Native-Linux music player Amarok gets major overhaul Linux-native music player Amarok 2.0 was released today, sporting some big changes to the open-source iTunes alternative. Amarok 2's user interface is a major overhaul of the Amarok 1.4x GUI, both aesthetically and functionally. It's also moved from the KDE 3 to KDE 4 framework to hook into the desktop environment's latest …
I heard that Amarok was *the* music player for Linux, so I gave it a go while fiddling about with Ubuntu. It's way too heavy, there's crap everywhere (just look at those screenshots!)- I don't care about song lyrics, and I doubt I'm alone in this... I found Rhythmbox much simpler.
But then i went back to OS X and accepted iTunes, flawed though it may be.
This seems like bad timing to me. KDE4 is still too immature and buggy to make for a solid platform. I'm a keen KDE fan and went over to Gnome for my Ubuntu 8.10. Whilst Amarok 2 is a welcome addition, it's going to be a long time before we see anything like 1.4 functionality on it.
Definitely a castle built on sand.
I'd just like it to simply play MP3's, not head off to search my drive, my network and god knows what else before doing a bloody thing with the one file I gave it. Sitting watching pretty moving green bars is no substitute for music coming from the speakers, a lesson the Amarok developers need to learn.
My media is already as organised as I need it, if I can manage hundreds of gigs of media in Windows without a database why the hell can't Amarok?
Who keep his music organised by album per artist? And actually quite likes to listen to an album - a whole album, in the order the artist intended it to be listened to?
What's all this bollocks about playlists? It's fine if you're a radio station, and utterly utterly pointless for any other activity: hell, even my *phone* can't cope with 'play everything in this directory' and cheerfully plays 01_bat out of hell followed by 01_rites of spring if I don't take extreme measures.
Idiots.
Er, </rant>
I must be making a mistake here - I run Amarok (Kubuntu-Hardy Heron) on 900Mhz SFF PC hooked into my home network, - it DOES play files from my (wired) networked "music folder " just when I ask it to (thr my NAD 302 amp - but that's another story). It also manages to update the folder list in the background. I also don't wait 6 hours for it to load. I tried Rhythmbox - by comparison it was crude - I like the contextual info from Amarok. Also tried Songbird - but Amarok just beats it hands down.
Not tried iTunes as I have no Windows machine (except the one running in VirtualBox) - my son has/does. Unfortunately he lost all it's tunes recently when an auto update to his XP assignes his keyborad and mouse to the same interrupt and he had to re-install (told him to use network folder but he's 16 so....)
In summary, Amarok works fine for me; nuff said
@Rich: KDE is not just a UI, it adds several systems for interacting with you hardware. The KIO system allows filesystem like access to various systems - e.g. remote mounted filesystems or media devices that use obscure protocols etc. Also the Solid system provides an abstracted system for looking at the hardware attached to your computer. These systems are needed to aid cross platform capabilities and thus your call of bullshit is pretty much bullshit in itself ;)
To the others that don't like amarok because it's "bloated" etc. that's fine, that's your choice. Personally I like it. The tag line is "Rediscover your music". When I'm listening to music I'd do so in one of two ways - I'll either hit play and then minimise and not look again, or I'll look through my tunes and browse the web about the artist and generally *appreciate* it. Amarok works best to *appreciate* my music. It's for people who love their tunes and like to do more than just sit back and listen.
So if you want something to give you background music while you work or whatever, then arguably amarok is overkill. But if you want to *rediscover your music* it's perfect!!!
"Some features, such as the player window or support for databases other than MySQL, have been removed"
Oh, fuck no. I despise MySQL - it's just junk. Amarok devs - please keep support for Postgres.
I never run anything that requires me to use MySQL as the backend.
The differences in the SQL language between the two are tiny - it can't be hardly any work to make it play nicely with both.
As ever, developers try to push more and more functionality into applications whilst forgetting that the simple to use applications are the most accepted. I'll stick to 1.4 - it does exactly what I need and works with all my portable devices, it's clean and intuitive... no need to change.
Just what I don't need.
Amarok works just fine as it is - mainly because I've worked out how to turn off all that crap and just get the music. Learning how to do that all over again doesn't appeal I'm afraid.
And I do rather value the ability to talk to certain portable devices - there being few Linux programs that do this without problems.
If they really want to piss around with all that fancy stuff that no-one uses, at least retain a "classic mode" option so people with better things to do (like comment on El Reg, obviously) can use that.
Amarok is getting so many features I'm sure the developers must all be emacs users.
But I'll hold off the upgrade; maybe when it's not masked in Portage I'll consider it more. (Plus I imagine there's a bunch of dependencies I'd need to compile as well.)
@Paul: You can easily configure where it looks for your music; on this craptop of mine I never have speed problems because I turn off the annoying GUI stuff and if I put a music file in my music dir I usually see it right away when I switch to the Amarok window to add it to the playlist.
Unlike the other commenters complaining I use Amarok every day to listen to the radio or play music from my collection. Amarok 1.x already is very very nice so I can't wait to see version 2 mature and grow. The fact that there is a stable release out there is nice and the fact that they are continuously improving is promising.
As for KDE 4: I'm using version 4.1.3 every day now and calling it "buggy and immature" is really a bit of a stretch. Missing small features here and there: sure, but very usable and enjoyable to work with. KDE4 like KDE3 is of-course more than just a thin UI shell, it contains many frameworks for multi-media, database and network connectivity, etc.
Bad move. KDE4 is - at least as far as functionality's concerned - still in very early beta. I Installed it with Kubuntu 8.10 and gave it a really good try, eventually giving up in disgust. I'll try again in a year, perhaps, when it works. It's a big mistake for Amarok to tie itself to such a premature technology. Bad Amarok. Bad.
Having started to run it, not sure I see where it's an improvement over 1.4... the UI is uglier, the default settings are less intuitive (Although that might just be my vast experience with 1.4 coming through) and there doesn't appear to be anything new (to me who uses it as a straight up album player).
I may roll back!
Nope, because KDE isn't just the UI (like Gnome) but an entire system (like Windows). Kparts and KIOSlaves are inherently part of KDE and these allow (especially KIOSlaves) access to a device (such as iPod) or other stream (such as iPlayer and iTunes music store) as if it were a disk (like file:/) or website (like http:/) See the fish protocol (fish:/ KIOSlave) which allows an SSH login to look like a normal file system to Konqueror (or anything that uses a KIOSlave).
I nearly coughed when I read that it used MySQL as a database. Why?!
For a music database (which is most likely to be used by one person at any one time) such a database engine is severe overkill and a potential security nightmare (as the audience for a music player won't known how to secure MySQL properly).
Surely, using a small, light, single user database engine would have been ample?
As for KDE 4, it looks pretty. I've got a Mandriva 2009.0 box running it. I wouldn't call it production ready, there are too many every-day things missing. Maybe in a year or so, when the basic functionality's been written I'll go beck to it.
Or is it still just so much easier to stick a CD in the CD player and press play. Easier to use controls too. Horses for courses.
I agree with the comment above about listening to full albums as they were intended. I'd never turn off a song half way though either. An interruption of the 'musical message' is bad.
It's for the people who wanted Windows Media Player (which lets you watch your music, but doesn't have a command line) or iTunes (ditto).
It's for them.
This is why "Why is it so confusing! Pick ONE application and use it, don't ask me which of twenty several versions of the same thing I want!!!" is wrong.
Because left to one of them, you won't have ogg123. Left to you, they can't use ogg123.
Well, when you get tired of the ogg123 bloatware holding your hand and spoon feeding you toffee coated bite sized music nibbles, you can unhitch the training wheels and join the real men cat'ing raw data straight to the audio device.
Of course, everyone will understand if you are too nervous to move away from ogg123's eye candy and its "do it our way, or no way" command line options. If I wanted an app to get in between me and my music i would damned well write it myself in assembler, carefully hardcoding in all my preferred options, including the disk sector locations of the music files I wanted played. If I changed my mind I would start from scratch - and I MEAN scratch. I would reinstall my OS (Gentoo, without all that namby-pamby "portage" fluff) and recreate my audio files, transcribing the originals with a hex editor.
By all accounts I must have one hell of a big willy.
SHUSH!!! Throwing flamer comments at the fanbois on /. is almost as much fun as winding up the Sunshiners here!
Anyhooooo. Will I use Amarok - no. Not because I don't think it's a good bit of work, but becasue I have other tools that do the job for me. But what really cheers me is the amount and quality of a lot of the Linux apps like Amarok popping out all over the Web. Ten years ago there were a few forums (including /.) which, if you read, you could be pretty sure of staying about 99% up to date with Linux development. Yes, Amarok is over-engineered and could be described as bloatware, but so could 90% of Windows or Mac apps. It's a sign of the growth of the Linux arena and its wider appeal that apps like Amarok get air-time on sits like The Reg, and that will REALLY wind up the Sunshiners and Mactards!
There is no logic on using MySQL for a database - if you have hundreds of thousands of songs then maybe perhaps a full blown RDBMS is what you're after. The rest of us either manage via a regular file structure and *maybe* something in SQLite if you want to do any clever. Tying it to something as heavy-duty as MySQL (which a number of users won't necessarily need to install) is senseless.
I still use XMMS on Linux and XMplay on Windows - this is just too big and overbearing, and I don't need to see the album cover, if I want to do that I can either look it up on Wikipedia (hah I tell thee!) or go downstairs to where my CD collection is and have a look.
I only have Windows Media Player installed because MS installed it with XP, and some of the other software I have depends on it under Windows.
Remember the OSS mantra, "We have choices."
If you don't like Amarok, then fine, but provide some useful criticism to the developers or shut F up and find a different player! With comments like, "too much crap included" and "I don't want no green shite and wavy stuff", "the devs need to learn", it's no wonder we can't get decent OSS software for some areas. As soon as someone makes an effort all they get it whiny planks going on about what's rubbish and not providing anything useful!
I find Amarok very useful. I turn off all the bells and whistles day to day, but once in a while I like the fact that I fancy seeing what the singer is screaming and yelping about. Once in a while I like to know that I have listened to the same crap song 65.5% more times than any other from that band. The thing I like most is, I have the choice!
As someone who likes to listen to full albums some of the time, and a "random" mix others I find it to be ideal. Most players that would allow me to play a "random" mix of my files would then not allow me to add to the playlist as I feel. So, for me, Amarok works -- and I'm sure there are others out there it works for too.
If I "just want to play a music file" then I'll use something else less bloated.
Sometimes it's nice to have a choice.
That said -- my first thoughts on seeing KDE4 and Amarok 2 are "Nooooo!" and "Nooooo!", Hopefully I will grow to know and love them as I have my present KDE/Amarok setup.
xmms? Have you seen what happened to it? Last year - a nice, neat, small, just-works player. Now it's xmms2, a bloated, unreliable, pain-in-the-neck client server architecture which is deservedly dying on its arse.
A classic example of what happens when development is driver by developers: bells and whistles for the sheer programming joys of it, while usability and users evaporate like the morning dew.
1.4 is fine for me, all I do is navigate through the music tree, choose an artist/album, and click play. Occasionally I move files to my MP3 player... and thats about it! Version 2 doesn't really offer me any benefits whatsoever!
Not that I'm blaming Amarok, because as other's have pointed out KDE4 isn't nearly ready for this sort of thing!
Does it support the latest generation of iPods yet?
Apple did some sort of crypto hash on index files on the new gen nanos, I think specifically to stop any other programs interacting with the player. Maybe it hurst their iTunes revenue model to have competition. Miserable feckers.
Either way, a friend plugged his nano into my eee 901 just to charge it, nothing dodgy, and up pops Amarok, reads the index and then wrote it back on, without the appropriate Apple magic-hash. The iPod then got very confused and said it was still full but couldn't actually see any files.
Shame on Apple for pulling this stunt, but also shame on Amarok for writing to the device without asking.
No, you're not the only person in the world. Playlists are the devil's work. I seem to spend as much time fannying about with ID3 tags and mp3 files as I do listening to the feckin' music these days. And when I want decent quality I still have to give up on the computer altogether and go back to my Arcam CD player.
The album view on my iPod Touch is about as close as I get to browsing my old collection. But I can still scan my shelves of CDs quicker than it can scroll the covers.
Bloody computers. I thought they were supposed to make things better?
You either hate it or love it :)
No comments about Amorak since I have it installed but don't tend to use it much.
I don't see any problems with having another GUI for playing music and also having it installed.
We all hit issues with software from time to time so to have multiple versions of one thing is a good thing specially when testing quality of an mp3/output
Linux users should only really thank its developers for providing us with all these cool tools for FREE so what if it doesnt look like a glossy windoze package at least its free and does not require keygens to get it working :)
Amarok 1.4.X was absolutely my favourite player. I loved the features and the way you could navigate through large collections with ease. Yes it had to parse your file structure but then you get all the ID3 tags into the db so you more easily find stuff.
I've been trying Amarok 2 since the first beta and while it's not bad; it's not as good as 1.4.X. The missing things like queuing within a playlist should not be missing from the first stable release IMHO. The look is pretty crappy with too much information crowding the program window. It's almost like the music library has taken a backseat where as the playlist and library where the major features in 1.4.X. The collection navigation and searching is still not great. I am sure it will improve in time, but it's just not as good right now. Mind you it's still better than the bloat that is WinAMP 5 or iTunes!!
Re: MySQL; not sure if anyone has pointed this out yet or not, but Amarok 2 uses MySQL embedded not the full blown server. From my understanding that is like a "better" (subjective) SQLite. You do not need a full blown mysql server installation just for Amarok 2. To be honest, I have no preference on this myself - so long as it works!
Why do KDE4 apps looks so ugly? What's with the enormous expanses of grey? I've been a great fan of KDE since the early days of KDE2, but it seems to get buggier, less unix-y[1], and now it's really ugly too! I'll stick with the 3.5.9 as long as I can, but I think my next upgrade will be to XFCE.
Also, anyone who releases a new version of an app without including the majority of the key features of older versions deserves to be slapped with a wet fish. I like Amarok, but a higher priority ought to be making it run long-term without crashing...
[1]In my view, a "desktop environment" should be a collection of self-contained apps, sharing a toolkit and a design view, but not "welded" together, i.e. respecting the Unix philosophy of small simple tools. What don't get is the need to have so many KDE-specific "frameworks". Eg sound should be handled by alsa or (maybe) by pulseaudio, but not by yet another daemon.
Amarok devs posted a great article discussing why they used MySQL. Seems that my understanding of "embedded" was a little of the mark (naive more like) and TBH I CBA to look further but here ya go:
http://amarok.kde.org/blog/archives/812-MySQL-in-Amarok-2-The-Reality.html
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