Top 5 Linux music players

crosscourt · 2024-08-02 17:26

Just looked up Deadbeef and it looks pretty nice, thanks for the lead Germ.

Germ · 2024-08-03 23:35

You're welcome.

lisa.dyerrr2 · 2024-09-02 16:06

crosscourt wrote:

More here,

It is useful. Thanks for sharing!

crosscourt · 2024-09-07 19:00

swarfendor437 · 2024-11-06 22:28

Interestingly, the bottom 2 are my top 2. In the past I would have given Clementine my vote but as time has gone by it hasn't been good as in days gone by for finding correct album art. I also miss ProjectM visualisation plugin. I've had to setup steam to access ProjectM but not sure it is working with my preferred audio application Audacious. Why Audacious? Well I have been having issues on a lot of GNU/Linux distributions not playing the audio from my AudigyRX card to my Logitech z506 speakers. I solved this by the Tutorial I have just posted, by installing most ALSA packages, and then using Audacious settings then choosing the Audio plug-in, ALSA Output! qmmp is my second favourite which does have visualisation!

crosscourt · 2024-11-07 00:14

You're using an Audigy card, been awhile with so many using onboard sound these days. Audacious indeed I find more compatible with a wider range of older hardware.

Durhammer · 2025-02-02 22:48

I've tried out many "music players" and I keep coming back to the best one, even if it isn't being maintained -- Cantata (with mpd, of course). It has more usable features to me than so many others, and it's a lot smaller in size. (For example, Clementine would show up as using 300+ MB RAM, while Cantata + mpd would be under 90 MB.)

I have a lot of local radio stations that I like to listen to and keep track of. I can find a lot of them in Cantata, but it can be a real PITA in others to either find the stations, or load a playlist with them. Strawberry was forked from Clementine, but it really sucks in the radio department. At least Clementine has the ability to search its radio sources, even if they ultimately don't find all the ones I want. (Plus, you can't save the URL to use in another player that doesn't have the same searchable source that Clementine has!)

Cantata also has a very good Podcasts discovery feature that I don't see in any other music player. It might not have a lot of cute plugins for light shows and such, but it is very capable. The main beefs (not Dead!) I have with it is that Mr. Drummond stopped working on it, so it's frozen. I used to see song lyrics show up in the "info" panel, but no more. Funny thing is, I haven't seen many other players with decent lyrics support either.

Besides Cantata, Clementine, Strawberry, and DeaDBeeF, I've tried, and rejected:

Sonata
Lollypop
Audacious (not bad)
Amberol
Museeks
Elisa
Tauon
Banshee
Streamtuner2
Quodlibet
Ario (really thought it had promise, but it wouldn't connect to mpd, didn't try to find out why)
vlc (just too much of a hassle to figure out, though I'm sure it can do the job with lots of extra time, plugins, etc.)

If this was Windows, I'd be using MusicBee, but it's not. (But I DID manage to use Cantata and mpd on Windows before I trashed Windows!)

Anyway, just my $0.03 worth (adjusted for inflation).

crosscourt · 2025-02-02 23:30

I pick music players entirely on what features I need and how easy it is to use. Memory usage doesnt concern me but certainly if I spot an app misbehaving, Ill deal with it, but honestly browsers are the biggest offenders.

Durhammer · 2025-02-02 23:55

crosscourt wrote:

I pick music players entirely on what features I need and how easy it is to use. Memory usage doesnt concern me but certainly if I spot an app misbehaving, Ill deal with it, but honestly browsers are the biggest offenders.

Well, that's pretty much why I chose Cantata over the rest, if you read my post. The fact that it takes less RAM to be better is just icing on the cake.

I tested out a slew of browsers for being both light in weight and full-featured and wrote it up on the MX Linux forum. The point of this and other such quests that might seem Quixotic to you were done to get a decently running Linux setup on a severely constrained environment -- an HP Stream 13 notebook, with a 2 core Celeron/Atom processor set, 2 GB RAM (soldered in, no upgrade possible), and a 32 (hah!) GB "SSD-like" device. So a lot of the things I do now are in keeping, even if not absolutely needed.

Anyway, it turns out that the best browser is Brave. It has good memory management, it has built-in ad-blocking so you don't even need uBlockOrigin or Adguard (and the ad-blocker is written in Rust, for what it's worth), and it has other cool features, at least one built in that I make use of, which is a "Brave News" news/RSS aggregator sorta like Google News but can be enhanced with your own rss feeds. It also has a built-in "Zoom" feature that's free to use for up to 4 connections.

None of the other browsers (Chromium, Firefox, Waterfox, LibreWolf, Zen, etc.) came close. The little ones were really really laughably limited.

crosscourt · Yesterday 00:00

Now I can definitely understand why you were trying to run lean with that system. What system are you running right now?
Im not trying to be pointed. Its just that hardware has improved hugely and you can get used systems for dirt cheap, so being able to run whatever you like is definitely not a problem these days. I agree as anytime you can use a full featured app that uses less memory is a win/win.
Brave has become very popular as a browser.

Durhammer · Yesterday 00:22

crosscourt wrote:

Now I can definitely understand why you were trying to run lean with that system. What system are you running right now?
Im not trying to be pointed. Its just that hardware has improved hugely and you can get used systems for dirt cheap, so being able to run whatever you like is definitely not a problem these days. I agree as anytime you can use a full featured app that uses less memory is a win/win.
Brave has become very popular as a browser.

On THIS box (Samsung RF711 -- you're everywhere so you can check out the hardware in the other post! ), RIGHT NOW, I'm on Q4OS Wayland. I also have my old standby, MX 21.3 Xfce edition, plus MX 23.5 Xfce, all on the internal SSD. I also have a bootable external SSD with MX 23.5 Fluxbox edition that I can boot up here or on the HP or other places.

On the HP Stream 13, I'm running MX 23.5 Fluxbox edition, but using IceWM DE (not really a fan of F-box, sorry). I'm also a fan of jwm but had already set up the HP with Ice before learning about it. I was setting up the HP with Linux bcz it was a useless piece of junk when it was pretty much consumed by its Windows 8 OS (which is really crazy, 'cause it was one of those COMPRESSED Windows!). No amount of personal space freeing up would make it useful. I was fixing up the HP with childrens' educational stuff (gcompris, etc.) for my granddaughters to use when they get a bit older and more interested in it. The thing works great, though ya can't really keep many browser tabs open at the same time, especially if you've got a resource hog like Clementine running (I didn't try Cantata back then, might have to go back and do it!).

crosscourt · Yesterday 00:29

Yep, saw your other post and the specs of your Samsung RF711. Im getting a lot of exercise bouncing between posts, LOL!! I havent used the Fluxbox version of MX in quite awhile, I might give it a look.

Last edited by crosscourt (Yesterday 20:49)

Midas · Yesterday 17:51

Not here to rain on anyone's parade, but multi-platform Qt-based Qmmp scores high points on my preference ranking...

http://qmmp.ylsoftware.com/

From my experience, Qmmp's legacy versions even support old unmodified Winamp skins...

And BTW, regarding the Windows camp, although most audio purists swear by Foobar2000, I find the convenience and ease of use of XMplay hard to beat.

crosscourt · Yesterday 20:50

XMPlay is really nice.

Durhammer · Today 03:54

I just installed, tried qmmp, and removed it. Not really easy to figure out how to use it, it shows up in a tiny weird window arrangement, and it doesn't seem to have any internet radio stream functionality, at least nowhere as easy to fiddle with as Cantata (or EVEN Clementine, which still is insanely awkward). Thanks, but no thanks. No rain on my parade, and you be you! Thanks for the suggestion to try it (it was either that or Winamp earlier, and I dismissed it then years ago).

I'll check out XMPlay. But seriously, y'all need to try Cantata/mpd.

EDIT: apt can't find xmplay/XMPlay.

Last edited by Durhammer (Today 03:56)

crosscourt · Today 04:22

Different strokes for different folks. XMPlay is a Windows app so you would need to use an emulator like Wine to run it. Ive used it in Windows and its really nice.

Last edited by crosscourt (Today 04:53)

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#26 2024-08-02 17:26

Re: Top 5 Linux music players

#27 2024-08-03 23:35

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#28 2024-09-02 16:06

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#29 2024-09-07 19:00

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#30 2024-11-06 22:28

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#31 2024-11-07 00:14

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#32 2025-02-02 22:48

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