On media players, xmms and audacious

jd — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 11:59:00 +0200

Last month the new thread I was afraid about has started. Called Considerations for 'xmms' removal from Debian, the maintainers of the xmms package proposed the removal of it.

I used xmms (and, before, x11amp) for something like 9 or 10 years. I know, I love it. I can't bear other players. Amarok is heavy, rhythmbox seems like a joke to me. I like to load my 6500 files playlist in one shot, press 'j' and jump to the song I want. I don't see how it could be easier to use a music player.

Following the thread, I must admit that, yes, xmms is old, gtk1.2, unmaintained, etc. I had to switch, sooner is better.

So I use now Audacious. At least I try to. Last time I tested it, the search (jump, 'j' key) function was… not working. No it is, it works like xmms, and I'm happy. I know that upstream author of audacious dislikes being compared to xmms, but, screw you, you're like xmms, and I like it, so I like audacious for this. The plugins and the interface is like xmms, so it's great also.

However it's buggyyyyyyy. Third day of use, serious bug reported as #436557. It segfaults sometimes, or simply blocks reading a file.

The information loading 'on demand' is so crapy compared to xmms. I mean, it's fucking slow! When I put shuffle on and I lick 'next song please', then it hangs reading informations. xmms was doing what in a better way.

However, dear audacious-author-that-already-hates-me-for-comparing-xmms-and-audacious, I really think it'll be a real alternative for old xmms users like me and a lot I know (yes, I know a lot of people, damn it!). Developement seems to be very active, so I'll continue to report bug and use it.

Yes, I believe in audacious.

jd:/dev/blog - Tag - audacious

On media players, xmms and audacious