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From a land of hills and water…

1. troll 3.12.08 / 6pm

   To take a look at competitors (healthy activity):
   - Eg. Windows Media Player recognizes usb mass storage devices and integrates them with the player for easy transfers
   - Windows Media Player has not only music library but it also has video library. At this moment there are only afaik 3 MEDIA players in existence: iTunes (the video support is shoddy but exists), RealONE (heavy, takes a lot tweaking if you want to use it), and Windows Media Player. There is NO Linux desktop use oriented MEDIA player in existence. This is extremely bad usage as the audio and video truly converge in the modern portable devices and entertainment! (Linux is some ~10 years behind development on this area…)
   - Only vendor specific applications handle remote Bluetooth multimedia devices such as Nokia and Sony-Ericsson phones conveniently
2. nixternal 3.12.08 / 6pm

   Dave, fix it :p I love when people do that. I totally agree that there is still a bit of pain involved with *media* and Linux, and one thing I am hoping for is that once KDE 4 is up to speed with the Phonon/Solid frameworks working to specification, some of these pains will be eased.

   @Troll: Impossible for Linux to be behind 10 years, as 10 years ago portable media devices were next to none. As for an all in one media player there are way more than the 3 you listed as well. Linux may only have a couple but that is for due reason possibly. Look at the 3 media players you listed, all 3 are the biggest, bloated, pieces of garbage I have ever used. More features doesn’t make it a better application in the long run.
3. momerath 3.12.08 / 7pm

   @nixternal: Amen brotha! Though I think Troll was referring to the fact that those programs all are capable of doing what their supposed to. The software Linux has doesn’t always work properly. Things are getting better though! I can actually plug my ipod in and not worry about it getting hose anymore.
4. Ernst 3.12.08 / 8pm

   Tried MTP with Rhythmbox 0.11.4? All the drag and drop love I need for my SonyEricsson phone!
5. troll 3.12.08 / 9pm

   Oi! Those applications do not seem bloated to me to be honest. Windows Media Player at least has at every release after 8 or so (they are at what.. 11?) become slimmer, better looking, and faster. I got less than 3 seconds startup time with cold caches and it’s really responsive (as responsive as ever possible with the nearly non-existent multi-tasking of the Windows kernel - not the application’s fault really). It’s fast enough, as are all the other contenders as well, including the open source ones. Also the GUI doesn’t have anything extra, for instance Banshee and Amarok have got couple times more buttons and gizmos by default.

   The only thing on it that might be bloat is the rightmost tab that is for commercial media shops - by default it has the MSN’s service. It is not Microsoft only though (you could actually even add those non-drm’d shops there if you wanted to and set them as default) and it never forces you there. I have found couple new artists from music genres that I don’t usually listen to thanks to that service as they have free songs constantly there.

   Having a proper library for both types (video and audio) is a basic requirement nowadays. Having to start several applications to be able to send both to your mobile player is really bad for usability because those steps should not be required at all. Futhermore those applications act and work all slightly differently, and especially the workflows for video files are awkward, and especially when you’d like to synch them somewhere else.
6. Meneer R 3.12.08 / 9pm

   If you have any mp3 playing device that does not register itself as a music player, but as a usb-disc, you can do this trick:

   Go to the usb-disc in nautilus
   Right-click .. create file -> empty file
   Then name that file: “.is_audio_player”
   Notice the dot; its a hidden file!

   Then you open that file in gedit and you put this into there:

   audio_folders=MUSIC/
   folder_depth=2
   output_formats=audio/x-ms-wma,audio/mpeg

   Off course you can change the music folder and the supported codecs.
   Then if you remove the mp3-player/phone and add it again, you should see it in Rhythmbox.

   Then when you drag music to that device from within rhythmbox it will automatically convert the file to the first supported codec, when the file is not natively supported by your device.

   Hope this helps!
7. Big Dan 3.12.08 / 9pm

   This is a large problem for Ubuntu and Linux in general. Forget about organizing media. How about watching a YouTube video in Firefox then trying to listen to a shoutcast stream in XMMS without restarting Firefox first. XMMS cannot use the soundcard because Firefox or Flash has it locked.

   Simple things like this which have worked on Windows for years think Win 95 and 98 are the reason Linux cannot get a big hold on the desktop market. It’s one little thing, but then it’s another, and another and people get fed up with it. As much as I like Ubuntu, I’ve switched back to windows periodically due to the little things that add up to be a major annoyance.
8. Rodrigo 3.12.08 / 9pm

   It’s very easy. Just switch to MS Windows or OSX.

   Cheers
9. troll 3.12.08 / 10pm

   Big Dan, the newest versions of most of the districutions use Pulseaudio, which will intercept attempts to use alsa as well, and provide the capability that many applications can output audio simultaneously. That problem is gone on other distributions already and the next release of Ubuntu will fix it for Ubunteros.

   Meneer R, that is pretty awesome trick! It’s a shame it is not easy for Average Joes (no gui, and they don’t get any clues that such solution exists in the first place). Some Gnome developer oughta take an AP to provide “mark this device as multimedia device” feature for Banshee/Rhythmbox!
10. Onkar 3.13.08 / 4am

    A better way to do what Meneer suggested is to edit file /usr/share/hal/fdi/information/10freedesktop/10-usb-music-players.fdi, add entry for your phone/player, restart hal, (re)connect the phone/player, make sure rhythmbox recognizes it and then submit a patch so others also benefit.
11. troll 3.13.08 / 5pm

    That one requires root and far more knowledge (what is the .fdi format like)
12. DrDabbles 3.13.08 / 8pm

    This is the reason for wanting standards. No matter who published it, if there were a standard for music storage on portable devices, phones, iPods, etc. could all be developed to make use of it. Sadly, companies patent standards…so you can only use an iPod with iTunes, and things of that nature.

    Instead, we use libraries like MTP to sit between myriad devices and our front-end applications, so developers don’t have to keep reverse engineering different players. This standardizes access from apps to devices, which is good, but only a half measure. Unfortunately, it is only relatively recently that companies like Intel and now even ATI have opened their specs and standards to the “open” crowd.
13. MentalNotes 3.14.08 / 11am

    Big Dan: The problem is with Flash. It’s annoying on Windows too. I’ve got friends who run XP and Vista who have to restart their browsers if they want to watch YouTube videos every time they want to listen to them through their stereo (USB connection).

    Meneer R: Thank you! Very handy bit of info that. Where did you get it from? *runs away to see what else Rhythmbox/HAL can do that I didn’t know of…

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