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Idea #16153: Songbird integration with gnome

Written by AndrewLuecke the 3 Dec 08 at 00:53. Category: Multimedia. Related project: Nothing/Others. Status: Deleted
Rationale
Songbird 1.0 was just released and it would be great if there was better Ubuntu/linux integration. Songbird is a media player that uses the Mozilla XUL platform so is highly extendible, cross-platform and completely themable (which unlike other players allows the interface to be completely modified, not just re-coloured). The beauty of songbird is that similar to firefox, any integration work can be done entirely as extensions, and doesn't require hacking away at the main code.

Some example integration work that could be done is:
- Dbus support (advertise song changes and actions via dbus
- Pidgin plugin to advertise current song played (uses DBUS)
- Library importing/exporting from Rhythmbox/banshee
- Override dialogs to comply better with Gnome HIG and a ubuntu specific songbird theme
- Package songbird...
- Sharing playlist's between rhythmbox/banshee.

Update: Ars Technica has posted a good review on it, and they believe it fixes all the major problems they experienced in the betas
Tags: songbird

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Eldmannen wrote on the 3 Dec 08 at 01:52
I want to see Songbird in the repository!

vs8 wrote on the 3 Dec 08 at 11:55
+1 Songbird addict here! Please give it more attention!!!

DrHalan wrote on the 3 Dec 08 at 12:33
I don'T use it yet but it looks nice and needs support!

DrHalan wrote on the 3 Dec 08 at 12:38
Btw,

http://www.getdeb.net/release.php?id=3334

(though still 0.7)

DrHalan wrote on the 3 Dec 08 at 12:39
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Songbird is a better source

t4ggs wrote on the 3 Dec 08 at 15:40
As I've heard the problem with songbird is that it has the codecs embedded and as you know they are property codecs...thats why they can't be in ubuntu.

Vadim P. wrote on the 3 Dec 08 at 17:11
Songbird uses GStreamer now, so codecs can't be embedded in it. Codecs are handled the same way they are everywhere else on Ubuntu.

DrHalan wrote on the 3 Dec 08 at 20:31
yeah but it seems like songbird is statically linking in linux because the packages aren't small..

Faryshta wrote on the 3 Dec 08 at 22:13
Dude, seriously SongBird is helpless.

Some people are saying it uses 100MB of ram, that is a waste.

Faryshta wrote on the 4 Dec 08 at 00:40
Auzy yes, you are right, it must go to repos. About 100MB yes it is to much, as much than all the apps I use (but firefox)

Remember, most of the countries don't have your computers nor your money, here at the schools they still using 10 years old computers.

And I don't want to flame but I don't think masses will see SongBird as a choice.

Craig73 wrote on the 9 Dec 08 at 00:05
100MB for what - playing music? The reason I switched from Windows was to get away from stupid resource usage (virus scanners for example).

A key industry problem is that with each new OS/Office upgrade you needed a new machine because of rampant waste... so let's not promote it.

Supporting tasks should not use much if any memory...

Craig73 wrote on the 9 Dec 08 at 02:30
@Andrew... resources is just one of my reasons, and you are simply wrong to tell me I'm wrong...

1) WindowsXP is quite slim, but every app I installed slowed it down miserably and added crap to the system, it took forever to start up, and most good virus scanners consume a tonne of resources. My Ubuntu installation boots faster and is more responsive than my Windows installation - period.

2) I know the purpose of Anti-Virus, and I don't think Linux's security is special... so don't be so condescending. At this time, for this implementation, I do not need Anti Virus so I can stave off an investment in new hardware until I do... which is the basis for many Linux success stories - making my existing hardware do more.

So recommending an application that consumes 10% of my memory for the sake of playing some tunes while I do real work is significant. And it is a significant chunk of resources to many people in many parts of the world.

Ironically, I didn't vote this up or down... because if it is a quality app in all other respects it should get in the repositories and see enhancements. You have listed some very notable features, you have some great integration ideas, I just don't want it to be lost on people that resources are there to be squandered.

Craig73 wrote on the 9 Dec 08 at 02:32
whoops... resources are NOT there to be squandered.

stevel wrote on the 14 Dec 08 at 08:28
(full disclosure, I'm a Songbird developer)

Both AndrewLuecke & Craig73 have valid points. Craig73: If all you're looking for is something to play music that you minimise into the background and has minimal footprint - then yes, Songbird is not the best player for that.

The whole point of Songbird is to be a player that integrates tightly with the web. 1.0's Concerts & mashTape feature (that pulls in contextual information about the music you're listening to from various web sources) are prime examples of that.

Anyway, media-player philosophical debate aside... yes, I would really like to get Songbird into Ubuntu's package repository. I met with asac & fta about it at UDS last week and blogged some our meeting here:
http://whacked.net/2008/12/11/ubuntu-songbird-sitting-in-a-tree/comment-page-1/ #comment-98405

But back to the original poster's comments. All of those features can be implemented as add-ons... in fact, some of those requested used to exist (dbus), and some of them wouldn't be hard (pidgin support, import library/playlists w/ Rhythmbox/Banshee). Building an Ubuntu specific Feather would also be pretty straight-forward.

stevel wrote on the 14 Dec 08 at 08:29
Whoops that URL should be:
http://whacked.net/2008/12/11/ubuntu-songbird-sitting-in-a-tree/

nosoupforyou wrote on the 18 Jan 09 at 19:32
+1
Songbird is amazing and far better than any other open source music player out there in my opinion. It promises to be the Firefox of media players which is amazing. The only downside is it does require quite a bit of memory, at least 512mb of ram but that's not too much of a problem anymore. People can still use some of the older, more basic media players if they want but if your PC can handle songbird like most can nowadays, it is truly amazing. Coming from windows, I also find that songbird handles my media library much better than what is currently in Ubuntu which lacks some of the nicer features. Only thing is that songbird can't be set to watch folders yet but this feature will be implemented for the Hendrix release this February.


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