Comments on: Banshee not good enough; Gomer Pyle reacts

By: Dan Serban

Dan Serban — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 09:53:58 +0000

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.

By: Chris Halse Rogers

Chris Halse Rogers — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 09:33:19 +0000

Dan Serban : ... 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. ...

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).

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 08:16:59 +0000

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.

By: Dan Serban

Dan Serban — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 07:57:48 +0000

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.