I did a quick search and found a few “old” (read more than a couple years) posts regarding what people use to listen to their music on Linux. I just switched back from Windows (an online class was being a butt and I couldn’t deal with it plus the stress of the OS not working) onto Fedora 33 Workstation (using the GNOME desktop currently) and need a music player. I have a 7th generation iPod Classic that I want to make sure I can still synchronize with but I feel like that should be a fairly “easy” hurdle to overcome.
I’d like something simple like iTunes (in the way that I can setup a library location and it just works) but I love Foobar2000. I watched the old TekSyndicate video(s) on it and would love to use it on Linux but they still won’t release a *nix version. So rather than hack something together (unless that is the best course) I wanted to reach out to the lovely community again. I’m hoping we can have a good discussion about this as well, so if you list a suggestion/recommendation let me know why and if you use it or just heard about it.
I have seen a few listed:
DeaDBeeF
Clementine
Lollypop
MPD (this one intrigues me a lot since I’m a minimalist in both physical media and digital/software)
I don’t sync my devices via USB, so I personally only use mpv for both audio and video. Buuut most people in the online circles I visit recommend mpc, which is a cli interface for mpd.
I would recommend Lollypop for simple and sleek interface.
For bitperfect music quality I use Strawberry.
So basically when I want background music I use lollypop, when I want to focus on the experience Strawberry.
Be warned, bitperfect reproduction from strawberry takes control of your audio sink, no no other sound can come through once it starts playing. Likewise if your audiosink was being used by other software strawberry wont be able to play audio. (If this is confusing just use Lollypop)
This is what I’ve been seeing actually. I’d love to use that, so I’ll have to see if there’s a separate program for syncing. Thanks!
It is a bit confusing, but definitely something that I’ll be wanting to look into. Thank you for the recommendations and I’ll be sure to do a thorough look into both!
My only problem is that I still want to use the original firmware, it’s just nostalgia I’m sure and will most likely wear off, but… either way, I will look into Rockbox again, because it does sound like it’ll make the syncing portion a heck of a lot easier. Thanks for bringing it back to my attention!
To be fair Foobar2000 is known to run pretty well under WINE, except for some plugins. So if you really like it that much you can still use it, which is what I did for a while.
Tried Clementine and Amarok for a while and the interface while fine at first didn’t really suit me, there was too much stuff I didn’t want and couldn’t remove, or that I wanted and couldn’t add.
As I was searching for something native I stumbled on DeaDBeeF somewhere here on the forum and I got it set up pretty much the way I had Foobar before, I did have to compile some plugins myself tho. But that’s not that big a deal.
One thing DeaDBeeF does not do is building an actual library file though, and I haven’t found a plugin that does either. So in Foobar you have a lot of options how to filter your library using different plugins, that’s not really an option. You point it to a directory and it just lists your directory structure (which may or may not be an issue depending how your music is organised).
I’ll have to look into that! The biggest plugin that I’ll need is for converting FLAC to ALAC. If that plugin works then it’ll be smooth sailing, along with the synchronization for the iPod.
My music is pretty well tagged too, BUT I’m not sure if it’s still that way because after importing it into iTunes a lot of stuff got messed up. I’ll have to run the entire library through Picard again I suppose.
These sound very promising, I’ll be sure to check them out! Thank you for the information and the input, it’s really helpful!
Finally I wanted to let everyone know what I’ve been doing this week to keep my music collection/listening still working for me in the meantime.
I tried using Rhythmbox as it offered to do native syncing for my iPod for me. After doing that though something majorly got messed up and although the music was on my iPod it was hidden and I couldn’t get it visible. I decided to reset it all using a Windows 10 VM and setting up iTunes to access my local Linux library. Once completed I have been working on converting my FLACs to ALACs for the remainder of some albums. I’ll be looking into what a lot of you have suggested and report back what I’ve made my decision. Thanks for the suggestions thus far!
There is no plugin for that and there doesn’t need to be. In the convert dialogue there is a preset for ALAC, but all the Convert does is pass the files to a command-line application, so basically anything ffmpeg can do, you can do in it.
I did try to do that but in my tired state ran into an issue that I couldn’t figure it out. I’ll try again this afternoon to see what went wrong. Thanks for that!!