From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Community icon by AlpΓ‘r-Etele MΓ©der, licensed under CC BY 3.0
I tried out most (if not all) of the music players on flathub, but I always end up going back to Rhythmbox. It's so simple, lightweight, got just enough features (for my use case) and blends well with GTK Desktops (I mostly use Gnome and Cinnamon) and it looks so clean in my Nord theme π
How has your experience with Rhythmbox? do y'all got any alternative you think everybody should give a try? I personally think Elisa is a close second!
I really really don't get why you just can't organize your music in plain old folders with rhythmbox. Not Playlists, not Meta data. Just folders. Ist it that exotic? Is it that hard to implement?
My musics are organized by metadata, playlists AND folders. I currently got about 1980+ songs locally, and felt like I needed all of these methods to keep them organized and good looking
And is there any way to play songs by folder with rhythmbox yet? Haven't looked into it for a while.
I'm currently using Sayonara, but Rythmbox is perfectly fine too.
I used it on Mint. I liked it. I use Strawberry now because it can bypass software decoding and output audio directly to my DAC.
I really just want a media player that:
Has good media library support based on tags (lots do)
Has ReplayGain support (lots do)
Lets me have an album art panel bigger than a thumbnail (and here is where so many options fall short, including Rhythmbox)
Deadbeef seems to be the closest due to its good customizability, but the plugin which allows for actual media library capability is apparently Mac-only, for some unfathomable reason.
Gonna be stuck with Foobar via Wine for a fair sight longer, I think.
~~Clementine does all those things.~~ I may have mistaken what you are asking for. Are you wanting a cover larger than a thumbnail in the "catalog" section?
Yes, bigger than that. I have tried Clementine.
Got it. My initial thought was you wanted to see the cover when it was playing. This makes more sense now. I don't use covers in the catalog part because my library is way too big. I would never be able to scroll through them all!
Cider, apple music
I just went on a journey looking at different local music players.
Just tried Rhythmbox. It's not terrible, but not great either. It looks very bare bones.
Of the ones I've tried, I like Elisa the best. I spent a ton of time getting HQ artwork and quality metadata on my files and Elisa really shows that off. Rhythmbox barely shows any artwork. I just have two complaints about Elisa. First, Qt apps just don't feel right in Gnome for various reasons: fonts are often too thick, icon contrast is bad, and Qt theme is weird for non-Breze. It also has weird scrolling behavior: it has forced scrolling smoothing and acceleration.
Runner up is Sayonara. It's Qt based, but actually feels decent in Gnome. Overall I like the UI more than Elisa, but unfortunately it doesn't handle showing my library as well. Artwork is duplicated (it shows albums multiple times if songs in them have different years) and some artwork is inexplicably missing.
Just felt the need to say our music libraries look very similar. You have great taste.
I really enjoyed Elisa too! It looks modern and does a great job at showing off metadata π
But I still sticked with Rhythmbox because of: 1- it's GTK based, and I'm currently on Gnome (the reason why when using KDE, I stick with Elisa) 2- I kinda did not understand how managing playlist in Elisa works? Maybe I missed something, but Rhythmbox just seemed more simple and direct to the point with that.
But yeah, I do agree with you that Rhythmbox really lacks in the "showing album covers off" space. But in my personal usage, I don't tend to be looking at the UI of the music player on the desktop anyway, since I usually just play music on the background while doing other stuff.
On mobile (android) on the other hand, I'm enjoying Gramophone for not only showing larger covers, but also matching it's own Material You colors to the respective music you're playing, it's neat :p
It literally hasnβt changed even a tiny bit since I first saw it in 2006 :)
I currently use Strawberry - a well maintained fork of the old Amarok player before they redone the UI for KDE 4. It does what I care the most:
Fork of Clementine you mean.
I am still using Clementine. Strawberry is missing some features.
@merci3 Just a very solid player. Linux music players come and go but Rhythmbox has always been there.
Clementine was the best
Still is. I use it everyday.
I use strawberry now, which is a clementine derivative. Having my library in one column on the side and just pulling stuff from the library to a variable custom playlist is my preferred player style. Exaile is also like this, and deadbeef too if your library is organized and you add the filebrowser plugin. I use strawberry over those two because it's the only one I can get from the main arch repositories and I try to minimize AUR usage.
Pragha actually fits this style too and is still in the arch repos, but I don't understand why because it stopped getting upstream updates years ago and is a buggy mess compared to strawberry with no advantages.
I definitely miss the clementine remote though, being able to control the player from an android phone was so convenient and I don't know any other player that has similar.
Thanks for this i will check strawberry app
being able to control the player from an android phone was so convenient and I don't know any other player that has similar.
Well, you can remote control playback in Kodi through apps like Kore, and browse the libraries, but it's a totally different experience in comparison to dedicated music player apps. Kodi is more like software for a home theater PC, a.k.a. media center.
The best viable solution I can think of, that includes a desktop UI and remote control from a phone, would be hosting a Jellyfin server for the music library, then using the client app for Android to remotely control another client app running on your desktop. I do that everyday (but mostly for video content), since I'm using my phone to control playback on a Raspberry Pi running Kodi with the "Jellycon" client add-on, but that could be any other Jellyfin client, such as a regular Jellyfin desktop client.
Yeah, I wasn't considering kodi and jellyfin as music players because they serve a broader purpose than that, but I guess they should count. I do have jellyfin set up for movies and shows, but I've stuck with strawberry for music because the player interface is a bigger priority for me than having a remote is.
I use mpd and ncmpc++, myself. My library got too large (Just shy of 70,000 songs now) and all the GUI players choke and freeze when I try to scan my library, including Rhythmbox and QuodLibet. I'm kind of interested in how inori develops, since ncmpc++ isn't getting any active development beyond fixing bugs when things break with updates, but I'm also pretty happy with it for now.
I just read that navidrome
Handles large libraries!
Plays well with gigantic music collections (tested with ~900K songs - 2/3 FLAC, 1/3 MP3)
Though, I don't know if any of the supported Subsonic API clients can handle as much...
Gonic works pretty well with my library, and Tempo is fine for a client. I mostly just put stuff on an SD card in my Fiio these days, though.
can anyone suggest a tool to re-assess all my ripped mp3s and flacs with artist/track title info? I ripped ages of music from CD, and at some point a lot of the data got dicked up.
I've been enjoying Tauon, it does the things I want
I like Strawberry, for two reasons:
It was the first player I found that supported playing directly to a pipewire sink, without going through the Pulseaudio compatibility layer.
It can stream hi res FLAC files from Tidal.
It's an amazing music player and shit podcast app
TIL rhythmbox still exists.
I'm just going to use this opportunity to publicly grieve again for Winamp fake becoming open-source: https://hackaday.com/2024/10/16/winamp-taken-down-too-good-for-this-open-source-world/
I've been a Linux user since 2005ish and a DJ since at least 2013. I've tried a lot of music players including Rythmbox. I settled on Clementine/Strawberry or Amorok, depending on use case. Haven't used either of them recently.
With that said, there is no right answer. Find one you like!
Are there any music players that will play my mp3s and stuff but also let me play audio from youtube or spotify without logging in? On android I use Musify, which does this but is a little wonky.
Rhythmbox has been my main music app for over 15 years now. Every now and then I'll check out other options but I always end up back after a couple days.
I do wish they would give the UI some attention. Nothing major, just a few visual tweaks to bring it inline with modern Gnome (the alternative toolbar plugin is really close)
Same, I just really want the automatic playlists feature, but no other music players that look nice on gnome seem to have that. Pretty much all newish players are so minimal
Cantata.
Same here. Nothing even comes close, at least in my opinion - it's comparable to foobar2000.
@WeAreAllOne @merci3 That's my current player of choice on KDE. Sadly it's no longer maintained. Hopefully some fork will succeed
I think I've read somewhere that there still is maintenance but can't find it now. In any case Cantata works perfectly!