Rhythmbox... seriously, an alternative is needed!

[tirant]

I still can't understand why Rhythmbox is still being shipped as the default Gnome Destkop Music Player...

It's the buggiest piece of music player I have ever used. My first contact with it was on Centos4/Centos 5/Ubuntu 5.04/ (can't remember). I usually run at home the same distros I run on my servers. (I was using Centos5 until last week), but last week I needed some new hardware so I installed Fedora 12.

I couldn't believed it was there again, in Fedora 12. So it must have improved if it's still shipping on new versions... ohh I was so wrong... One crash for every time I have used it. Usually on playing CDAudio, but also with ramdon things... Jeesus...

[Evil_Bert]

Works fine for me ... always has.

[glennzo]

Works pretty well for me too. On several Fedora 10, 11 and 12 boxen.

[Laserman]

I use it 'most every day, no crashes yet.

[DustinCasler]

When I use gnome, I use and enjoy rhythmbox quite a bit. I also really like Banshee though. Try that out.

[dmyersturnbull]

I used to use Listen but switched back to Rhythmbox because I find Rhythmbox incredibly stable. It's a bit feature-limited, but it's never crashed or bugged out on me.

[smurffit]

On my Ubuntu 08.04 it crashed a lot, so i switched to Songbird.
On F12 it's really stable so i switched back to it. :)

[DustinCasler]

Yeah. I'm using Songbird in F12 KDE. Rhythmbox and banshee won't recognize my ipod in KDE. And I don't much care for amarok.

[jbuckley2004]

This is getting odder.

I'm using Rhythmbox under KDE on F12 with no problem. It recognizes the Shuffle perfectly fine, and has been rock solid. No crashes. Worked fine in F11 too.

Maybe it's hardware? I'm using a gigabyte motherboard with the front panel USB ports enabled, and default F12 drivers for almost everything.

[Demz]

there's always banshee but that requires Mono to be installed also, an some people hate Mono

[tirant]

I notice all my recent hangs have cd-audio playing involved...

I filed a bug the other day:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=558240

[ninjashoes]

Audacious is my favorite

has the best sound quality of any player I tried

my second favorite would be Songbird

[DannyKitty]

I use Exaile, and love it. I haven't had problems with Rhythmbox crashing on me, but I find the UI to be quite clunky compared to Exaile and Banshee.

I used to use Audacious, but it doesn't work very well with PulseAudio on my boxes. It crackles and skips and MIDI sounds like it's "tripping". Playing around with the buffer controls doesn't help at all.

[calanor]

songbird is awesome but then amarok is awesome too

[Jim1911]

I haven't been able to get Rythmbox, Amarok, Songbird or anything else to play itunes files on Fedora 12. They are missing the necessary decoder MPEG-4 AAC which doesn't appear to be in the repository.:mad:

Strange, these programs work great for Ubuntu.

[Mortosa]

Doesn't Gstreamer-ffmpeg handle those files?

[Jim1911]

itunes are audio files

[mh3rn4nd3z3]

Not only does Rhythmbox sucks, but every single media player for Linux...

I use Banshee... it just 'sucks' less.

[Zorg]

Rhythmbox has never worked right once. It's an embarrassment to Gnome IMHO :(

[Demz]

Rhythmbox has never worked right once. It's an embarrassment to Gnome IMHO :(

its just being maintained, no new bits are going on it. use Banshee or something else a newer player

[Piscium]

Rhythmbox is also unreliable on my PC, it hangs a lot. So I am not using it any more. I tried five or six players, my current favourite to listen to CDs is Audacious. My favourite Firefox plugin is xine (I tried three others and none works well with my favourite radio station).

[dd_wizard]

I have to agree with the posters that recommended Exaile. It's being very actively developed, reminds me of Amarok, but doesn't use any KDE libs. The 0.3.1 development branch is usually updated several times a day. So far, I've only had to downgrade a daily build once in the last few months. I believe it's the default ubuntu player now, as well.

dd_wizard

[Zorg]

[re: rhythmbox] its just being maintained, no new bits are going on it. use Banshee or something else a newer player

:) well I've been using Audacious for quite a while, but the latest F12 packages (updates) cause some issues regarding MP3. I downgraded to the last "stable" version of Audacious but _that_ version has the annoying problem with pulseaudio. Mixing a reliable version of the audacious plugins (older ver) with a reliable version of the player (newer ver) does not work for obvious reasons.

Solution: mplayer on the command line and no messin', or wait until audacious behaves again with new updates.

But no matter what, ANYTHING is better than rhythmbox.

[Dies]

I have to agree with the posters that recommended Exaile. It's being very actively developed, reminds me of Amarok, but doesn't use any KDE libs. The 0.3.1 development branch is usually updated several times a day. So far, I've only had to downgrade a daily build once in the last few months. I believe it's the default ubuntu player now, as well.

dd_wizard

Hmm.. if you're already using Exaile from trunk and you don't mind being a guinea pig...

Would you mind trying my branch? Just want some opinions on the changes. :)

https://code.launchpad.net/~jerrycasiano/exaile/exiled

Please note that I track trunk closely so anything that's currently broken in trunk is likely to be broken there too, plus whatever breakage I introduce. :D

But on the upside you don't need to install it just to try it so it doesn't really matter.

[dd_wizard]

You're in luck, Dies. I finally got a nightly F13 build to boot from a live CD, so I was going to upgrade to F13 today. But, it's deps are badly broken, so I'll try your Exaile branch instead.

dd_wizard

[Dies]

Ah cool, let me know what you like/dislike. ;)

[dd_wizard]

So far, I definitely like the default OSD better, along with the new icon for Shoutcast stations. I'm not sure what I think about tabs on the bottom, I really got used to them on top. The changes are pretty subtle, but the default layout seems more familiar to an ex-Winamp user.

dd_wizard

[Dies]

So you're not bothered by progressbar/button placement?

Oh also, is the collapsible window something that you can see yourself using or not really?

And if you're using a compositing manager I'd also like your opinion on the desktop cover plugin. ;)

[dd_wizard]

The buttons are fine at the top, but I'd prefer the shuffle buttons and search bar being up there with the play buttons. Grouping all the controls together seems better to me. I'm not using a compositing manager, so no comment on desktop covers.

What is the collapsible window? I haven't come across that yet.

dd_wizard

---------- Post added at 02:42 PM CST ---------- Previous post was at 02:40 PM CST ----------

Never mind, I found the button! lol

I use open box and shade windows when I want them around but unobtrusive. Also, I usually just close the window to the icon in the system tray and leave Exaile in full screen mode. I doubt I'll use use the collapsed window mode, but mini-mode seems to be popular with other users.

dd_wizard

[BlueC]

Not only does Rhythmbox sucks, but every single media player for Linux...

I use Banshee... it just 'sucks' less.

I agree with this, but I tend to use Rhythmbox because it 'sucks' less. But truly, the music players for Linux are dreadful.

Question: do ANY of the available player actually properly support SYNCING music to an external device?

When I say syncing I don't mean dragging and dropping, I mean selecting the music you want to have on your device (through checkboxes whatever) and then plugging the device in and it will automatically sync those selected songs to the device, and remove any from the device that weren't in the selection. This seems such a bloody obvious feature and surely wouldn't even be difficult to do just by using simple XML, but none of the players I have tried support this, or have I missed something?

[Demz]

:) well I've been using Audacious for quite a while, but the latest F12 packages (updates) cause some issues regarding MP3. I downgraded to the last "stable" version of Audacious but _that_ version has the annoying problem with pulseaudio. Mixing a reliable version of the audacious plugins (older ver) with a reliable version of the player (newer ver) does not work for obvious reasons.

Solution: mplayer on the command line and no messin', or wait until audacious behaves again with new updates.

But no matter what, ANYTHING is better than rhythmbox.

yes, Audacious is a bit buggy atm, these Bugs are being worked on at Audacious Website . i see a Audacious 2.3 Alpha out so perhaps the bug fix will be in that.

[Dies]

The buttons are fine at the top, but I'd prefer the shuffle buttons and search bar being up there with the play buttons. Grouping all the controls together seems better to me.
...

I agree completely.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a spot where they looked right... :(

[Steve_Barker]

I was not too struck with Rhythmbox on F12, but have found Banshee is spot on, and now use it all the time.

[Mortosa]

Yeah I agree.... Banshee is pretty good right now. I am enjoying it over Rhythmbox