Let's talk about Linux

[nordlead]

Khuutra said:

WereKitten said:

Khuutra said:
Hey what is everybody's favorite music player? I'm just using Rhythmbox at the moment, but I have heard good things about Amarok.

Are you familiar with the Gnome/KDE feud? They are the two big options under Linux for desktop environments, and Ubuntu defaults to Gnome.

Amarok is beloved by many and offers countless plugins and features, whereas Rythmbox is more bare-bones (thought suited to my needs, ie to have my playlists going while I code and keep my music tagged and ordered).

Being a KDE application Amarok might look aestethically and functionally slightly out-of-place in the Gnome environment, though you can theme it to be closer to the rest of the Gnome environment. Plus, it will bring a slight overhead in memory consumption because it will need to load different libraries from the rest of the environment. Unless you are really memory constraint this shouldn't be an issue, though... I liberally mix and match applications from the two parts with no troubles.

Other players you might want to look into are banshee and muine. If you like simple and to the point (your pidgin remark), then you might like muine over rythmbox, but amarok will probably feel like overdoing it.

Well it's true I do like simplicity. I'm converting my MP3 collection to .ogg right now...

I'm gonna give muine a shot, then. Thanks.

And I am not at all familiar with the Gnome/KDE feud, do tell me more.

I'm not to familiar with it, but KDE and Gnome are the two biggest desktop environments in Linux. As far as I know Gnome typically is the desktop of choice for default installs (or maybe just all the distros I use). Think of it like PS3 vs. X360. Just a bunch of fanboys with similar things constantly arguing over which is better when both are very capable items.

Here is a summary of the differences (which are all very minor other than layout in my limited opinion)

Generally, KDE focuses on offering as many features as possible with as many graphical ways as possible for configuring those features. Fans of KDE highlight the functionality it has. Critics of KDE say the menus are too confusing.

Gnome, on the other hand, opts for simplicity and often hides certain configurations in order to achieve that simplicity. Fans of Gnome think the simplicity of Gnome offers a cleanliness that allows the user to get stuff done. Critics of Gnome think it just lacks certain functionality.

 

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Anyways, for my most recent "linux experience" I came so close to using Ubuntu on my new HTPC, but then found out that netflix won't run on linux so I bought Windows 7. I may switch to linux for my current main home PC, but probably not until after it's been replaced by a new main Windows PC.