community more important than certain users

It's kind is disappointing that people still haven't learned to just refer to the announcement. The team is very clear in that Amarok 2.0 is a first working basis, and that features that are missing right now will be added later in this release cycle, which, thanks to the new technologies and the cleaner code should be quite a bit accelerated compared to 2.0.

I've talked with some of the Amarok developers about the lack of some apparently important features, and that it's likely to cause a backlash from the armchair users (those that don't read announcements, that are interested in slinging mud and those that are mostly out to vent frustrations in any possible way).

A simple fact is that the Amarok crowd needed a release not to lose momentum in their community, developers wanted to get their code out, wanted to collect more feedback. On top of that, there's now a very stable base released with Amarok 2.0 that will start to shine in more 2.x releases.

If that's not your your kind of thing, there are gazillion of MP3 players around, among them Amarok 1.4, if that's what you like. No reason to throw shit at people that are actively thinking how the 'listening to music' experience can be improved and extended.

I fully understand the Amarok community putting their own needs above that of their users, and that's exactly what they did.

Now I'm not much of a MP3 person, but I did use Amarok for some time. It looks like a fine music player to me, and I didn't see any functionality really missing, apart from my iPod touch not being recognized (which I would say is hardly Amarok's fault, given the closed nature of that product). Otherwise, it works fast, the interface is streamlined and relatively easy to understand. Sure, it could use some more polish, more of those smart features, but it's a very decent beginning. If this sets the tone for the whole Amarok2 series, there are good times ahead.

One bit of practical information to finish off: If things like resizing or scrolling are sluggish and you're using the nvidia binary driver, update to the latest beta. It makes Qt4-based apps fly on the hardware I've tested.