How is it possible that there's no good music player software for Linux like Musicbee for Windows? (feddit.it)

submitted 1 year ago by iagomago@feddit.it to c/music@beehaw.org

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Please stop me if this is not the appropriate place to speak of issues like this one.

I believe an introduction is due. I have been a Ubuntu user for a little more than a year now and while the whole ecosystem is fantastic and smooth to use, it boggles me that there's still no app that can match the versatility and easiness in use that Musicbee provides. Strawberry pales in comparison, foobar2000 is clunky and clumsy, Rhythmbox is really without any option for control over your library... Even Tauon (the most complete music player I have found so far) becomes overly, uselessly complex in certain moments. What's your take on this issue? What do you use for browsing, editing and playing your music collection? Is there any way we'll ever see something like Musicbee on Linux distros?

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[-] Unquote0270@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago

Linux programs tend not to be monolithic. The power is there but is often split across a few tools rather than being bundled into one. Beets is incredibly good for library management and there are a bunch of good players around, my favourite being mod + cantata. Cantata is not bad for browsing and managing as well, and it lets you set up custom actions so you can open an album in something like puddletag if you don't want to deal with beets.

[-] tram1@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

Pretty sure that's the opposite of monolithic

[-] Unquote0270@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

What is?

[-] tram1@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

The *NIX philosophy, that you describe, is having a bunch of small programs do specific tasks. Monolithic means having one large thing do all the tasks. Maybe the confusion comes from the fact that the Linux kernel is monolithic. They tried to make a FOSS Unix clone before Linux was a thing, but I think they failed (see GNU Hurd). What it means for a kernel to be monolithic or not, I have no idea... I assume the same, but on the kernel level.