this minute by using VLC. For people who are in this situation, there is additionally no legal way to buy supported licensed codecs, like one can do with GStreamer.

[czr114]

You are welcome to post to the mailing list. I have enough on my plate and will not have time to lead any such debate. Try to make the shortest, clearest argument you can and propose a solution, rants tend not to end up being productive.

I still think though that specific bugs being filed would be very helpful. Sniff Banshee (or read the code) and see what information it sends where, examine the destinations privacy and data retention guidelines. Then file bugs on those issues. I would suggest starting with the album art fetching as this is something most users will encounter.

Thanks, I'll take this up on the list, and see what the dev team has to say.



Again, no it doesn't. Not in a version we could ship legally by default. And it's underpinnings are not at all suited for adding codec support after the fact.

Patent license violation is a very expensive offence which you may be committing right this minute by using VLC. For people who are in this situation, there is additionally no legal way to buy supported licensed codecs, like one can do with GStreamer.

In fairness to VLC and its team, that's a problem with broken politicians, not a broken player. The code itself works.

Does anybody actually buy the GStreamer codec pack? I'd wager that the vast majority of Ubuntu desktops are not buying codecs, rendering the practical net effect of Totem and VLC the same, in those jurisdictions in which it is an issue (VLC is perfectly legal in France, where it is based).

I wouldn't fault GnuPG or Tor for those places where they can't be shipped, either, even though their dev teams are in the US where neither are an issue.

[ivanovnegro]

Just out of interest what kind of improvements are you looking for?

First of all is the speed, Banshee is really slow on my machine scanning and browsing the music, maybe I see something wrong, but in my case the performance is not as good, only an example, Guayadeque and Clementine are scanning my music library faster and are working faster in all what I do. My notebook is not so old, it cannot be a hardware issue.
Banshee is increasing my CPU remarkable while only browsing through the album browser.
Second, the GUI is cluttered for me.
At the moment how I have the program on my machine its not really usable, it scanned my music at the end (and it was doing it with problems - FLAC-files) and I disabled everything what I dont need but I cannot satisfy myself.
I have more issues and ideas but for now I think this is not the place for it.
I dont know how to explain it better, its just usability, Im really a freak with respect to music. I tested all players and could compare many things.
And btw, the context menu displaying Wiki and Last.FM articles is not suitable for me, it blurs with the browser and is not looking good.

[NightwishFan]

The only player I found that scans faster than Banshee is Amarok 2. If you notice slowdowns it may be due to ext4. Have you tried running it on an ext3 filesystem?

[zekopeko]

When amongst the millions of people impacted, those you'd characterize as "irrational and ignorant" -- a characterization I denounce as shamefully arrogant -- constitute a majority, I'd submit their opinion matters greatly. If Ubuntu has as a goal to satisfy the most people possible with their offering then it doesn't seem particularly prudent to be laying before them a pons asinorum and dismissing their viewpoints.

Oh look. You are making assumptions. Those that I characterize as irrational and ignorant are in no way a majority of those millions. They are simply loud, hateful and bent on attacking people because they don't share their demented worldview.


And here's an interesting tidbit: all of the polls to which I linked were fairly resilient to being "gamed", while the OMGubuntu one -- the only one in which Banshee faired at all well -- was not. In the UbuntuForums polls, though outdated, members were only allowed to vote but once, and forum members are prohibited from holding more than one account. While for the other polls to which I linked, the polls covered several categories across the broad spectrum of applications, systems, and services. Making it somewhat unlikely that someone would be specifically interested in gaming the audio player vote to the exclusion of their favorite distro, desktop, webbrowser, office tools, programming language, graphical editor, games, et cetera, et cetera.

Interesting tidbit: you selectively chose one criteria (that is actually not that relevant) while ignoring more important ones. You also forgot that Ubuntu labels itself as a meritocracy with an occasional dictatorial decree. Popularity isn't that important factor when deciding on default.

[zekopeko]

VLC has among the simplest of interfaces.

A user opens something, then it plays.

Users aren't confused by periphery such as libraries, collections, playlists, music store tabs, import functions, tags, recommendations, album art, etc.

VLC has many options in the menus and under the hood, but the average user doesn't need to access those.

VLC plays virtually anything which isn't broken, and much of what is.

I can understand a complaint that VLC has no interface, and lacks the bells and whistles, but to bash the interface as confusing - what interface?

VLC is a set of controls with an optional menu.

Your entire scenario collapses once a user opens a menu or, god forbid, preferences.

[czr114]

Your entire scenario collapses once a user opens a menu or, god forbid, preferences.

That's only if the user opens the menus and preferences. VLC is very well-behaved, making such actions rarely necessary, assuming the user isn't setting up advanced options, using it as a streamer, or correcting video output on poorly-lit pirate telesyncs.

The novice user who might be confused by a weighty interface with many options won't have to go that deep in VLC because it gets things right extremely often.

Basic functionality, like subtitle selection, can be accomplished with the same intuitive menus in other players like Totem.

How often does a novice user have need of something in the advanced preferences?

I'm not suggesting VLC as a replacement for Banshee. Most users will probably want a player with extensive playlist and library functionality, and that's fine, because it's a matter of personal preference.

My point is that VLC's interface is as simple as it gets, and the software generally works right. There isn't a simpler interface or more resilient application for someone who want to double click and have it play right.

[gnomeuser]

First of all is the speed, Banshee is really slow on my machine scanning and browsing the music, maybe I see something wrong, but in my case the performance is not as good, only an example, Guayadeque and Clementine are scanning my music library faster and are working faster in all what I do. My notebook is not so old, it cannot be a hardware issue.
Banshee is increasing my CPU remarkable while only browsing through the album browser.
Second, the GUI is cluttered for me.
At the moment how I have the program on my machine its not really usable, it scanned my music at the end (and it was doing it with problems - FLAC-files) and I disabled everything what I dont need but I cannot satisfy myself.
I have more issues and ideas but for now I think this is not the place for it.
I dont know how to explain it better, its just usability, Im really a freak with respect to music. I tested all players and could compare many things.
And btw, the context menu displaying Wiki and Last.FM articles is not suitable for me, it blurs with the browser and is not looking good.

If you are on Maverick please try to update SQLite to at least 3.7.3 - Anything on the 3.7.x branch lower than this has serious regressions in performance (3.7.0 was especially bad causing our startup to be measured in minutes even on modern machines). Why Ubuntu let this slip by I don't know.. they just like seeing me cry I guess.

Performance in general is a bit subpar, but we are working on it and improvements are continuing to arrive. Specific cases are being worked on such as the grid view and list view, also a smooth-scroll option is being introduced. Finally of course we will gain performance as Mono improves, 2.8 and beyond with the new garbage collector and other nice improvements will likely mean a better experience as well.

We can definitely use specific cases where we are slow for bugs, so please do file those. I want to be clear, if we are slow, it is a bug.

See e.g. these bugs for examples of good reports of performance issues:

When scrolling through artist UI feels unresponsive
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=635565

Grid view is a bit slow
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=613723

Both are being worked on as you can see.

[VastOne]

The only player I found that scans faster than Banshee is Amarok 2. If you notice slowdowns it may be due to ext4. Have you tried running it on an ext3 filesystem?

I am pretty sure that if it was an ext4 issue the same slowdowns would be seen on the other 15 or so music apps Ivanovnegro has tested.

I would say you have not loaded 30,000 songs on very many apps if Banshee and Amarok2 are at the top of your list..

[NightwishFan]

Around 7k with no problems. It has to do with what database is used not just a 'generic filesystem thing'. Some databases are significantly slower with ext4 on some releases.

[directhex]

Banshee is increasing my CPU remarkable while only browsing through the album browser.

I know this is a cliché, but "that's not a bug, it's a feature".

Banshee avoids a linear increase in RAM usage with library size by not loading your entire library into a GTK ListStore object the way Rhythmbox does - instead, the only entries in the ListStore are the items you can see, plus and minus a few. When you scroll, new SQlite queries are made to change the visible values in the ListStore.

[saulgoode]

Oh look. You are making assumptions. Those that I characterize as irrational and ignorant are in no way a majority of those millions.
I am to some degree positing that the results of the polls examined reflects the opinions of the larger population purportedly represented by the polls. From this association it would follow that a characterization of the voters in those polls is likewise a characterization of the larger population. That is the general purpose of polls.

If your contention is that the results of those polls do not reflect the opinions of the larger population then your response should be to argue that disjunction, not to denigrate the voters in the poll for not sharing your opinion.


They are simply loud, hateful and bent on attacking people because they don't share their demented worldview.
I would not condone attacking someone personally because they don't hold a particular viewpoint. I suspect you and I disagree as to what constitutes a personal attack for, to be clear, I consider characterizing someone as irrational and ignorant to generally fall under that category (though the latter can, within a confined scope, occasionally be used in its literal sense with respect).


Interesting tidbit: you selectively chose one criteria (that is actually not that relevant) while ignoring more important ones. You also forgot that Ubuntu labels itself as a meritocracy with an occasional dictatorial decree. Popularity isn't that important factor when deciding on default.
I was pretty transparent in my original post on the subject (http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=10158600&postcount=79) about the criteria I was addressing. If you wish to dismiss the relevance between a program's popularity and its inclusion in Ubuntu, that is your choice. To me it is one of the factors deserving of consideration, and even if it ends up not being the dominating factor in the decision, that should not justify dismissing it altogether as unworthy of discussion.

I did not forget that Canonical aspires to be a meritocracy; but even given that fact, the criterion of "popularity" offers insight into important aspects of other considerations such as usability, capability, intuitiveness, and responsiveness. These are all to a large degree subjective criteria and as such the experiences and perceptions of the users "merits" examination.

I reject your criticism that I'm ignoring other criteria. Yes, I failed to cover all possible criteria in that particular post. The focus on a single aspect was quite intentional and in my opinion conducive to discussing the merits of that issue. In a previous post I had covered another aspect. In future posts I may cover still more. Quite simply, one can not discuss everything at once.

[ivanovnegro]

The only player I found that scans faster than Banshee is Amarok 2. If you notice slowdowns it may be due to ext4. Have you tried running it on an ext3 filesystem?

No I have not tried it yet on ext3 but like VastOne said other players can handle it better, so Im not sure if its an ext4 issue.
And I can remember when I was on ext3 I think it was the same, Banshee was one of the slowest in all aspects.

[zekopeko]

No I have not tried it yet on ext3 but like VastOne said other players can handle it better, so Im not sure if its an ext4 issue.
And I can remember when I was on ext3 I think it was the same, Banshee was one of the slowest in all aspects.

It could be a problem with the SQLite database. 3.7.x release has been problematic with regard to speed.

[ivanovnegro]

If you are on Maverick please try to update SQLite to at least 3.7.3 - Anything on the 3.7.x branch lower than this has serious regressions in performance (3.7.0 was especially bad causing our startup to be measured in minutes even on modern machines). Why Ubuntu let this slip by I don't know.. they just like seeing me cry I guess.

Performance in general is a bit subpar, but we are working on it and improvements are continuing to arrive. Specific cases are being worked on such as the grid view and list view, also a smooth-scroll option is being introduced. Finally of course we will gain performance as Mono improves, 2.8 and beyond with the new garbage collector and other nice improvements will likely mean a better experience as well.

We can definitely use specific cases where we are slow for bugs, so please do file those. I want to be clear, if we are slow, it is a bug.

See e.g. these bugs for examples of good reports of performance issues:

When scrolling through artist UI feels unresponsive
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=635565

Grid view is a bit slow
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=613723

Both are being worked on as you can see.

Yes, I have to test if this is an SQLite issue, thank you for this advice.

[ivanovnegro]

I am pretty sure that if it was an ext4 issue the same slowdowns would be seen on the other 15 or so music apps Ivanovnegro has tested.

I would say you have not loaded 30,000 songs on very many apps if Banshee and Amarok2 are at the top of your list..


For example, in my case Amarok is the worst of all, even on KDE, it cannot scan my over 30.000 files, it refuses to do whatever with my library.
Thats the problem, we have people with smaller music libraries and they are happy and can do whatever they want and we have people with bigger libraries and yes Banshee or Amarok are suited for this, but there are people with giant collections like me and I have really problems to see a program working with such a database without to loose the performance of the program or everything related to it. Tagging, listening to music, organizing, filling the playlist, all this at the same time, I want to see a program that is doing this for me without to crash at one point.

[ivanovnegro]

It could be a problem with the SQLite database. 3.7.x release has been problematic with regard to speed.

That is what I will test now, never had this idea.

[Sef]

This thread has drifted off-topic, so locked.