Why Banshee should be default in 2 screenshots...

Rhythmbox has a poor interface, while Banshee has a much cleaner one. The only lacking from Banshee is the Jamendo store and visualizations, aside from those, the rest is better done in Banshee (using Dust as default would be great too).

How Rhythmbox looks and behave by default:

[[IMG]http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/8658/rhythmboxus7.th.jpg[/IMG]](http://img510.imageshack.us/my.php?image=rhythmboxus7.jpg)

How Banshee looks (with the album cover using the whole browser space, which could be a very sane default):

[[IMG]http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/2315/bansheezh4.th.jpg[/IMG]](http://img178.imageshack.us/my.php?image=bansheezh4.jpg)

And the Banshee window is a hell lot smaller...

Plus, Banshee supports videos too.

That would never happen. Compared to Rhythmbox, Banshee is a lot buggier. It also uses Mono, which a lot of people would cry over.

While the Banshee layout looks cleaner, it appears from that screenshot that you can only choose the album, whereas in the screenshot of Rhythmbox, it appears that you can easily change artists and albums.

Using upstream defaults is usually preferred, but I would support this change. Mono is already included in Ubuntu, so it's not like you are bringing in a bunch of new libraries. Music players are such a personal preference though, so even though you and I like Banshee, you would find many that would support Quod Libet, Rhythmbox, Exaile and Songbird, so it's tough to truly argue that one is objectively better than the others.

Banshee needs sorting by genre for the panels.

You can see artists, but I don't like it:

[[IMG]http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/73/banshee1eo1.th.jpg[/IMG]](http://img244.imageshack.us/my.php?image=banshee1eo1.jpg)

F-Spot is a mono application, those against mono are just trolls. Buggier? Well, Rhythmbox is less stable here. And Banshee support videos too btw.

Got to include something. At least RB doesn't pull in too much. 99% of people are going to change anyway.

I must be the only person on the planet who doesn't look at their music player. Album art I could care less about; I'm listening to my music, not glued to the screen ogling album art.

Same goes for a prettier layout. Make it stable first, pretty second. Not that RB couldn't use a little makeover, but dear gawd it's rock-solid stable for me.

Sorting though, is a good thing. I like how ugly little RB can sort by, well... Pretty much anything I want it to!

Ehem, if you don't like cover arts fine. But a sane default is not what you like most, is what people usually find more comfortable and easy to use.

Plus, ugly rhythmbox doesn't add any true functionality banshee doesn't, at least any I'm aware off, nor it has something that makes browsing my music easier.

It's just... more ugly and clutter.

LuisAugusto said: Ehem, if you don't like cover arts fine. But a sane default is not what you like most, is what people usually find more comfortable and easy to use.

Plus, ugly rhythmbox doesn't add any true functionality banshee doesn't, at least any I'm aware off, nor it has something that makes browsing my music easier.

It's just... more ugly and clutter.

Banshee doesnt have half as many customized panels as RB. IE, the only thing I want, genre panels

Why banshee should become the new music player: It's slow, buggy, and breaks everything :)

um... well I have would like to like banshee but it doesn't automatically jump to the current playing song, is slow when searching and crashes when I play some videos :( Rhythmbox on the other hand is very stable and when searching results appear instantly even with my huge music collection.

If banshee could preform better for me I would be all for the switch.

I find banshee buggy.

Rhythmbox is very stable for me. Never once its done something out of the ordinary, nor crash.

I do like the look of banshee and would prefer it to rhythmbox but it still needs a lot of work, it's really slow for me and crashes quite often. Also the video library needs a lot of work or removing, looks really messy as you have artist, album and title columns. Rhythmbox may look crap but it never crashes and is really fast so shouldn't be replaced (although a complete makeover would be nice)

LuisAugusto said: But a sane default is not what you like most, is what people usually find more comfortable and easy to use..

If you apply the same logic, which happens to be quite good, then your suggestion of Banshee becomes the one that doesn't fit the criteria for a sane default. This is especially the case because of Rhythmbox's status as the Gnome default.

Songbird? Anyone?

shadowdude1794 said: Songbird? Anyone?

Maybe in a couple years...

Um, does Songbird exist? The webpage (songbird.com) doesn't appear to work, and I never heard that it ever hit 1.0.

I'm an Amarok man myself. Although, I will never ever stop loving Audacious.

SomeGuyDude said: Um, does Songbird exist? The webpage (songbird.com) doesn't appear to work, and I never heard that it ever hit 1.0.

Yes, and it they just released version 1.0 not too long ago.

Personally, I'd use Amarok 1.4 if I could figure out how to change the theme of KDE 3 applications in Intrepid.

For now, Rhythmbox is fine with me.

The Rythmbox screenshot not only looks better to me, but also looks more functional.

First of all, the main song panel in RB has many more columns. It's likely that you can add more columns in banshee, but then that panel would look really cluttered (which is probably why you didn't add them).

Also, the art in the album list makes the list less useful as it can't display as many entries at once. Another thing to remember is that many people have a music library with few album covers. A quick look over my music library shows that 4 out of 5 albums have no art.

Banshee also doesn't seem to have a quick method for refining your search results the way rythmbox does.

bikeboy said: If you apply the same logic, which happens to be quite good, then your suggestion of Banshee becomes the one that doesn't fit the criteria for a sane default. This is especially the case because of Rhythmbox's status as the Gnome default.

GNOME default =/= What the user find more comfortable and easier.

---------------------------

Rhythmbox has more customizable panels, great, you could install it, but for most people banshee is better.

Banshee it's more stable than Rhythmbox, at least in my installation, it's super fast on searching, I mean it's instantaneous.

Ctrl + J jumps to the playing song.

LuisAugusto said: Rhythmbox has more customizable panels, great, you could install it, but for most people banshee is better.

Do you have ANY proof that "most people" think banshee is better?

Your entire premise here is "everyone likes banshee so it should be default" but you're just discarding every time someone contradicts you.

SomeGuyDude said: Do you have ANY proof that "most people" think banshee is better?

Your entire premise here is "everyone likes banshee so it should be default" but you're just discarding every time someone contradicts you.

Yes, I did the "girlfriend, father, mother, friends test". Which is more accurate than the "geek test".

geoken said: Also, the art in the album list makes the list less useful as it can't display as many entries at once. Another thing to remember is that many people have a music library with few album covers. A quick look over my music library shows that 4 out of 5 albums have no art.

Yeah, sure, the visual feedback from the cover art is not useful...

LuisAugusto said: Yes, I did the "girlfriend, father, mother, friends test". Which is more accurate than the "geek test".

And they based it on, what, taking a look at it for a minute and a half? Boy, that's a great test. Next let's decide what OS to use after a 30 second YouTube promo!

The best decision happens when people have used the pair for extended periods of time. Banshee LOOKS nice, but there are reasons GNOME has yet to include it by default. Unless you think for no good reason the GNOME project enjoys using inferior software.

This would make mono people cry and moan.

I've tried Amarok, Exaile, RhythmBox and Songbird. Right now I'm using RhythmBox, and I don't see why everyone dislikes it so much. It plays music, it scrobbles to last.fm, it minimizes to tary, and you can listen by genre, artist, or album.

Seems good to me. ;o

LuisAugusto said:

Yeah, sure, the visual feedback from the cover art is not useful...

It isn't. To re-iterate, many people have music libraries with a 4:1 ratio of albums with no artwork. Even if they did have artwork, are you saying you remember how the album art looks for your hundreds (if not thousands) of albums?

Can someone point out the specific aspects of rythmbox that are ugly compared to banshee?

To me the apps are almost indescribable from each other. I don't think one looks better or worse than the other, unless you're talking about clutter in which case banshee looks far worse when you try to squeeze out the amount of info rhythmbox can fit in it's UI.

[IMG]http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y169/geoken/b2b.jpg[/IMG]

Firstly, please note that the OP's Banshee screenshot is not the default UI.

This is:

[img]http://download.banshee-project.org/shots/1.4.1/android-purchased-music.png[/img]

Banshee's UI is highly customizable - for some this is a plus.

My understanding is that the desktop team will not consider replacing one app with another app unless it has at least the same functionality. There are two issues with Banshee - one minor, one major.

Minor issue: Banshee does not support serving music over a network. Rhythmbox supports serving music via DAAP (iTunes sharing server)

Major issue: Banshee uses a large number of custom widgets for its interface which cannot be enhanced by accessibility features such as high-contrast themes, screen readers, etc.

I'd encourage the desktop team to frequently reassess the default application selection - e.g. Rhythmbox versus Banshee versus Quod Libet etc etc etc. But for now, I think Rhythmbox is the right "good enough" choice as a default - even though I use Banshee myself

SomeGuyDude said: And they based it on, what, taking a look at it for a minute and a half? Boy, that's a great test. Next let's decide what OS to use after a 30 second YouTube promo!

The best decision happens when people have used the pair for extended periods of time. Banshee LOOKS nice, but there are reasons GNOME has yet to include it by default. Unless you think for no good reason the GNOME project enjoys using inferior software.

Stop assuming things, my close family use Ubuntu, some of my friends too.

*Banshee downloads the cover arts automatically. *I know it isn't the default GUI, when did I say that? Plus, the one you showed is for media devices... *Actually, images from cover arts are easy to remember, and easy to browse, since they are easier to understand for the brain (one image is whole component, a word requires more processing).

Youtube messed with the quality. But meh: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDkgH-HKskc

LuisAugusto said:

*Banshee downloads the cover arts automatically. *I know it isn't the default GUI, when did I say that? *Actually, images from cover arts are easy to remember, and easy to browse, since they are easier to understand for the brain (one image is whole component, a word requires more processing).

Every app downloads the cover art automatically. That doesn't really help you when you listen to genres that are single based (ie. D'n'B).

Also, what does the album cover for The Doors-Waiting for the Sun look like. When browsing for it do you think it's easier to look through every single thumbnail until you find the one for the album that looks extremely similar to at least 6 other doors albums and has even been re-used in at least on of the greatest hits albums or is it easier to simply scroll down to "W" (or search it)?

[not serious]No way! This will bring the wrath of M$ to us and make us all die! I would rather use a PIG to play music than Banshee[/not serious]

That was for those who hate mono. Anyway, I don't' think that the default should be changed. Mono takes up more memory than Rhythmbox. Also, I find Rhythmbox to be overall better FOR ME than banshee. Unless theres a very good argument for Banshee (right now theres not, you basically got most of the same features, nothing really that is implimented in Banshee that isn't in Rhythmbox), it shouldn't be the default.

One thing: no automated library scanning.

For the interested:

Idle RAM consumption, 2686-track library, Ubuntu 8.10 64-bit, numbers from gnome-system-monitor: Banshee 1.4.1: 47.5 MiB Exaile 0.2.13: 53.4 MiB Quodlibet 1.0: 45.1 MiB Rhythmbox 0.11.6svn20081008: 30.1 MiB Songbird 1.0: 64.1 MiB

Whilst Rhythmbox is the most lightweight, it certainly doesn't seem to be the case that being CLI-based hurts Banshee compared to Exaile (Python) or Songbird (C++/XUL)

geoken said: Every app downloads the cover art automatically. That doesn't really help you when you listen to genres that are single based (ie. D'n'B).

Also, what does the album cover for The Doors-Waiting for the Sun look like. When browsing for it do you think it's easier to look through every single thumbnail until you find the one for the album that looks extremely similar to at least 6 other doors albums and has even been re-used in at least on of the greatest hits albums or is it easier to simply scroll down to "W" (or search it)?

You still have the name of the album... The sun with doors will make you bypassed the other albums... you would only read those that are the same.

smartboyathome said: [not serious]You basically got most of the same features, nothing really that is implimented in Banshee that isn't in Rhythmbox), it shouldn't be the default.

Oh, Rhythmbox plays videos?... Not to mention that the main thing here is the crappy Rhythmbox interface.

bruce89 said: One thing: no automated library scanning.

[[IMG]http://img234.imageshack.us/img234/3359/banshee2kl9.th.jpg[/IMG]](http://img234.imageshack.us/my.php?image=banshee2kl9.jpg)

LuisAugusto said: Oh, Rhythmbox plays videos?...

Not to mention that the main thing here is the crappy Rhythmbox interface.

You aren't proposing replacing Totem as well, though, so that is irrelivent. If you were proposing it to replace both Totem and Rhythmbox, I would still say no, as VLC or MPlayer are much better replacements.

LuisAugusto said: [[IMG]http://img234.imageshack.us/img234/3359/banshee2kl9.th.jpg[/IMG]](http://img234.imageshack.us/my.php?image=banshee2kl9.jpg)

Did you see he said Automated? That means it scans your music library for updates each time it changes. You have to manually do it now, in Rhythmbox you don't.

smartboyathome said: You aren't proposing replacing Totem as well, though, so that is irrelivent. If you were proposing it to replace both Totem and Rhythmbox, I would still say no, as VLC or MPlayer are much better replacements.

VLC is Qt, they won't put a Qt application in the default Ubuntu installation. MPlayer lacks a decent GUI implementation, plus, Banshee is the only one that actually has a library. That said, I didn't propose that.

smartboyathome said: Did you see he said Automated? That means it scans your music library for updates each time it changes. You have to manually do it now, in Rhythmbox you don't.

1 click doesn't seem deadly, and, it's irrelevant, by the time 9.04 is released banshee will be able to scaning it automatically.

SomeGuyDude said: Um, does Songbird exist? The webpage (songbird.com) doesn't appear to work, and I never heard that it ever hit 1.0.

Let's try http://getsongbird.com/ and go from there. If iTunes is your thing, and it's not mine, Songbird is fine I guess.

Songbird should be in the repos, but as default is completely out of the discussion (XUL, cluttered, non-integrated interface, etc).

bikeboy said: This is especially the case because of Rhythmbox's status as the Gnome default.

Um no, Rhythmbox os not the GNOME default. There is no default GNOME music player, only a media player (Totem). See the release suites under http://live.gnome.org/TwoPointTwentyfive .

Re Banshee, I kind of like its interface better than RB, but both are not that good imho, they make playing the music you want way to complicated. Banshee has the advantage that it's modular architecture makes developing different interfaces based on the same core possible (see for example the muine clone included with 1.4). The problem with it is that it's horribly slow and gobbles up masses of memory on large libraries, to the point of being unusable. If they can fix that, it might be a good idea.

Benshees video-playing seems pretty useless though.

LuisAugusto said:

Not to mention that the main thing here is the crappy Rhythmbox interface.

Please, point out the main UI differences that make the app on the left awesome and the app on the right crappy. Most people would be surprised if you told them these are 2 different apps.

[IMG]http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y169/geoken/b2b.jpg[/IMG]

LuisAugusto said: You still have the name of the album... The sun with doors will make you bypassed the other albums... you would only read those that are the same.

You completely missed my point, namely, that it's almost impossible to remember how all your album covers look. This is especially true when we're talking about small thumbnails. Are you expecting me to actually look at the thumbnail and tell if the tiny people pictured are the doors, the beatles, etc, etc? Do you actually think choosing albums by facial recognition on tiny thumbnails is faster than an alphabetically sorted list?

Therion said: I must be the only person on the planet who doesn't look at their music player. Album art I could care less about; I'm listening to my music, not glued to the screen ogling album art.

Exactly, I use totem for all my stuff anyway, not much to look at. Same goes with the default Windows Media Player on Windows, I don't look at the player, so I turn off visualizations and skins, and use the default skin.

geoken said: You completely missed my point, namely, that it's almost impossible to remember how all your album covers look. This is especially true when we're talking about small thumbnails. Are you expecting me to actually look at the thumbnail and tell if the tiny people pictured are the doors, the beatles, etc, etc? Do you actually think choosing albums by facial recognition on tiny thumbnails is faster than an alphabetically sorted list?

Ok, I will add a bug report asking for the remove of all icons from GNOME and KDE, any graphic feature should be replaced by text because it's impossible to remember thousand of icons and others.

------------------

I just ignore your screenshots showcasing both apps with nothing but a crappy theme and no covers, since I could put there any gnome app and it would look similar. That's call trolling, the real life examples are at the first page of this thread, and I bet you saw the difference back then.

Wolki said: Um no, Rhythmbox os not the GNOME default. There is no default GNOME music player, only a media player (Totem). See the release suites under http://live.gnome.org/TwoPointTwentyfive

I see no mention of Totem, RBox or even actual release notes there. http://live.gnome.org/TwoPointTwentyfive/ReleaseNotes

Secondly, what other music player is developed by Gnome devs? http://projects.gnome.org/rhythmbox/

So for these intents and purposes, it's a default.

LuisAugusto said:

That's call trolling

Actually, trolling includes behaviours like repeating the same tired arguments without jutification, not answering questions directed at you, not justifying one's position and demanding others justify *their* position with a greater burden of evidence.

This is the behaviour you're exhibiting, because you're just repeating a subjective position without providing any objective reasoning about *why* the interface is better. A personal opinion is not a reason. As others have pointed out, they're remarkably similar and certain views of the default Banshee actually have the same panel layout as RBox. Others have given reasons for its usability, such as ability to sort quickly using a variety of methods from the default interface.

Album cover browsing might well be a desirable feature, and some people might find that the most efficient browsing method for them. This does not mean other methods are not as valid or that they can't be deemed more efficient by some (evidently many) people.

I just ignore your screenshots showcasing both apps with nothing but a crappy theme and no covers

Stop dismissing other people's evidence, it only weakens your case. Furthermore, stop dismissing other people's evidence but complaining when they counteract or argue against yours. Then you will stop displaying troll behaviours.

So far, you've provided nothing convincing enough to warrant a default app change. The burden of evidence is with you, because you're after a change. Subjective interface differences and quasi-scientific efficiency claims haven't yet satisfied that burden. That's not to mention some of the technical reasons already discussed. If the situation changes, I'm sure a change will be considered and some more substantial discussion points will be available.

Evidence? Unless real case screenshots are less important than those useless ones... I didn't see any arguments. Plus, it isn't subjective. Subjectively I like KDE more, but I'm aware that GNOME is easier and better for new users, since the interface is better designed.

Same here, Rhythmbox may have some little features here and there (pretty minor actually), but Banhsee interface is overall better, easier, less cluttered. And it has features Rhythmbox doesn't aside of those advantages.

I presented a solid argument, while the yours seem to be week, unless your arguments get solid enough there isn't any reason for me to get more deeper. Images are easier to recognize, this is a fact, yet, some argue that album art is useless, they're free to believe it, or dislike them, but then again, it isn't about what you personally like more, is about which has better usability and interface.

Counterpart arguments are based on wrong assumptions:

*Words are more easier for the user to browse than images. *A basely empty screenshot, with a simple plain theme, mixed with no covers represents better the applications (it's useless, since it doesn't represent the actual usage, basic logic people)

LuisAugusto said:

Counterpart arguments are based on wrong assumptions:

*Words are more easier for the user to browse than images. *A basely empty screenshot, with a simple plain theme, mixed with no covers (it's useless, since it doesn't represent the actual usage of the apps)

It represent the usage of the app for me since that's my actual music library and that's the actual theme I use. I tried to bring up the fact that people who listen to less mainstream genres than you will usually have music collections with very few covers, but as usual you ignored that point. Then, when I show you an actual pic you still have some dismissive excuse.

Your trying to make it seem like I specifically tailored the photos to show banshee in the worst possible light. This seems pretty ridiculous considering I'm using my actual music library and my actual theme.

I don't really care if you use your pictures or mine for reference. I though I was doing everyone a favor by posting a simple side by side picture because it's easier than switching between 2 different pics.

LuisAugusto said:

Same here, Rhythmbox may have some little features here and there (pretty minor actually), but Banhsee interface is overall better, easier, less cluttered. And it has features Rhythmbox doesn't aside of those advantages.

So give us some examples. We've been extremely specific with our complaints but all you've been able to do is accuse me of being a troll (because I dared to show a pic of my computer) and respond with completely unspecific claims of Banshee's superior UI.

This thread has ceased to be productive and has degraded into a flamewar. Closed.