Winamp with Linux

[dman777]

Ok, I know this question has been asked a zillion times before. But I thought I would ask in the hope of any new recent information. I want to go full on Linux and no Windows. But, my computer is mainly used as a media player. I use Winamp and I use all it's powerfull functions along with many plug ins. I could never cut to Linux only if I can't use Winamp. I have to stay with Winamp...there's no way I would switch to another player. What are my options? I heard of Wine but I am not a big fan of it because I read where I am limited with Winamp features on Wine.

[di1bert]

1. Stick with Windows and Wine
2. Use wine to run Winamp
3. Realise that there are about 10237123981236123 better media players available under Linux
3.0.1 audacious, rhythmbox, amarok, banshee
3.1 Pick one
3.2 Never look back.

Personally I think you should stick with Windows because if you can't live without
something simple like Winamp then Linux in general is going to scare you.

But maybe that's just me...

-m

[sab]

1. Stick with Windows and Wine
2. Use wine to run Winamp
3. Realise that there are about 10237123981236123 better media players available under Linux
3.0.1 audacious, rhythmbox, amarok, banshee
3.1 Pick one
3.2 Never look back.

Personally I think you should stick with Windows because if you can't live without
something simple like Winamp then Linux in general is going to scare you.

But maybe that's just me...

-m

you forgot one, it is actually 10237123981236124!

[hirakendu]

amarok. period. lol .

(that said, then why do you even want to use linux on that machine? that too gentoo . you just want one app - winamp. you can even stick with windows 98 . besides, there are obvious better things an audiophile would do.)

[vegaman]

I wouldn't say winamp is an amazing player.
So IMO you should spend a while learning one of the players on linux, there's a lot of choice.
Otherwise if you absolutely have to use winamp, windows is probably your best choice, media players under wine generally don't perform as you'd like them to.

[Cyker]

Ugh, you can't compare Winamp to AmeroK.
Winamp is better, period - It has more features, more plugins, has a better interface that doesn't demand using up most of your screen and uses less CPU and memory.

XMMS was the closest thing to it, but that's stagnated like Winamp 2 did (I'm sortof hoping it goes through a rebirth like Winamp 5... bypassing the horrible Winamp3-era completely :shock )

Audacious isn't bad but doesn't have anywhere near the features...

*ahem*

But yeah, you should be able to get Winamp working in WINE.
Most of it should be okay, but things like visualizations and some types of video-playback/streaming are very hard/impossible to get working through WINE.
More exotic plugins (e.g. AWEamp and RM-X) won't work because WINE doesn't allow direct hardware access.
But all the audio plugins should work, so you'll get access to that wide range - For instance you have access to decent mod-player plugins and not the shitty mikmod one that almost every linux audio program uses, and also better TMFX, MIDI+SF2, SID decoders than the standard linux libs.

The only caveat is timing issues - Using biig buffers in WINE and your audio-output daemon should help there 'tho. Also, use the WAVout plugin and not dsound for output...

But IMHO, getting WINE working nicely is the harder part

It's worth it 'tho -

There are lots of programs in Windows which have no comparable Linux equivalent - WinMerge, PGP, Winamp, Ultraedit and WinSCP to name some off the top of my head.
There are programs which, superficially do the same (Kompare/Kdiff for Winmerge and Kate for Ultraedit for instance), but in use are vastly inferior to their Windows counterparts... (Kompare/Kdiff don't even come close to the utility of Winmerge, and Kate is more cumbersome and a bit of a resource hog compared to Ultraedit, yet has less features)

[hirakendu]

@ dman77 : actually, i was very tempted to suggest the latest wine (0.9.55), but was just thinking of what sort of audio quality are you after.
i must say i was really really impressed with wine after my yesterday's adventure with wine-0.9.55 in portage. i could flawlessly install steam and play halflife2 and Portal. that is like a dream .

@ cyker : kate vs ultraedit is comparing apples to oranges . emacs, period :p. hmm, never felt there is a dearth of apps in linux that way*. except for games that is :p.
*disclaimer : experiences may widely differ.

[treffer]

But IMHO, getting WINE working nicely is the harder part

Huh? latest wine + winetools + ies4linux. If your app doesn't work afterwards you'll have to wait for an 1.0 wine/reactos

Regarding WinSCP... Are you kidding? You know that any kde app works with "fish://" urls? dolphin or konqueror with fish:// are awesome. And direct remote editing by typing fish://<ip> onto any file-open/file-save dialog is a killer feature. Especially if you like ssh key-exchange (like I do). Out of a sudden any machine feels local... gnome-vfs should do the same for gnome...

Regarding winamp/amarok: I use the moodbar feature a lot. It's not just about eye-candy, it helps to find breaks in songs. Musicbrainz and Last.fm support rock. Especially the "get similar artists from last.fm" feature is killer. Build a good playlist in <30s by navigating through similar artists. Use precomputed BPM's and moodbar colors to sort by sound/speed. That's what I call usefull

[niick]

I've got to mention Aqualung, it looks very similar to Winamp and is the best music player I've used. Give it a try, you can get it from the pro-audio overlay.

Nick

[Cyker]

Oooh, I'll have to give AquaLung a try; Looks promising!

@treffer - I didn't emerge the megs of crap you need for fish:// support; I've never been a big fan of the Windows Explorer Browser-Does-Everything way of doing things, but unless it hacks up the interface I doubt fish:// is even half as capable as gftp, nevermind WinSCP!

(It occurs to me that this usefullness metric depends highly on what you're using it for 'tho; WinSCP would be near-useless for FUSE-style remote-machine-is-local-filesystem SFTP use, but I suspect fish:// would be just as annoying for the kind of stuff I use WinSCP for... Currently the closest app to WinSCP in Linux is Midnight Commander! )

[hirakendu]

@ cyker : c'mon, whether its useful to someone in particular or not, fish:// is got to be one of the coolest things in a browser . and kioslaves in general .

[Belliash]

audacious looks better...

[Cyker]

@ cyker : c'mon, whether its useful to someone in particular or not, fish:// is got to be one of the coolest things in a browser . and kioslaves in general .

Embrace the UNIX philosophy - Everything is a File!

[i92guboj]

Ugh, you can't compare Winamp to AmeroK.
Winamp is better, period - It has more features, more plugins, has a better interface that doesn't demand using up most of your screen and uses less CPU and memory.

Sure. You can't compare it, but for a different reason. The truth is that you don't need the whole screen to use amarok. It has some kind of xmms-like mode. Anyway, since there are taskbars, virtual desktops and the like, that is not what I call an important thing anyway. Think the linux way

XMMS was the closest thing to it, but that's stagnated like Winamp 2 did (I'm sortof hoping it goes through a rebirth like Winamp 5... bypassing the horrible Winamp3-era completely :shock )

Check my signature and my site to get xmms ebuilds. There are also some overlays that ship it.

But all the audio plugins should work, so you'll get access to that wide range - For instance you have access to decent mod-player plugins and not the shitty mikmod one that almost every linux audio program uses, and also better TMFX, MIDI+SF2, SID decoders than the standard linux libs.

I think that there are some alternatives to mikmod, you should really research on that.

There are lots of programs in Windows which have no comparable Linux equivalent - WinMerge, PGP,

I don't know what winmerge is. But about pgp... I think you are missing something.

Ultraedit

If there's something that linux has, it is text editors... Of course, if you are biased and compare it to kate, then you are not seeing the whole scene.

Regarding WinSCP... Are you kidding? You know that any kde app works with "fish://" urls? dolphin or konqueror with fish:// are awesome. And direct remote editing by typing fish://<ip> onto any file-open/file-save dialog is a killer feature. Especially if you like ssh key-exchange (like I do). Out of a sudden any machine feels local... gnome-vfs should do the same for gnome...

Yes. And not knowing how to use this features is no excuse.

Oooh, I'll have to give AquaLung a try; Looks promising!

@treffer - I didn't emerge the megs of crap you need for fish:// support; I've never been a big fan of the Windows Explorer Browser-Does-Everything way of doing things, but unless it hacks up the interface I doubt fish:// is even half as capable as gftp, nevermind WinSCP!

(It occurs to me that this usefullness metric depends highly on what you're using it for 'tho; WinSCP would be near-useless for FUSE-style remote-machine-is-local-filesystem SFTP use, but I suspect fish:// would be just as annoying for the kind of stuff I use WinSCP for... Currently the closest app to WinSCP in Linux is Midnight Commander! )

As you say, you don't need to emerge loads of crap to use ssh on a local-like fashion. You have mc, and you also have sshfs if you want, what, virtually, make completely painless the usage of ssh. That can't compare to winscp or anything. The equivalent in windows would be browsing directly into an ssh machine just like you browse into a zip file from the explorer. So, I can't understand what's that wonderful on winscp.

And this is all completely off-topic, by the way.

@ cyker : c'mon, whether its useful to someone in particular or not, fish:// is got to be one of the coolest things in a browser . and kioslaves in general .

Embrace the UNIX philosophy - Everything is a File!

Yes, and kio-slaves convert remote entities on local files, virtually. I can't see the problem.

[MostAwesomeDude]

There is exactly one Winamp plugin which has no Linux equivalent, and that's Jump to File, which you would not use if the computer is a remotely-accessed jukebox. (Of course, if it's remote access only, just use mpd/ncmpc.)

[codyzapp]

i prefer amarok.. much better than winamp! i remember when everyone used xmms

[bertaboy]

Don't feed the troll!

[BigBrain]

hm... I can't really understand all the people who need thousands of plugins to enjoy their music, under Windows I have a program called SysTrayPlay, which is a small icon in the systray and is perfectly for my needs and under Linux I have Amarok as it can also minimize to "systray" (is it called like that in kde?) but also has a very nice GUI when I use it sometimes.
However, probably it's just me who doesn't care about all these "overpluginned" media players

[i92guboj]

There is exactly one Winamp plugin which has no Linux equivalent, and that's Jump to File, which you would not use if the computer is a remotely-accessed jukebox. (Of course, if it's remote access only, just use mpd/ncmpc.)

What does this plugin exactly do, anyway?

[i92guboj]

Ugh, you can't compare Winamp to AmeroK.
Winamp is better, period - It has more features, more plugins, has a better interface that doesn't demand using up most of your screen and uses less CPU and memory.

Sure. You can't compare it, but for a different reason. The truth is that you don't need the whole screen to use amarok. It has some kind of xmms-like mode. Anyway, since there are taskbars, virtual desktops and the like, that is not what I call an important thing anyway. Think the linux way

By the way, amarok is easily extensible by just inserting scripts. So, you can do anything you want with your player. It is, clearly to my eyes, much more extensible than winamp will never be.

I don't use amarok so much, I am not a big fan of it lately, but to say that winamp is a better product is just a fallacy. It is just my opinion, of course.

http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/Scripts

[bertaboy]

There is exactly one Winamp plugin which has no Linux equivalent, and that's Jump to File, which you would not use if the computer is a remotely-accessed jukebox. (Of course, if it's remote access only, just use mpd/ncmpc.)

What does this plugin exactly do, anyway?

It looks like it's basically a queuing plugin.

As of Winamp 5.02 this plugin has been included as part of the distribution but what is it? What does it do? Is it really any good?

With the Winamp player there is the ability to search through the files in the current playlist and 'jump to that file'. With this plugin it is possible to enqueue the file instead of jumping to the file which is useful if you want to find a song to play but you want to finish listening to the current one that is playing.

However, that is not all that it does...

The plugin has been developed rapidly over the last few months since being started at the end of October 2003 as a proof of concept to it's current state (v0.96ff) with it being included in the Winamp distribution since 5.02 (not bad if i do say so myself).

Due to this level of development, the queuing features added to the jump to file dialog have been extended to other parts of the Winamp player to now include the Playlist Editor (with support eventually to be added to the Media Library once 1.0 has been reached).


With the addition of the Playlist Editor features it is now possible to have a similar style queuing as was possible in the Winamp3 Playlist Editor (alt+click on the playlist item or via a right-click menu) which is a much missed feature going by the posts over in the Winamp forums. And added since v0.94h there has been the ability to view the queue position of a song in the playlist window.

The key aim of the plugin is to allow you to queue you files to play in an order that you specify. With the plugin installed you have two different methods available to you to achieve this (though a third method is being worked on). The two ways are:

* Enqueue...
* This creates a list of files to play through which can be managed/altered as needed (see help for more information)

* Move after current...
* This will place the selected file(s) after the currently playing file with the ability to do this like a consecutive list (though the list mode only works on the Jump to File dialog)

and to be implemented before v1.0...

* Timed Queuing...
* Queue files to play at a given time with the ability to control when they are played at based on various options (such as Day of the Week, on the hour, etc) There will even be the ability to add into the 'timed queue' a 'virtual file' which will allow you to close Winamp and/or the system at a given time.

* a few other useability features

To me, the only "benefits" or features from using this plugin that I don't have from Rhythmbox are the timed queing and "move after current," but I see no reason to require a "move after current" because you can just select a consecutive range of songs and queue those songs at the same time.


Like I said before, I'm finding the initial poster to be a troll. Please don't feed him.

[i92guboj]

Like I said before, I'm finding the initial poster to be a troll. Please don't feed him.

Probably, but there were a number of inaccuracies posted by other people and I felt that it was time to fix them, so this post has at least a bit of useful info on it.

I don't think anyone is feeding the troll, in fact, he only posted the first post, and nothing more.

[MostAwesomeDude]

There is exactly one Winamp plugin which has no Linux equivalent, and that's Jump to File, which you would not use if the computer is a remotely-accessed jukebox. (Of course, if it's remote access only, just use mpd/ncmpc.)

What does this plugin exactly do, anyway?

It is a popup box that allows you to queue any song in the current playlist, another playlist, or the library. Can be popped up globally, and is very fast and responsive, with a text/regex song search. There's nothing with that level of power in Amarok, which is quite sad as it's otherwise excellent.

[i92guboj]

There is exactly one Winamp plugin which has no Linux equivalent, and that's Jump to File, which you would not use if the computer is a remotely-accessed jukebox. (Of course, if it's remote access only, just use mpd/ncmpc.)

What does this plugin exactly do, anyway?

It is a popup box that allows you to queue any song in the current playlist, another playlist, or the library. Can be popped up globally, and is very fast and responsive, with a text/regex song search. There's nothing with that level of power in Amarok, which is quite sad as it's otherwise excellent.

So, it searches for songs and queues them. Almost any player can do this, in one or another form, and many of them might support regex searches as well (though, to tell the truth, I never felt the need to use this feature, even on 40k tracks collections).

Maybe the winamp plugins is fancier, but I doubt it is any more useful. And I also doubt that a seach on winamp is any faster than a search on a mysql backend.