Progress: opposed to innovation?
Michael A. Peters
mpeters at mac.com
Mon Dec 13 08:08:43 UTC 2004
On 12/12/2004 11:20:26 PM, Brian Fahrlander wrote:
>
> I promise you, this is not intended as a troll or rant. I just
> need
> to vent a little here, maybe it'll help.
I send my venting to /dev/null :D
OK - that's not true, I vent on lists sometimes too ...
>
> New to a fresh install of FC3 on the same machine that's been
> running Linux (and only Linux) for 4-5 years, I bring up RB, the new
> default I'm told will be staying with Fedora development, not the
> age-
> old XMMS that worked so well.
There actually is a sane reason for moving away from xmms as default -
I don't know if this is Fedora's reason, but I'll offer it anyway.
Rhythmbox uses a GStreamer backend. GStreamer is a multimedia framework
that many applications can use - install appropriate plugin, and lots
of apps benefit. xmms also uses plugins, but they are for xmms -
GStreamer is a framework intended for use by LOTS of multimedia
players, video and audio, and even to provide multimedia capability to
apps who's primary purpose is not multimedia. I think there is a GPS
application for nar navigation that uses GStreamer for its audio
output, for example.
With respect to Rhythmbox - I have become less fond of it as it has
gotten older. I can't pinpoint why.
Currently I primarily use gamp - a GStreamer backend audio player that
will play my aac filres. I really like the UI of another GStreamer
player, Eina - but it does not work on fc3 for me. Another one I have
been looking at is Jamboree. It only wants to play mp3 and ogg at the
moment, but it is faster than Rhythmbox at startup (I haven't tested it
with a huge library) and offers smart playlist etc. It's young (all of
the Rhythmbox alternatives are) but I'm hoping that it will mature, add
support for audio other than ogg/mp3 - it's a nice player.
> First I have to tell it what to play,
> or
> I'll be listening to the same song(s) all the time. I tell it to
> open /shares/Music where I keep several hundred titles, and three
> hours
> later, it's still stepping it's way through the list.
Yes, Rhythmbox is slow at indexing a large collection.
> I kill it,
> part
> stays behind and keeps the CPU usage at 100%, mysteriously. When it
> eventually gets done, it will *still* play the same song twice in a
> row,
> despite shuffle being turned on.
That I haven't experienced myself.
> Evolution's new- let's see what's
> been added: Connector. (Great if I'm ever sentenced to a workplace
> with
> Windows, there must be more) Well, they've moved things around, the
> 'map
> it' fuction's still not there, musta been some _other_ version of 2.0
> it
> was intended to be introduced in. The fonts are uglier....nothing
> much
> else changed.
I don't like evolution myself.
I prefer Balsa. Balsa has its own quirks, but less than evolution imho.
The balsa that ships with FC3 doesn't work so well, but 2.2.5 does.
>
> OpenOffice is still there. My whimpy AMD 1300 isn't up to the
> challenge tonight
I can't stand OO.o.
I prefer the AbiWord/Gnumeric combo.
-=-=-=-=-=-
I think there is a general problem in Fedora of defaulting to bloated
big software packages.
OO.o is a perfect example - sure, I think it's the only OSS way to view
PowerPoint - but I think AbiWord is a better word processor, especially
for creating rtf files - and I'm almost 100% positive that Gnumeric is
a better spreadsheet program.
When it comes to MS Office documents, I haven't had one sent to me that
AbiWord doesn't handle well, I have found some on the web when I
specifically search for complex word documents - but OO.o didn't handle
them well either.
Exporting to Office - AbiWord understands KISS. While OO.o will try to
write to a .doc format, AbiWord creates a .rtf file and calls it a .doc
and that works very well without introducing bugs of a reverse
engineered document format. It works really well - AbiWord creates
excellent .rtf files.
Same with Evolution - I think it is overly complex for what 95% of the
users need. Let those who specifically need exchange compatability
install Evolution, but put your efforts into and default to a smaller
code base leaner e-mail client, like Balsa.
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