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Getting the Most Out of XMMS (O'ReillyNet)

Rickford Grant reviews the capabilities of the XMMS media player on O'Reilly. "XMMS (X Multimedia System), available with just about every Linux distro, is simple enough to use, yet many users fail to reach below the surface and take advantage of its many capabilities. In this article, Rickford Grant takes you from the basics of using XMMS to its more advanced features, such as creating playlists, playing Internet radio broadcast streams, and more."
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Rhythmbox 0.8.0 out today too

Posted Apr 16, 2004 23:16 UTC (Fri) by louie (subscriber, #3285) [Link]

With <a href="http://www.rhythmbox.org/news.html">rhythmbox</a> reaching 0.8.0, and having support for web streaming, vastly better library and playlist handling, and easier to use to boot (really, who thought that buttons in the LCD display was a good idea? :) No visualizations yet, I guess, and no skins, but otherwise it's just better. I ditched xmms for a very early rhythmbox build and don't miss it at all. (<a href="http://muine.gooeylinux.org/">muine</a> is also getting there, albeit with a UI that is innovative enough that it has evolved into 'not for everyone.')

[BTW, is there something dumb I'm missing in posting to make links work?]

Rhythmbox 0.8.0 out today too

Posted Apr 17, 2004 2:11 UTC (Sat) by TimCunningham (guest, #10316) [Link]

Rhythmbox is nice, but it still has problems. For me, even with 0.8.0, about 1% of my mp3s make it hang.

Rhythmbox 0.8.0 out today too

Posted Apr 17, 2004 14:04 UTC (Sat) by louie (subscriber, #3285) [Link]

The gstreamer guys would really love to see those mp3s, I'm sure. I use it purely with .ogg, so I'm probably not seeing that. [It did have a lot of other issues during the gstreamer 0.7 development stream, but they seem to have smoothed out most of those kinks.]

Links in posts

Posted Apr 17, 2004 3:22 UTC (Sat) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

> BTW, is there something dumb I'm missing
> in posting to make links work?

Well, not "dumb", really, but easy to miss.. Format: HTML, the radio
button between subject and comment text. Plain text doesn't do links.

Of course HTML comes with its own hassles, in that you can't just <lf>
<lf> for a new paragraph, you must <p> it. I generally prefer plain text,
but do switch to HTML if I'm posting a link.

What I /wish/ LWN had was plain text with links, sort of half way between
the two formats but closer to plain text. As you can see I'm rather at
home with usenet style quotes and emphasis markup, and prefer that to
HTML. However, I DO like clickable links as most news clients do, now
days, as well, and LWN's plain text unfortunately doesn't make that
possible.

Duncan

Rhythmbox 0.6.2 is broken for me

Posted Apr 17, 2004 10:47 UTC (Sat) by starblue (subscriber, #5842) [Link]

I just took a look at Rhythmbox (the version in Debian, 0.6.2).
Doesn't look too bad, but the distinction between database and playlist is not clear, and when I selected the small view its height became zero and it can't be resurrected, can't find the file of the start up configuration of that thing and purge+reinstall doesn't help either.

But at least it could show the å in Bazar blå ...

So for the moment I'll stay with xmms even though I hate its interface.

It would be nice if the Grumpy Editor could take a look at this kind of software ...


Jürgen

Rhythmbox 0.6.2 is broken for me

Posted Apr 17, 2004 22:55 UTC (Sat) by jbh (subscriber, #494) [Link]

I saw the same. Two things:

- for me, double-clicking on the title gives the "regular" small window (but it probably depends on your wm)

- F8 reverts to the full size window, even if you can't get the small window to show

Rhythmbox 0.6.2 is broken for me

Posted Apr 19, 2004 13:10 UTC (Mon) by starblue (subscriber, #5842) [Link]

Thanks, the F8 thing worked.

Actually for that I had to temporarily tell my window manager (ctwm)
not to interpret F8 as the window manager fullscreen function.
Applications should leave function keys alone.

Jürgen

Rhythmbox 0.8.0 out today too

Posted Apr 17, 2004 22:53 UTC (Sat) by jbh (subscriber, #494) [Link]

Hey, thanks for the tip! Just what I've been looking for.

Rhythmbox 0.8.0 out today too

Posted Apr 19, 2004 7:36 UTC (Mon) by Felix.Braun (subscriber, #3032) [Link]

What I really like about XMMS is the availability of lots of input-plugins. Does gstreamer already have a MOD plugin? Or a SID plugin?

Rhythmbox 0.8.0 out today too

Posted Apr 19, 2004 18:27 UTC (Mon) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link]

Yes, and yes.

Getting the Most Out of XMMS (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Apr 16, 2004 23:45 UTC (Fri) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link]

When "creating playlists" and "playing Internet radio streams" is considered advanced, something is horribly wrong with both the author, and the application. This kind of stuff belongs in an XMMS manual (and it probably is).

What he's running looks like it's GTK2-based, which means it's not even a released version of XMMS.

Getting the Most Out of XMMS (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Apr 16, 2004 23:47 UTC (Fri) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link]

I take that back -- you never actually see XMMS's GTK UI (just the Nautilus file association window). A screenshot of that would be enough to scare off most people, I think.

Getting the Most Out of XMMS (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Apr 17, 2004 12:34 UTC (Sat) by pheldens (guest, #19366) [Link]

It's still the player I keep returning to, at this time no other player has the features and combination of compatibility/stability/ease of use/free license xmms has.

Getting the Most Out of XMMS (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Apr 23, 2004 16:45 UTC (Fri) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]

Well, I was disappointed with this article because it didn't tell me
anything I didn't already know, but I guess that means I'm already
getting the most out of XMMS.

Since I use KDE I keep attempting to use KDE-based media players, and
keep going back to XMMS due to either stability, feature set, or
appearance.

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