Banshee for Gloria !!

[knuckles]

I'm a big fan of Banshee, and i think it would be a very good Idea to replace Rhythmbox with Banshee in Mint 7 Gloria. It is simple to ask somethink like that but i have my arguments, and after reading them, you will perhaps share my opinion. Let's start:

-for my new ipod nano 4g (16bg green) i have tested a lot of Linux app's to find the ultimate solution to replace iTunes, an for that Banshee is the best Solution, not Ultimate because of little bug's, but the best solution. (and it support other mp3 devices like the google-Handy....)

-In Banshee you can Import (Rip) CD's what is very important if you buy CD's and wish them to be in you library, an there you have a big choice for the format an quality for the import, in big Words Banshee has a lot of nice and useful Possibility's to organize you Music, her not only music but videos too.

-I have not found features in Rhythmbox, that aren't in Banshee, but Banshee has a lot more feature than Rhythmbox

-Banshee is very well integrated in Gnome, and if you read on the Gnome homepage the news, you will see that Banshee is more and more supported from the gnome-team.

-a better solution for the future, it you watch the releases of Rhythmbox, you will see that the last version for comming th 9th July 2008 6 months ago, and befor there were regular updates, with the fact that the gnome site speak more about Banshee than about Rhythmbox, we can ask the question, is Rhythmbox maintained, and will it progress in the next time??

-Banshee with the version 1.4.2 is very stable (if you have tested an earlier version before, please retry Banshee, because 1.4 is a big milestone), yes there a some little problems but do Rhythmbox have no problems? For Gloria (i think in Mai) there is already Banshee 1.6.x (some dates from the project-page 1.4.3 for 13.02, 1.5.1Beta for 16.02 and 1.6 for 30.03.2009) that will have more new features and less bugs.

-there is very well maintained Repo, if the choice make it to replace Rhythmbox and if Clem will not add the packages in the Mint-Repo

-Banshee is too accepted from Ubuntu

-the fact that Mint has all the codec's intstalled out of the box, Mint is to popular as Multimedia-Distro, and Banshee integrated out of the box will made that fact more popular.

What is with other similar app's? I think app's like Amarok or Songbird will never be a good base choice for a distro that has made the choice to have Gnome/gtk as main Desktop. Amarak is a great application but made for KDE and Songbird is somethink for everythink (Linux, windows..) and do not fit very well in gnome (beside all the missing features).

I know already that there come no comment, Banshee is a MONO application, but that is for me no argument against. If you work with Banshee will you see MONO in front of you? The Quality of an Application do not depend only on the programming Language, and it is wrong the judge an app because of that.

So for the moment I'm finished, what do you think now of my arguments?

[GoustiFruit]

Indeed Banshee being Mono is a NO for me, I always remove Mono after any Linux installation

[proxima_centauri]

Do you have any opinion on how Exaile might compare to Banshee?

[knuckles]

@GoustiFruit
ok MONO, a very big point where the mind's goes very different ways, but the fact that Clem add Tomboy Notes in Mint, will say that Clem is not against MONO.

@proxima_centauri
i have tested Exaile too, and what to say, it is or it will be a great app. Why my mind is again Exaile:
-buggy, a has a bad ipod(or mp3-player) support
-the user-interface less user-friendly (in my eyes)
But I will to say that Exaile is on a 0.3.0a1 version, what let see us that this project is really Jung, perhaps in a later Version it will be a very nice program and a good alternative

[AK Dave]

I like Elisa. Turns my laptop into the very sweet media center that "XP Media Center" promised but never delivered on.

elisa.fluendo.com for details.

[badmotor]

Banshee doesn't check your library periodically for new songs. That's the one big handbrake for me. Until they add that in I'm not going near it.

[knuckles]

@badmotor
so nice news for you, Banshee 1.4.x has a bottom in the menu to check/rescan you library, and on the Banshee-page they say that the version 1.6 (for the 30 mars) will have features to made that automatically.

[badmotor]

@badmotor
so nice news for you, Banshee 1.4.x has a bottom in the menu to check/rescan you library, and on the Banshee-page they say that the version 1.6 (for the 30 mars) will have features to made that automatically.

Hey, that IS good news.

[AK Dave]

So you're using Banshee with a 4g Nano and it is flawless? No problems? Syncs music, video, pictures, and podcasts?

I don't know if I'm brave enough to try it. My iPod Classic doesn't seem to be happy with anything except iTunes, but I admit that since I stopped using it in "hard drive mode" it has been a lot more linux friendly. Maybe that was my problem.

[badmotor]

So you're using Banshee with a 4g Nano and it is flawless? No problems? Syncs music, video, pictures, and podcasts?

I don't know if I'm brave enough to try it. My iPod Classic doesn't seem to be happy with anything except iTunes, but I admit that since I stopped using it in "hard drive mode" it has been a lot more linux friendly. Maybe that was my problem.

Strangely enough, my brother's Nano would only work with Rhythmbox, and nothing else. Tried Banshee/exaile etc.

[Rob Loach]

I've been using Banshee to sync with my Android G1. Works very nicely.

Banshee doesn't check your library periodically for new songs. That's the one big handbrake for me. Until they add that in I'm not going near it.

That's apparently on the feature list for the next release. In Banshee 1.4.2, you're limited to clicking on the "Check Watch Folders" menu item..... I can't wait for the periodic updating. Definitely a huge requirement.

Indeed Banshee being Mono is a NO for me, I always remove Mono after any Linux installation

Do people not understand that Mono is completely open source under the MIT and GPL licenses and built upon open ECMA/ISO standards? It's a fantastic development tool and allows for extremely rapid application development. What you're saying here proves that you don't know what you're talking about and that you don't understand what Mono is. For more information why Mono is a good thing, please read Bryan Lunduke's Why 100% Free Software Destroys Linux blog post.

[knuckles]

ok here my Experience with Banshee 1.4.2 and my Ipod nano 4g:
the synchronization's work all: auto, manual, music, video, popcast....
only 2 bug's that are not sooooooo critical:
first after a second resync the cover art is gone, here you need too clean the ipod (delete some files, only the music artwork and itunesdatabase) after you resyn know the cover are back. because I do not sync my ipod every day (only if i have bought a new CD) that is not a big deal.
second one, is that the covers are saved for every song and not only for an album, so the covers take more space than really needed, that is for me a little glitch but not a bug that break the the ipod.

good news here, the 2 Bugs are reported, and i think/hope that they are fixed lately for the version 1.6 (perhaps already for 1.4.3, what is a bugfix release)

[hardy-nl]

Personally, I'm a huge fan of Songbird - the extensions are sweet!

When they add ripping features (read - soon), I'd like to hear arguments against its inclusion.....

[knuckles]

Yes Songbird is not bad, and the extension-system is great, there is a lot of stuff that do not work as I will t hat it works.
From the support-side, there is no repository for Songbird what make thy simplicity of updates worse.

For the moment I wait for the next Banshee update, badly they have say on there Webside the next version 1.4.3 will come the 13.02.2009 but now we are already the 19, but better later an more bug are fixed

Exaile is an other Media-Program I like from the Idea, but for the moment it is too early to take this as stable.

In the changes of the Source from rhythmbox, I saw that they work on it, but no release since more than 6 month, I hope they do an great update, because it is not a bad Program, and I'm always open for alternatives.

But for the moment my Mind didn't change that Banshee is the completest solution as an working out-of-the-box media-player with external-devices support for gnome.

[Thomas]

Yes Songbird is not bad, and the extension-system is great, there is a lot of stuff that do not work as I will t hat it works.
From the support-side, there is no repository for Songbird what make thy simplicity of updates worse.

For the moment I wait for the next Banshee update, badly they have say on there Webside the next version 1.4.3 will come the 13.02.2009 but now we are already the 19, but better later an more bug are fixed

Exaile is an other Media-Program I like from the Idea, but for the moment it is too early to take this as stable.

In the changes of the Source from rhythmbox, I saw that they work on it, but no release since more than 6 month, I hope they do an great update, because it is not a bad Program, and I'm always open for alternatives.

But for the moment my Mind didn't change that Banshee is the completest solution as an working out-of-the-box media-player with external-devices support for gnome.

Only problem with Songbird is that it's far from lightweight, it takes some juice for that thing to run, even though it's pure pwnage.

Exaile is pretty cool but Banshee has many more features and looks better.
I vote Banshee, it's really awesome and easy.

[linuxviolin]

For me it's like GoustiFruit. Banshee = Mono and I don't want Mono on my Linux box!

Rob Loach I'm sorry but you are wrong. No it's not a "fantastic development tool" but a useless development tool, excellent solutions for desktop tools already existed. It's a free clone of .NET, a Microsoft technology, it is an open-source clone of Microsoft .NET, a re-implementation of a Microsoft technology, a Windows-like approach of the computing. It is a Microsoft-inspired technology, a "Microsoft-designed business". Mono is a 'victory' of Microsoft in Linux and with Mono apps you have some EXE and DLL and MDB files, just to feel "at home" in Linux...

As said knuckles, "Banshee is more and more supported from the gnome-team". And why not? Gnome got more and more contaminated (even depend on) with Mono, even maybe soon you will no longer remove Mono from Gnome! GNOME is now tributary to a Microsoft-inspired technology!

Rob Loach, I'm sorry but it's you who "here proves that you don't know what you're talking about and that you don't understand what Mono is." And no, Mono is not "a good thing" for Linux and btw it was not created for this kind of thing:

Because not everyone was happy with Java, and because the .NET technology that relies on a Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) pioneered by Microsoft is now an ECMA standard (ECMA-335, ISO/IEC 23271), someone thought that an open-source clone of .NET, namely Mono, would make the best choice for running .NET client and server applications on Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, Windows, and Unix at large (Mono is a project sponsored by Novell).

Are we really depending on a Microsoft concept to save the enterprise services in Linux? Some people don't seem to be bothered by that.

Sadly enough, Mono is nowhere close to replace the enterprise Java. Nowhere close to that. After all these years of fuss and increasing enthusiasm, Mono has not replaced ASP.NET in the companies that are using .NET on Windows platforms. The most prominent use of Mono in Linux is the use of C# for standalone GUI projects, namely through Gtk#.

(...)

So Mono has not fulfilled the initial expectations. On the contrary, it has made a lot of Linux users to be dependent of Gtk# (through Beagle, Tomboy, etc.), whereas excellent solutions for desktop tools already existed, e.g. PyGTK or PyQt

If you want to use Mono no problem, but not for me thanks.

But I stop here, I have already talked enough about this in the forum and I don't want to start a battle/war here

[thorx89]

Agreed. Banshee's awesome. One of the first things I do after installing a new version of Mint is replace rhythmbox with banshee. I find it faster & more elegant. Plus I enjoy the mirage & lyrics extensions (it's only a pity the awesome lyrics extension isn't supported in the latest version, I hope they'll fix it soon).
IMHO rhythmbox doesn't look so good, tends to create duplicates of songs when refreshing the music library, assigns wrong album arts to songs and the visualizations are somewhat sloppy & slow. (Well there are none for banshee, but I think it's better than a not well polished solution).

I'm definitely for making banshee Mint's default music player!

[dlkreations]

I was an Exaile user for quite some time and loved it. Tried out Banshee and loved it too, especially with equalizer capabilities which was nice! But then I found out there were so many more plugins available for Rhythmbox, including an equalizer, desktop art and full screen view that I have now come to love it and use it as my only music player.

I haven't seen any problems with duplicate songs, and mismatched album art with Rhythmbox as I found with Banshee. Guess it depends on your music I suppose.

[bealer]

For me it's like GoustiFruit. Banshee = Mono and I don't want Mono on my Linux box!

Rob Loach I'm sorry but you are wrong. No it's not a "fantastic development tool" but a useless development tool, excellent solutions for desktop tools already existed. It's a free clone of .NET, a Microsoft technology, it is an open-source clone of Microsoft .NET, a re-implementation of a Microsoft technology, a Windows-like approach of the computing. It is a Microsoft-inspired technology, a "Microsoft-designed business". Mono is a 'victory' of Microsoft in Linux and with Mono apps you have some EXE and DLL and MDB files, just to feel "at home" in Linux...

What a ridiculous post. linuxviolin I'm sorry but it's you that is wrong.

Are you actually a developer? A proper, well-rounded developer, not a "I like assembly language" and can be a bit of an arse at times (like Linus Torvalds) type of developer.

Mono is an excellent framework for developing in. And yes that's because it's a clone of .Net. Within it, C# is a well matured OO language, originally taken from Java, but now far superior. There's a lot I like about it. It's quick and easy to write good applications with, which appeals to a lot of developers. Banshee, Gnome-Do, F-spot, Tomboy are all good examples of what can be produced.

Get over it. It's not "a Windows-like approach" to programming (does that even exist? It's an OO approach), and it's definitely not a victory (as many good .Net developers can now develop on Linux).

What it is, is a good tool for writing applications quickly. In my opinion better than Java, or at least I prefer it. Whether I use Mono, or Python or C++ depends on what I want to do, and how much I know in that area of the each language. I would never disregard Mono though. It's a means to an end.

I find it quite sad that people will avoid great apps like Banshee and Gnome-Do just so that they don't have to install an open source, GPL licensed mimic of a Microsoft framework originally copied from Java.

[Carl]

+1 for above post! some of the best Ideas in Linux where pwned off other operating systems