grip being removed [Re: rawhide report: 20050120 changes]

[Tyler Larson]

Trond Eivind Glomsrød wrote:
> Personally, I think xmms looks better. It's plain, but displays what it 
> should and doesn't take a lot of screen estate. Rhythmbox is huge, looks 
> really ugly (not exactly itunes in that respect... it manages to be huge 
> and cluttered while not displaying much) and sloooooooow. When trying to 
> add my music collection (5000 songs or so... got way too many CDs), xmms 
> is finished in an instant. Rhythmbox just stays unresponsive for 30 mins 
> using all CPU, not displaying any progress or letting you do anything.  
> Then I just want my system back and puts it out of its misery.
> 
> Rhythmbox shouldn't displace better working alternatives until it has 
> gotten useful.
> 

I think we can all agree that no one is against replacing xmms as long as 
there's a suitable alternative.

Rhythmbox, it sounds, is clearly not that alternative.

Rhythmbox is a media organization program with a built-in player. Xmms is a 
media player with some organization capability. The focus of the programs are 
different, so the interface is different. Clearly, neither one is a direct 
replacement of the other.

Arguments over which one *looks* better are obviously moot--there are enough 
people on either side of the fence to show that it's simply a matter of taste. 
If you grew up on Xmms and winamp back in the early days, you'll probably find 
the Xmms interface perfectly intuitive. If you have a fairly large media 
collection, you may find Rhythmbox's library-based interface more useful.

So, would there be any serious negative consequences of keeping xmms around 
until a more suitable replacement could be found? What sort of cost/benefit 
are we talking about in relation to this change?