Winamp for Ubuntu

[fooWander]

Originally Posted by TimbreWolf

Hi fooWander,

I thought someone might ask. I had avoided mentioning specific examples as my memory is a little hazy on the subject at this stage and I didn't want to get into a debate which would mean having to go test them all again to prove a point.

No need to worry, I am pretty aware of the limitations of linux audio players and totaly understand when people don't want to spend endless hours every couple of months trying out every new audio player or release. That's what discussions like that are for; you name your requirements and someone else might tell you if there is or is no possible solution.

In any case, I believe many of my issues were related to the flexibility of column sorting available in Winamp 5.xxx. For example, say I have 43 minutes free for a nap and I want to find a peaceful album of this length to match?

I don't know any audio player on linux that's able to do that. How do you do that with winamp?

Or in a different vein; say I want to play a random album out of those that have been added to my music collection in the last 6 months?

Quod Libet should be able to do that: #(added < 24 week) and filter random album

Or; say I want to know what track I was listening to at a particular time yesterday?

This should also be possible with Quod Libet: #(1 hours < lastplayed < 2 days)

These are the sorts of tasks which I find other software to struggle with and yet are right in front of you in Winamp. If you'd like to recommend a Linux player in particular which you think comes closest to Winamp's abilities I'd be happy to try it out and report back.

All the best,

TW

Sadly you won't find any linux audio player that's anywhere near as powerful as Winamp or foobar2000, but there are a few who come close to that in some regards. Just to give you a quick summarization of audio players I find useful/powerful:

Quod Libet - support for custom tags and pretty large libraries, pretty nice search capabilities, some issues with gapless playback (mp3), plugin support, basically no visualizations, good replay gain support (incl. scanning)

Gmusicbrowser - basically the same as Quod Libet but without replay gain scanning, instead it has a customizable interface

DeaDBeeF - no library, only basic search, playlist centered, great gapless playback, customizable UI, interessting plugins (lyrics panel, filebrowser, waveform, ...), DSP support, CUE support, replay gain support (no scanning), custom tags support

The first two ones might be what you are looking for.

[/usr/bin/Tux]

Sigh.

Winamp.

'nuff said.

[TimbreWolf]

Hi fooWander,

Thanks for your input and suggestions. I noticed that Quod Libet has a Windows installer so I've installed that to have a quick look. I'm not generally a fan of CLI / having to type but must admit that the search filtering here is a nice solution for a lightweight and flexible interface. I had not tried it before so thanks for bringing it to my attention. I like that the Random X options simply select rather than play giving you the option of taking that selection or not. I don't like that playing "All" on shuffle always still gives you the first track in your library before shuffling on the next track and takes me a few attempts to get it to start playing. All in all it's a nice little player and would meet most of my needs. Thanks!

Originally Posted by fooWander

I don't know any audio player on linux that's able to do that. How do you do that with winamp?

Possibly you misunderstood me here. I was simply saying it is quick and easy to find an album of a particular length in Winamp. You just sort by the "Length" column and then scroll down. Is there away to filter by length in Quod Libet? It's a pity there's no selectable headers for the Album view as there is with the Track view.

Originally Posted by fooWander

This should also be possible with Quod Libet: #(1 hours < lastplayed < 2 days)

That does appear to work for listing tracks played between particular periods but I couldn't see any way of seeing in the main interface last played times for all of the tracks at once (I couldn't find a header for this). Although I see that the last played time is available in the track information so it would be possible, just a bit long winded / trial and error.

Thanks again. Quod Libet is definitely on the right track, but as you say still far off Winamp overall. I'll also have a look at Gmusicbrowser when I next have time to load up a Linux distro.

All the best,

TW

[boggs2005]

Hi devs and new management! I hope with these new management steering this great multimedia player Winamp would be ported to Linux in .deb (Ubuntu/Debian) and .rpm (RedHat/SUSE) format. I know we Linux users are just a niche in the market but we are very eager to use your software for our daily use much like Valve's STEAM games which is highly appreciated and used by the Linux users and community as well. Cheers to your future!

[inferKNOX]

Despite what seems to be an overwhelmingly negative response returned to us loyal fans of Winamp for this wish, I too wish that Winamp comes and knocks the socks off the other players in Linux (specifically Ubuntu). Right now, I believe the only real competition is Clementine.
With Valve's position on Linux, I think it's as good a time as there is going to be to role with the momentum of the increasing adoption of Ubuntu.
EDIT:Not to mention AMD's Mantle, which is cross platform.

(Please try to refrain from verbally beating me down for my simple opinion.)

[KMNS]

Thats why the software called Winamp. The "Win-" means Windows.

But there are bunch of alternatives for Linux, my most liked is Audacious (based on XMMP). It has Winamp skin and equalizer support and have simular format support.

[Invenktive]

Seriously, winamp is the greatest music player ever. It has no comparisons with ANY other windows/linux players (above all with linux ones). For sure, the only reason for me(and I'm pretty sure that for some other guys too) to use the poor windows is of course because winamp is over there and it does not work nicely with VMwares and Wine. Winamp may be the WINamp, and it may be a little bit hard to "port" or even write all of its codes again just to be on linux, but it will REALY worth it.

As you all can see, microsoft is making of windows a little circus of horrors. Even their workers complain about what the OS is becoming day after day. I know that for Radionomy it looks a lot more viable, but with the advance of Ubuntu and a lot of other nice Linux distros and, we must say, the fall of windows with vista and 8, and this awful implementation of Metro (principally) (some day MS love it, another one, they hate it. Personally I hate it.), we must notice that write a linux version for winamp would be an interesting point to explore. And I am really sure that the comunity would help each possible need that you must have with so much pleasure.

[/usr/bin/Tux]

Dumbuntu sucks. Unity (with all its Amazon fame ) is a betrayal to everyone. Sorry, but if I was a Winamp dev, I would seriously laugh at you.

[Hicuregary]

I used to use XMMS on Linux until its development stopped. I thought it was based on Winamp? It looked almost exactly like Winamp and was probably the best media player while it lasted.

[DrO]

XMMS was built to look like Winamp i.e. used it's skins and was a bit of a Winamp-clone for Linux. same as many other Linux players. so just because it looks like Winamp doesn't mean it is Winamp (and XMMS definitely didn't use any Winamp source code), just like the Spotiamp client does - looks like Winamp but isn't.

[brookbot]

Winamp is also the first app I lunch - that is after everytime I'm forced to reboot... Can't get any work done w/o it.

You guys seriously need to reconsider linux support and development. The future is a low power, Android based, TV box and mobile devices. Qualcomm makes a wireless chip w/a DSP that includes all the decoders you could want. Windows is a dying platform and it only took us 20 years or so to get rid of it. Anyone that supports a proprietary, closed OS is just crazy.

Now that I don't have a Winblows box anymore, I'm really hurting for winamp on linux. I'm not worried about all the "features", who's bone head decision was it to embedd a browser in winamp anyway? Winamp as a small lightweight music player/internet radio was the best and can still be.

I've been using it for the past 15 or so years, and I'm available to work on a Linux version. If it comes out for my TV, I will prefer to use it. Wish I have it for my car...



-Brooke
www.brookewallace.com

[DJ-Garybaldy]

Originally Posted by brookbot

Winamp is also the first app I lunch - that is after everytime I'm forced to reboot... Can't get any work done w/o it.

You guys seriously need to reconsider linux support and development. The future is a low power, Android based, TV box and mobile devices. Qualcomm makes a wireless chip w/a DSP that includes all the decoders you could want. Windows is a dying platform and it only took us 20 years or so to get rid of it. Anyone that supports a proprietary, closed OS is just crazy.

Now that I don't have a Winblows box anymore, I'm really hurting for winamp on linux. I'm not worried about all the "features", who's bone head decision was it to embedd a browser in winamp anyway? Winamp as a small lightweight music player/internet radio was the best and can still be.

I've been using it for the past 15 or so years, and I'm available to work on a Linux version. If it comes out for my TV, I will prefer to use it. Wish I have it for my car...



-Brooke
www.brookewallace.com

I have Winamp working rather well under Wine on Ubuntu studio. Albeit a slightly older version (2.91) I have also had 5.621 working on wine as well.

[DrO]

5.666 worked ok for me on wine though there's some ui quirks on the bits I used (so its better to use the bento skin for the library window to show compared to a classic skin for some reason).