So, all that claptrap about Banshee being the better player has been proven false. Just like the “space saving” and “Rhythmbox doesn’t scale” fallacies. At least in this case, there is a token effort by Mr. Shields to link to the Rhythmbox page. We take what small victories we can.
Here is a thread on the Rhythmbox development mailing list where they discuss being replaced, including the developer’s thoughts:
> Is it true that the ubuntu team wants to replace rhythmbox with banshee
> on 9.10 version?
> I love your product and i don’t understand the motivations, could you
> explain me if any?
> Has Banshee some features than Rhytm has not? Something thant you
> couldn’t add quickly to your player before the 9.10 release?This is true. I can’t find any real information about the motivations behind
it. The outcome of the decision process (whatever it was, I wasn’t involved in
any way and I don’t know how it worked) seems to be that if certain features
are implemented in banshee by some deadline, then banshee will replace
rhythmbox in the default ubuntu install. There doesn’t appear to be any
consideration for changes made to rhythmbox during that period.The only solid information I can find is here:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/583933. This links to a set of bugs that I assume
must all be fixed for the replacement to go ahead. I can’t predict whether they’re
going to make it.I don’t have much to say about this issue personally. I would have liked to
have been involved in the process, and I like to think I would have had some
constructive input, but ultimately it’s ubuntu’s decision. They should ship
whatever software they feel best satisfies the goals of the ubuntu desktop.
Well, I can tell you the motivations behind it. “Get mono in there”. That’s it. Period. Now the justifications for this have moved among:
- Rhythmbox is bigger-on-CD than Banshee would be.
- Rhythmbox development has stopped.
- Rhythmbox doesn’t scale
- Banshee is wanted / Rhythmbox isn’t wanted by the users
- Banshee is the better application
All of which are clear lies, with the exception of #5, which is purely subjective.
It seems we are settling on the “best-of-breed” as the ultimate justification. This is a good stop if you are on Team Mono, because you can call any application the “best-of-breed” so long as you are the one that gets to decide what factors make it the “best-of-breed”.
I always chuckle around #4; Team Mono is forever chanting “pragmatism” and how “the user doesn’t care about freedom or principles”. Yet it’s quite clear that the overwhelming majority of users do not want Banshee. So, do the users matter or not? It seems to me that how much they matter is in direct proportion to how much they support you on any specific issue.
Seriously though
If you have the technical bent, show some love to Rhythmbox and take a look at the Developers page. There is a thing called “gnome-love” bugs that are specifically identified as being suitable for newcomers to the project:
Marking a bug with this keyword means that you’re willing to help someone fix the bug, or that it should be fixable by a beginner without any help. This should ONLY be set by a maintainer or people familiar with the code base, and ONLY when it looks like a project suitable for a new developer looking for a task.
There are currently 32 bugs on the list. Maybe there’s one you can take on? Maybe there’s one I can take on?
#1 by Dan Serban on July 14th, 2009
For a long time I didn’t know what I was looking for in a music player, but now I do.
What I need are in fact 2 music players:
- one to associate sound files with for quick checking what’s inside a podcast file; this one needs to load as fast as possible and my choice is Audacious;
- another one, the key feature of which is being capable of managing multiple playlists effectively; fast start-up isn’t essential; my choice here is Exaile.
One other requirement I have is that the music player shouldn’t establish any network connections by default. Exaile is bad enough in this department because I have to edit preferences and uncheck “Submit to Last.fm”
What’s up with all this integration bloat? I don’t care about getting album art from CDDB or submitting my listening preferences to a site that won’t even allow me to listen to a radio station for free.
Let’s go back to the underlying philosophy of UNIX, which is that all programs should be self-contained units of code that are built to do one thing only, and do it well.
My point is that a music player should stick to doing what its name implies: play music. The rest is unwanted bloat.
Now, to be fair, I haven’t tested Banshee and don’t know how well it does on the set of criteria mentioned above (start-up time, multiple playlists, respect for user’s privacy, adherence to the “keep-it-simple-and-modular” principle).
On another note, have you checked the distrowatch page hit ranking lately?
http://distrowatch.com/index.php?dataspan=4
At the time of writing, Ubuntu has 1596 hpd and going lower, Fedora has 1536 hpd and going up.
I believe people are begining to realize that having an Ubuntu quasi-monoculture in the Linux world is almost as bad as having an OS quasi-monoculture in the general computing world.
Ubuntu does a great job of introducing people to a Linux distribution, but it also has a knack for dividing communities over certain issues (like the Mono-included-by-default and “free-speech-zone” issues).
Seriously, if you find you get along with Linux, leave Ubuntu behind, there is a whole world of (much nicer) Linux distributions out there.
#2 by Jason on July 14th, 2009
Dan,
Very interesting, Fedora moving up like that.
On media players, I have found – for my use – Rhythmbox is unbeatable. I’ve tried a lot, but only RB fits all my needs.
That’s really the deviousness of targeting “best-of-breed” isn’t it, though? Just decide that a web-browser, lyrics from the internet, BPM readout and goldfish in platform shoes are “essential” parts of the audio player, and Bam! Rhythmbox just doesn’t measure up anymore.
#3 by Chris Halse Rogers on July 14th, 2009
Are we looking at the same “Last 30 days” page hit ranking? Because mine displays Ubuntu at 1596 and going up (at least, that’s what I presume the green up arrow is meant to indicate) and Fedora at 1536 and going down (similarly, that’s what I take the red down arrow to indicate).
#4 by Dan Serban on July 14th, 2009
Chris,
This is how I first saw it:
http://img102.imageshack.us/img102/1623/distrowatch.png
but it’s probably a browser rendering issue.
I looked at it in Opera and you are correct.