replacing XMMS

[duncan brown]

> I have to admit, I'm with him on this. Rhythmbox is much more appealing
> to a new user and I think that's important. XMMS appears, as far as I
> can tell, to be designed as a mere workalike for Winamp 2.x, but even
> Nullsoft has dumped the old layout in favor of the new 5.x layout, which
> I find a lot easier to use than Winamp 2.x ever was.

i feel the exact opposite way, the small footprint (ram/cpu/desktop) works
well for me.  it's an interface that i've been familiar with for the
better part of a decade now.

if you're looking to put rhythmbox on the foreground, then why not just
have xmms install into the "more sound and video applications" menu?  my
pIII 700 with 256mb of ram CRAWLS when i have rhythmbox and firefox
running.  just because it's got more features doesn't mean it's better.

don't get me wrong, i used rhythmbox for about 2 months after fc1 came out
and was installed on my machine, but it makes my machine almost unusable. 
if you want to concentrate on something, put energy into getting rhythmbox
less of a resource hog.  i like the way it organizes audio, i've never had
it fail to open the audio driver (like xmms is want to do), and it's gtk,
so i don't have to worry about hunting down a theme for it that somewhat
matches my desktop.

oh, and xmms has great plugin support for stuff like flac and mp3, if i
were able to get rhythmbox working with mp3s without having to recompile
i'd be alot happier.

> Some folks seem to think we need to ship Fedora with everything --
> including the kitchen sink -- installed, but I disagree. I think Fedora
> can live without XMMS; after all, having two players installed will
> simply confuse new users.

i really think this discussion sounds alot like 'gnome or kde?  we should
decide for everyone what desktop environment they should get!'

> After all, if people *really* want to use other players, they can get
> them, right? I mean, lots of Windows users are smart enough to go online
> and get Winamp instead of just using Windows Media Player (*insert
> barfing noises here*), so there's no reason to assume Fedora users
> couldn't do the same. Perhaps alternative programs can be included on
> the CD-ROM, but I think for a basic install, one player (installed) is
> enough for most people.

and there's no reason to assume fedora users don't want xmms to ship with
their distribution.  rhythmbox needs to be optimized and get (more &&
better organized) features.

-d

-+(duncan brown
-+(duncanbrown at linuxadvocate.net
-+(http://www.linuxadvocate.net

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