Looking at installing Linux on an old laptop that's not getting much use to play around with, and I'm looking for suggestions to replace the must have programs I currently use.
The big ones are my media players, MPC-HC for video, Foobar2000 and Spotify for audio.
What software is available on Linux that will offer similar quality levels, specifically to those of MPC-HC?
Thanks
Here would be my choices. First I think spotify still works under Linux but I'm not 100% sure then for audio I personaly like deadbeef as my main music player. When it comes to video I really like MPV I can stream stuff from youtube and crunchyroll without using flash though thats not much of an issue with youtube anymore and its very minimalist.
I'd normally have VLC or the Gnome preloaded Rhythmbox running in the background with no complaints on an 6GB E-350 APU laptop with a 60GB ssd. What are the specs for your laptop? What other types of programs do normally use on Windows?
Foobar and i believe spotify are have WINE/PlayonLinux support. Haven't really tried them out on linux because I use Fedora which has RhythmBox installed by default and I'm perfectly happy with it. You could Also look into Piano-bar with is a Pandora client you play through your terminal. I has unlimited skips and is ad free, I use that a lot.
Install Amarok for music
I find VLC is not as good as MPC-HC in colour saturation and reproduction, I even started a thread on the differences I saw in the media subsection, but will VLC is useful to have as a backup.
I'll check out Rythmbox.
The laptop will primarily be used for general media consumption and office work.
What I currently use and will plan to use on Linux is as follows
Use:Windows:Linux
OS: Windows 10: Elementary OS
Web: Chrome : Chrome or possibly Chromium
Office: Microsoft Office : LibreOffice
Audio Local: Foobar2000 : ?
Audio Streaming: Spotify Premium: ? (possibly online player)
Video: MPC-HC: ?
Video Backup: VLC: VLC
Comic Reading: ComicRack: ?
Torrent Client: BitLord: Deluge
My main desktop PC has to run Windows as I require Solidworks and basic CFD software for my studies/work. I also game on said desktop as it has the horses to run the more demanding titles.
Laptop Specs
Dell Inspiron 5520
i7-3612QM 2.1 GHz
8GB Ram
1TB Hard Drive, but may later install an SSD
id just like to take a moment to point out that we have built a very large list of linux software in the forum post here
https://forum.teksyndicate.com/t/linux-software-list/77465
+1. And spotify is available for linux.
Nothing google cant solve <3
Although I have found a great problem in my current Arch install... I said Fit to making a user and have been doing everything as root and makepkg refuses to run under root cause aparently it can destroy everything. Welp.
Linux messages can be scary ;)
(Saying that UNIX messages were better. Those things abused the hell outa you)
It's even scarier when you realize you fucked up and the system even warned you about it. :D
Nooow...
Should I bother reconfiguring my entire system so I can use AUR packages or nahhhhh? :D
What do you need to reconfigure? To install AUR packages you just need base-devel (pacman -S --needed base-devel), you don't need an aur helper.
I dont have a user and Ive spent a long time making root have beautiful i3 config and sound and such
You cant run makepkg (needed for AUR) as root
anyway Ive copied most of my configs to a new user and they kinda work so its all good <3
Deluge is great in my opinion.
VLC is underrated. it's really feature packed if you have time to go through some documentation.
Comics can be read by various programs as they are just zip/rar/7z containers. This should work out the box.
I don't think it's underrated, as it's the go to video player for the vast majority of people I know, and was for myself until recently dethroned (see thread mentioned earlier.) However, I actually use VLC all the time to watch YouTube videos at half screen size and I also use it as my main podcast client. The quality of video just isn't as good as MPC-HC and I'd like something that's on par with that.
That was exactly what I was looking for, thank you!
There is a Spotify application available for Linux. Btw
sudo apt-add-repository -y "deb http://repository.spotify.com stable non-free" &&
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys D2C19886 &&
sudo apt-get update -qq &&
sudo apt-get install spotify-client
mpc is open source so technically it's available on linux but I couldn't build it too many deps
foobar your frelled
isn't spotify available in browser?