http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/18932/
Note: "In March 2009 the current maintainer announced that he would cease development on Rhythmbox after the next 0.12 release. Some bugs will continue to be fixed, but no active development will take place." (Wikipedia) So rhythmbox is dead. (thanks: AndrewLuecke)

What do you think?

[-155 votes] Solution #1: Use Banshee as a default music player or even as video player


[-199 votes] Solution #2: Use Songbird as a default music player


[318 votes] Solution #3: Bring RB development back


[-164 votes] Solution #5: Library Plugin for Totem


[-96 votes] Solution #6: Use Exaile by default


[-90 votes] Solution #7: MPD with GMPC and optional web interface


[-56 votes] Solution #8: Supports development of Listen


[-13 votes] Solution #10: Solution #10 : Use Amarok by default


]]> en-us Mon, 30 Mar 2009 14:13:55 +0000 Wed, 25 May 2011 20:26:26 +0000 QAPoll module http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/18932/ Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:18:42 +0000
I think that Rythmbox should be improved, taking features like the cover thumbnail and tag editing]]> Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:51:47 +0000
For me is the same which player will be picked in the end. I know Synaptic or apt-get. The point is for regular users. But at least for my pick, the first option for me is Banshee, at least starting from version 1.2 that is a lot optimized for start time, scaling for large media libraries, etc.

I've looked for first comparison between two:
http://tuxgeek.me/2008/11/itunes-alternative-on-the-mac-songbird-vs-banshee/

They look fairly equal. I cannot say that this or that feature is important.

For me the killer feature of Banshee is to be a video player also (so you can have a pretty unified organizer for your movies and music like as it is in iTunes or WMP) and that is pretty stable and fast.

Comparing in this vote I see that Banshee is not the first love (it is equal in pluses and minuses) but Songbird seems to be almost the first hate :)]]> Tue, 31 Mar 2009 04:28:00 +0000 Tue, 31 Mar 2009 06:42:52 +0000 Banshee doesn't have library scanning. This feature is essential. Player cannot be default one without it.
// Rhythmbox in jaunty has tag editing.]]> Tue, 31 Mar 2009 10:55:15 +0000 Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:22:21 +0000
Why do we need to support mono when we know that microsoft can stop us in the future. If we support mono apps, other open source apps will die and microsoft can sue all linux gnome users
]]> Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:58:49 +0000 Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:59:59 +0000
Mono have a ECMA (Ecma is a standard company, as is ISO) implementation of .NET runtime. If Banshee uses Windows.Forms, which may be patented, it may be a problem. But if not, Banshee can happily live with Mono implementation of .NET

Please think for real:
- Mono is not a Microsoft technology, it never was. Is an implementation of a spec. Please also note that excluding Moonlight, there are almost no collaboration with Microsoft
- patents: an enforcement of an implementation. This may happen for libraries but not for Mono runtime itself

Is really ugly one issue: why do we support OpenOffice 3.0? It have a DOCX (Office 2007) implementation, improved VBA support, and for around 10 years it loads .doc, xls, etc. What if Microsoft will sue OpenOffice and we cannot use it!

This is one point when we are close to 2010, we know that Linux works with Windows by: Samba, Wine, FAT/NTFS, OpenOffice, it plays WMV, Mono (to not forget it!) and at the end, if it will ever happen that Mono to be blocked, let's say because I'm a blind person, what will be a real short term solution?

At the very moment the solution is Banshee or Songbird, but if the choice was picked because is Mono, I will be really dissapointed, and the reasons are: if an user picks Tomboy as a GNOME applet, it will make also the Mono libraries to be already loaded, and Banshee will start pretty fast. (the same true is happening with Firefox & SongBird if they will be made to share the same XUL Runner package).

So my point is: grow up for who see a devil in Mono. Why don't you consider evil Eclipse (for developers) & Java (which is de-facto standard way that most Linux development happen) if they are driven by two big corporations (IBM and Sun). Why don't you let in the past OpenOffice and use Abiword or KOffice? For a long time there is no conspiracy theory in Linux, and even it is, and once Microsoft will demolish with a rock the GNOME desktop as it use GNOME, it will take a 2 week migration to KDE desktop, which by the way, is driven by another "evil" corporation, Nokia]]> Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:04:23 +0000 Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:23:14 +0000
I love rhythmbox, it is clean, simple and easy too use!]]> Wed, 01 Apr 2009 22:37:02 +0000
Development is about planning for the future.

Rhythmbox is dead because it's underlying framework is too rigid to develop any further.

Go ahead and try to revive rhythmbox development (that's the leading solution right now) but don't be surprised when you experience EPIC FAIL.]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2009 04:58:01 +0000
To be honest Songbird is pretty, but the interface has always felt laggy and non-native to me on both Ubuntu and Windows.

Some members of the community are paranoid about any usage of Mono, but as long as the winforms libs aren't used it's no less free then Javascript. The worst MS can do is spread FUD like they usually do.]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2009 14:14:46 +0000 Thu, 02 Apr 2009 17:38:14 +0000 Thu, 02 Apr 2009 17:52:30 +0000 Sun, 05 Apr 2009 18:02:21 +0000 Songbird is one very *designey* player.

So, why not keep RhythmBox till (designey) 9.10 release, and then, if it has the features we want from it, switch to a (ubuntu-skinned?) songbird.]]> Mon, 06 Apr 2009 07:39:44 +0000
The obvious problem with Songbird is that it's not even in the repos. I believe that's because it doesn't share the Firefox packages. It just installs its own version of older Firefox code. When it starts coexisting with Firefox, it should perform much better.

A lot of the big features missing in Songbird can just be plugged in. The CD burning in Rhythmbox just uses nautilus cd burner. Also Songbird already uses the gstreamer backend. With Totem, video support in Songbird is redundant. Rhythmbox seems to only have everything Songbird needs to dominate the market, since Songbird already has the big stuff: being cross-platform, supporting plug-ins.

I'm so jealous of how successful Rhythmbox has been. It's podcast support is great. It's got integrated music stores. (Songbird has 1 integrated music store, but neither of the ones Rhythmbox has). It streams Last.fm. These are areas in which Songbird is inexplicably lacking, but once Songbird gets them, I can see it hitting critical mass and really shaking things up.

Now I just want Firefox and Songbird to pull in webkit and everything good about Google Chrome, while integrating it into Ubuntu. Oh Lordy.]]> Tue, 14 Apr 2009 06:04:56 +0000
Rhythmbox works. I accept the compaints about it being lacking in features, but it has what is necessary for a default player. And it uses plugins.

All of the 'database' players are much slower than Rb. Especially at start-up. Maybe that has to do with the 14k+ flac collection I'm dealing with. Maybe not. Most of the other players won't connect across a network share (or I haven't found how). Also DAAP support is often lacking.

Again, Rhythmbox works. It really doesn't need much development. Solid. That counts for a lot. I find that Amarok is too feature rich.]]> Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:27:14 +0000 Sun, 19 Apr 2009 13:25:31 +0000 Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:17:01 +0000
F-Spot and Tomboy are ONLY in there because a few very LOUD fanboys wanted the GNOME blessing for their favourite platform. See F-Spot unusable and crashing in multiple releases, but still pushed by Nautilus and the rest of the Desktop just about ANY time anythig happened.

Politics, not practicality. Saddens a lot of us in what should be a meritocracy.]]> Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:55:05 +0000 Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:48:26 +0000 Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:45:38 +0000 Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:31:23 +0000
If someone gets around to re-writing Banshee in C++ or something (ala GNote from Tomboy), then perhaps that part of the proposal could be taken more seriously.

Songbird has potential, but does not handle podcasts well enough to be considered a replacement at this time. I would check it again in the future, though.

Many players do not actually sync to iPods correctly so other 3rd party devices can use them - there are more issues to a media player than just scanning the harddrive for .mp3 files.

Rhythmbox may not look fancy, but it does just about everything and does it *right*.

]]> Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:53:15 +0000 Sun, 26 Apr 2009 09:34:45 +0000 Sun, 03 May 2009 23:07:13 +0000 Wed, 27 May 2009 15:37:59 +0000
This should be a very big regression as Jamendo and Magnatune are excelent exaples of free culture for the music industry and it help raise awareness of the free software movement in general]]> Tue, 02 Jun 2009 13:51:19 +0000
This is why Magnatune support is a blocker for Banshee becoming the default player. There is an early version with little recent love, in need of severe development, which should be worked on in the coming months. However, upstream have no interest in support for these stores, so these are features that the Community will need to provide.]]> Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:03:42 +0000
mono is a freaking runtime, and a MS-designed, MS-patented one. Canonical should take care for the legal well being of users (AND BE CONSISTENT WITH THE CHOICES THEY MADE ABOUT MP3, DVD, ETC).

not only that, but not having a native music player in the default, really screams fail.

Regarding research, RB is the second best music player for Linux, only beat by Amarok (IF the real push was to use the best music player, they should use Amarok, but what they really want is to further fill us with Mono trash).

Should take a look at this:
http://meandubuntu.wordpress.com/2009/06/10/disinformation-disinfected-pt-3-banshee-in-ubuntu/

I remember a brainstorm moderator claiming RB development was stopped, turns out those are damn lies.

Fedora and Debian are improving in this situation and got rid of Mono completely, ubuntu instead seems interested in filling even more Mono. Dear Canonical: listen, this will be a big mistake.

]]> Thu, 11 Jun 2009 19:59:49 +0000
First of all, it simplicity, but, at the same time, effectiveness. The first time I used Ubuntu, comming from Windows, it was really easy to get used to RB. It's quite well organized, it's makes it very easy to find the music. I haven't felt that comfortable with the other players I've used.

It's also very performant (or at least comparing it to the other music library players). And that's not a coincidence, as it's written in C and uses the GTK libraries for GUI, which are the core of the entire desktop. I remember songbird taking so much time to load up, and it felt really laggy (my computer is not too fast... but can manege RB pretty good!). A very simple test to do is trying the search option in RB: it filters all the results while you type and doesn't even lag (Even if you have lots of music), and I've seen other playes just dying for a coulpe of seconds when doing a search.

And I think it's very important for a madia player to be efficient. Beacause it performs some demnading tasks, like decoding audio (though yeah, most of them rely on a well-tested backend for this), or managing a giant music collection, while it is usually expected not to take much resources. And that's why I think a player like RB is the rigth choice. It's not cool to have a huge VM or running environment to just play background music.

It has quite a bunch of features, though I think it needs a little work on some of them. Like the lyrics: why not making it an integrated panel instead of a separated floating window? (This should be an idea proposal =P).

Well... that's pretty much my opinion on this subject. Though I think the is no clearly a music library player with the most outstading features (like VLC for video =P), I still think that RB is the best choice.

Bye, peace... sorry for the bad English ;)]]> Sat, 25 Jul 2009 03:41:35 +0000 Sun, 13 Sep 2009 20:40:05 +0000
With all due respect, Ubuntu should embrace the DVD format and put all *ubuntu distros on the same disc. That would give users direct access to the best of all worlds.]]> Sun, 13 Sep 2009 22:59:39 +0000
so the idea to bring RB development back is cute, but unrealistic. it's way behind other applications in terms of features.

banshee all the way. it should be default
+1]]> Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:44:41 +0000 Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:47:07 +0000 Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:47:10 +0000
Sometimes I wonder if the Mono project is nothing more than a divide-and-conquer tactic by Microsoft. Come on people, don't give in to the hype! Competition is good, but we have to stick together and evaluate projects on technical merits, not bling or the latest fad in programming.

Rhythmbox should stay; if it doesn't, I'm sure me (as well as many others) will leave Ubuntu.

]]> Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:53:08 +0000
However, its performance is really awfull and therefore Banshee is no option for me. I was able to play music and videos on my Athlon 1800 machine since 8 years and I'm willing to do so in future. And NOT to buy a new machine in order to play mp3 songs with Banshee! It is not for or against Mono rather the performance of Mono applications.
(but it's worth reading this: http://planet.gnu.org/gnutelephony/?p=3).]]> Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:43:43 +0000 There's nothing bad with using java or mono or whatever, in general. But the applications that use to be kept running all the time, like messengers, mail notifiers, music player, note applet, etc, should have a small footprint and be very responsive. Therefore, these should be real compiled programs. Even at the expense of some feature cut-down. Lots of people choose Linux because it's fast and has a small hardware footprint.

It's good that there are better options for music-centered people, but those bigger/fatter apps should not be the default in the OS.]]> Sun, 21 Feb 2010 13:46:02 +0000 Wed, 25 May 2011 20:26:26 +0000