Hi all; this is my first post here. Thought I would give my .02, since I agree with both MM and Mint
Despite the fact that MediaMonkey is indeed proprietary software, I 'd like to state that the OP makes a very valid point, imho. Besides, no one ever said that paid for software was banned from the linux environment, even less so when a free 99.9% functional version is available.
Reason I decided to post here is that comparing any media manager to MediaMonkey is just futile. The case of Miro can be quickly dismissed:
http://media-player.findthebest.com/com ... ey-vs-Miro
I (very much) like that it's cross platform but, looking at the features, it looks about useless to me. Maybe I will look into video conversion, as you just don't have anything under windows that can compare to what you have under linux.
MediaMonkey is not just another media player/librarian. Problem is, you have to try it and become an advanced user before you begin to scratch the surface. Failing at doing so will leave you with the mainstream opinion that amarok, foobar, or any selection of the best media software around, are in the same league. Or even better since MM doesn't have much to offer, as a player (apart from codec support). You would be wrong, by a ridiculous margin. I won't even start with user scripts...
I for one would be satisfied with a mere query tool for linux. For instance, a web server would do just that ! Query the (sqlite) db in your browser and launch your favorite player from there. That would be quickly done, easy to debug and would make years of "work" available under an alternative OS. I would not be overstating it, saying that I literally put thousands* of hours in my MM database. Something like 20-50 hours a month for 7 years... Would I know the first thing about building that webserver, I probably would egt to work. Some have scripted this for Windows already and THAT can probably be ported.
You could also just "serve" the db as DLNA in Wine and play in whatever local or distant player. NO programming needed : install, serve and play...
Thing is, both would be read only solutions, which won't cut it for most. You could run MediaMonkey in wine and write to db, probably discovering new bugs at every MM or Wine update, possibly corrupting the db... Bad.
Some questions could be:
- Would MM developers be willing to authorize a full blown read/write program
- Would they dedicate some of their resources to the project, maybe manage it ? This wouldn't be a first attempt and they probably have answered countless times to such requests. That would be interesting documentation.
- Would the licensing model be translated to the linux world ? I certainly would agree with that.
I agree with the OP that the rather large and persistent MM community probably has its share of wannabe Windows quitters. I'd like to be one of them but MM is not the only program I use which does not have an equivalent for *nix. Multi Booting is here to stay. Difference is that Xp wouldn't have stay as default entry in Grub.
Wouldn't that be something ? All that work I do in the Win Gui or, painfully, with the command line, I could do in some linux distro and gain some more of that independence I am craving...
Were i able to handle professional code, I would probably look into this, even more so if I was looking for a full time job, with an interest in media. Fact is that MediaMonkey has come a long way as a media manager and it's hard to find a better starting point for someone looking for excellent software.
All of this is just my opinion, of course. But I can back it up with quite some experience for those interested.
Cheers from France. Sorry for how the English sounds : we have that kind of schools here
Roger.