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Linux music player that doesn't suck?
gnolam
Member #2,030
March 2002
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A Linux music player that doesn't suck: is there such a thing?

My requirements are basically:

  • Light-weight. No "we want to be iTunes so bad we also need to waste resources like it" behemoths. Playing an mp3 takes a negligible amount of resources. The player should reflect this.

  • Usable on a netbook (seriously, what the fuck is up with Linux GUI developers and hard-coded minimum sizes?).

  • A UI that isn't full of fail (gmusicbrowser, I'm looking at you).

  • No obvious annoying bugs (*cough*Exaile*cough*).

So. Does such a program exist? :P

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Arthur Kalliokoski
Second in Command
February 2005
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If I want to listen to a single .mp3, I just click on it and the associated Mplayer brings up a little applet thingee. If I want to listen to a list of songs or an album in a directory, I use Amarok, although one time I tried associate Amarok with a directory without thinking for a second and thoroughly messed up Konqueror.

They all watch too much MSNBC... they get ideas.

gnolam
Member #2,030
March 2002
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Amarok falls squarely into the iTunesey Behemoth category. :P

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GullRaDriel
Member #3,861
September 2003
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Wine + Foobar2000.

That's all. Linux players sucks.

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someone972
Member #7,719
August 2006
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I assume you've already looked at and ruled out VLC, but if you haven't might as well look into that.

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GullRaDriel
Member #3,861
September 2003
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vlc isn't well designed to play musics.

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Mark Oates
Member #1,146
March 2001
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What types of features are you looking for in a music player?

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juvinious
Member #5,145
October 2004
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If you don't mind using a service sign up for a google music beta account and upload your stuff there. You can play your music from the site anywhere (also on android devices). I expect it to be a paid service later but for now I guess you can consider it an option. ::)

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SiegeLord
Member #7,827
October 2006
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I personally use Amarok, but I usually hear good things about Audacious.

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Slartibartfast
Member #8,789
June 2007
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I just use whatever it is that came with Ubuntu. It's not too heavy and does everything I need. (Which is WMP but that can play every audio file and isn't filled with all of the crap they added since XP days.)

Arthur Kalliokoski
Second in Command
February 2005
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I just tried Amarok on 11 mp3's at once and Mplayer on a single mp3 while watching a graphical system monitor thing, didn't notice any activity on the graphs except a slight spike when opening the directories with Konqueror, and there was a huge chunk of one core while Amarok showed the splash screen thingee which went away after 5 seconds. While watching the memory number in the monitor status bar while closing Amarok, I saw it go from 0.69G used down to 0.63 out of 3.9G total. The CPU was randomly fluctuating between 3.0% and 0% while the music was playing, just as it does when it's idle as possible. [edit3] Most of that 3.0% is the system monitor app by itself. :P

I do remember a few years ago doing the same thing while listening to OGG vs mp3 on an old computer, IIRC the mp3 took about 14% CPU and the OGG took about 40%. How old is your computer anyway, gnolam?

[EDIT]

Now I selected all 11 files and opened them all at once with Mplayer, it seems to be doing fine except it's playing them in reverse order. :-/

[EDIT2]

I wanted to listen to them in order, so I closed Mplayer and fired up Amarok again. Apparently it and/or the songs was still in the buffers as the splash screen only flashed briefly for a fraction of a second.

They all watch too much MSNBC... they get ideas.

l j
Member #10,584
January 2009
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VLC kinda works for music, but I hate that it starts software amplification when I push the volume up button on my keyboard... I actually hated it enough that I stopped using it.

GameCreator
Member #2,541
July 2002
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Write one.
(Yes, I hate when people tell me that too.)

Edit: to try to be perhaps a little more helpful:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-great-alternative-linux-music-players/

I would try the fifth on the list, if I used Linux.

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
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I use Amarok too. It's pretty fully-featured, but for the most part you can ignore the extra features. It depends if you're one of those people that likes to have multiple windows visible at once (e.g., have your current task window on a portion of your screen with the media player always visible). I maximize all my windows and switch between them so a large windowed application isn't much of an issue for me. It can be annoying on my netbook, but I only use that if I absolutely must... I don't remember if I've ever used Amarok (or any other music player) on it though.

When I first started using Linux ~6 years ago I think I used XMMS. It's relatively minimalistic, AFAIK, but the UI is pretty cluttered/ugly. I wouldn't be surprised if it was skinnable though. I haven't used it since I discovered Amarok. IIRC, it worked OK, but it did have some bugs. In the past 5 years they may have been worked out though... :-/

Samuel Henderson
Member #3,757
August 2003
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I use XMMS.

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Elias
Member #358
May 2000

I use Audacious. It uses GTK which is a big plus point in my case.

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kazzmir
Member #1,786
December 2001
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I got amarok to segfault like a dozen times in two days. Trash.

Now I just use mplayer on the command line.

Myrdos
Member #1,772
December 2001

Yes, XMMS is probably what you're looking for.

{"name":"pdaXqtrom-xmms.jpg","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/f\/8fc9f2b7a548daa285303bc0c93945c2.jpg","w":640,"h":480,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/f\/8fc9f2b7a548daa285303bc0c93945c2"}pdaXqtrom-xmms.jpg

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Bruce Perry
Member #270
April 2000

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Another vote for Audacious here - or XMMS if you can still get it and there's some reason to favour it over Audacious. I'm not clear on the difference but they both look the same and have always worked fine for me.

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Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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Probably because I think Audacious is XMMS2 renamed. XMMS itself is mainly discontinued.

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Evert
Member #794
November 2000
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I used to use xmms, but it was unmaintained and derelict five years ago at least. I never did find a replacement that I liked, but for the past few years I also haven't looked very hard.
These days, when I want to play an audio file, I just use mplayer. That's on a Mac though...

Peter Wang
Member #23
April 2000

I use mpd (Music Player Daemon) with ncmpc (a curses client, but there are graphical ones) and the xfce mpc plugin to control it from the xfce panel. I have the multimedia keys on my keyboard set up to control mpd as well.

Derezo
Member #1,666
April 2001
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I use rythmbox and hate it!! >:(

I might give foobar2000 + wine a shot... I love foobar2000

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Karadoc ~~
Member #2,749
September 2002
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That XMMS screenshot looks like the player that I use...

I use Winamp v2.95. Newer is not always better. :)

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Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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That's probably because its basically a Winamp 2 clone. Even loads Winamp 2 themes.

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