xmms freaks out and shoots to 100% -- frequently. You probably have a dual core multiple gigahert CPU and don't notice. I don't. 800mhz. That's one of the main reasons Microsoft Windows seemed slow, in the way that it did -- software for it, including parts of the OS itself, were full of bad thread code that would run amuck. On the 800mhz Via (which is slow for an 800mhz machine), which is the machine with the big HD with the mp3s on it, xmms freaking out will make it skip under the load.
So I set out to find a replacement one.
amork spent ages loading the playlist (xmms was fast) and then got itself in a state where it would play a few songs then stop. Relaoding it, it took forever and then started doing that before long. I spent more time loading my playlist than listening to music.
VLC wouldn't install with apt for want of dependencies (of which it had vast numbers of) but it's pretty spiffy on the Mac over there which does not have the mp3s on it and I'd rather not have two machines running and on just to listen to music, especially when one is a laptop that would like to get up and take off. I tried to install from souce and failed for a reason that I forget.
audacious built but didn't link cleanly. Trying to work around it, replacing a glib mkdir function with the core one and then trying to comment it out, left a binary that just coredumped in a call to pthread_mutex_lock.
bmpx-0.40.0RC requires libboost, which is frickin' massive. I spent about 10 hours (I shit you not) compiling, declared that it couldn't build everything, and then bmpx probed it, found it, but not all of the parts it needed. I'm not sure what the hell is in libboost but apparently everything you could ever want. More stupid C programmers writing personal toolkits of infinite size and scope and then passing them off as some kind of startand API. That's just more of why I detest C programmers.
I tried JuK a few days ago but it had some behavior which made it entirely, completely unusable. I forget what it was. Then after you tell it to quit, it "sits in the system tray", of which I have none, hogging the audio device until you drop to shell and kill it. But then artsd is still running. So you have to re-open shell and kill that.
I built mplayer a long time ago and for some reason couldn't get the GUI to work and the command line controls don't seem to support shuffle or skip.
xine starts with a big visualization window that takes apparently so much CPU that it doesn't have time to ever get around to processing events, such as requests to pause, attempts to get at a menu, or even attempts to close the visualization window. The result is it sits there stuttering out music until you drop to shell... and kill it.
When I was a kid, we'd listen to mp2s on 66mhz machines, and they didn't skip or lock the machine up. Now 800 mhz isn't enough. What the fuck? What ever happened to fast and light?
I'd like a GUI so housemates feel comfortable walking over to the media machine and skipping a track but for now it looks like I'm using mpg321 with -z and --list.
Bleah. I hate Linux. I hate the Linux community. I hate how it becomes more and more like Windows every year, with more garishly over complex, fragile, bloated crapware that does a billion things -- except work right.
-scott
Re:And yet…
Aristotle on 2007-07-28T11:41:45
Yeah. On some messageboard from back in my gaming days where I still visit the Linux forum, the first question most new converts ask is “how do I run foobar2000 on Linux?” Usually, a bout of frustration ensues, because none of the players are as small, simple, fast and full-featured. (Most people end up settling on amaroK.)
Re:And yet…
scrottie on 2007-07-30T02:56:42
That's the second mention of FooBar200 I've heard in the past couple days and I'd never heard of it before. I used to really like winamp -- not only did it occupy a minimal amount of screen realestate but it was small, fast, and reliable. Of course, they've completely hosed it since then. Go AOL! Turns out FooBar2000 runs pretty well under wine. Still formulating an opinion of it.
Thanks for the reaffirmation. You seem to be able to count on you for that;) Part of the reason I brought the topic out was I was toying with the idea of writing a small, self-contained Perl mp3 player that implemented just enough of the X protocol to draw into a pixmap and get click events from its window (stealing code liberally from X11::Protocol). Maybe. Most of my code ideas never get coded, of course... but it would be nifty, IMO...
-scottRe:And yet…
Aristotle on 2007-07-30T05:04:34
Most of my code ideas never get coded, of course…
You and me both, buddy.
:-P
Maybe MPD is worth a look? It consists of a player dæmon that also manages your library (no GStreamer dependency!), plus any of a whole bunch of different clients. They come in all sorts of varieties – small window, large window, KDE, GNOME, pure gtk+, just console, web-based (nifty)… pretty much anything.
...MORE...
< Decrease volume by 1%
> Increase volume by 1%
, Decrease volume by 5%
. Increase volume by 5%
RIGHT Seek forward by n-s
LEFT Seek backward by n-s
h ? Show the help screen
M Hide error/informative message
^r ^l Refresh the screen
r Reread directory content
H Toggle ShowHiddenFiles option
m Go to the music directory (requires an entry in the config)
d Delete an item from the playlist
g/ Search the menu.
V Save the playlist
^t Toggle ShowTime option
^f Toggle ShowFormat option
o Play from the URL
...MORE...
tqqqquFiles: 12933 tqqqqqqqqqqu FATAL_ERROR: Can't receive value from the server. x
x00:00 [00:00] KHz Kbps [STEREO] [NET] [SHUFFLE] [REPEAT] [NEXT] x
mu scott@via:~$
Re:Someone suggested moc.
hobbs on 2007-09-02T07:10:22
Actually I think you have a bad C compiler. But regardless, I second the mpd suggestion. ncmpc and gmpc are both good, light frontends. There are also web frontends, and if you don't like any of the choices you can just write your own;)
