Well, first of all… since we’re moving to a 6 month release cycle, shall we start calling Mint 5.0 “Mint 5”? What do you think?
Rhythmbox made huge progress and the reasons Amarok was chosen by Linux Mint as the default music player could now also apply to it.
It’s simpler to use than Amarok and it integrates better with Gnome. It’s also much smaller and only uses 12.2MB as compared to 144MB for Amarok. Switching to Rhythmbox could free up a lot of space on the CD and let us include more software within the default selection.
The main reason why Amarok was preferred to other players was because it was feature-rich but Rhythmbox seems to catch up and provides the following features:
- Collection with automatic detection
- Ipod support
- Magnatune, Last.fm and Jamendo integration
- CD Player
- Notifications
- Visualizations
- Album artwork and lyrics downloaded from the Internet
- Podcasts
- Play count and rating system
- Dynamic playlists
- Internet radio
It’s not as smart as Amarok and doesn’t come with its intelligent “context” but it provides all the important features you would expect from a rich music player and with a much simpler interface.
By the time we’re finalizing Mint 5, Amarok 2.0 should be out and it might be an entire new story. So we can’t say for sure which player will be there by default in the next release of Linux Mint, but as true as Amarok didn’t have any real alternatives by the past, this is not the case anymore and we’ll keep a close eye on its competitors.