Pdaxrom Needs A Better Music Player!

[ltrm]

One thing that I really miss from the Cacko Rom is the Sharp music player.  I really prefer the iPod-ish database style interface and I was wondering if we could get something similar on pdaXrom.

The two candidates I was looking at were Rhythmbox and AmaroK.  Basically I'm looking for a player which will let me find music by artist, album, genre, etc. Oh and it needs to do a decent job of running full screen rather that as a tiny little window.  

Does anyone have experience of either of these two (I don't have access to a big Linux box at the moment to try them myself) or any other player which might be suitable.

Also, I would be interested in opinions on how much work they would be to port (something I'm fairly new to)?   I think at the moment that Rhythmbox would be easier (need to port GStreamer too) but I'd appreciate any comment.

(Once I get an mp3 player sorted out then I only need to persuade Maslovsky to port Kino2 and everything will be peachy   )

[Hrw]

Heh.. I could write something about rhythmbox (music) and totem (video using xine) availability but Laze does not like when I'm writing about one distro so I would not write its name.

[Quickfry]

Rhythmbox has stability issues. But when it works, it's great.

[stuffman]

Xmms seems to be nice enough for me, but come to think of it, something along the lines of AmaroK would be quite nice (especially with a custom skin for our Zauruses).

Now time to go off topic and ranty:

Hrw - WTF? There's a reason we have separate sections for different ROMs here- and that reason is to discuss the going-ons and whatnot of that specific ROM. There is no reason to go around and brag about how great OZ is- we are all free to choose whatever ROM we want, and we don't need advertisments (read: pointless flames) to make our decision. If we are true Zaurus lovers, we would check out the progress of the different ROMs, and choose on what best suits our needs. It is the responsibility or the ROM's developers to promote the features of the ROM, whether it is via the ROMs website or the corresponding forum here on OESF. Sure, some people will be stubborn and side with one ROM and one ROM only (just like the Chevy vs. Ford vs. Dodge guys here in the U.S.), but those people are missing out.
The great thing about open-source and community-developed software is that that the numerous choices breed continuous innovation and progress- take a look at KDE vs. Gnome; do you think either would have progressed as far if they didn't continue to improve their features to attract more users? Zaurus users are not a dumb herd, in fact, we were all smart enough to realize the advantage of spending a few extra bucks for a product with essentially zero customer support outside of Japan. It is therefore not unreasonable to assume that we'd be smart enough to research what ROM best suits our needs, and make our decisions based on that. Frankly, I didn't think that pdaXrom was all that usable until about 9 months ago. I still try out every new rom release, whether it be Cacko, pdaXrom, or one of the OZ versions. If and when I think OZ becomes the proper choice for me, I will switch on my own free will, and not because of braggadocio posts made for the pure intention of inciting. Competition is great, as I said, but it's not asking too much to play fair. If I want information on OZ, I'll look it up.
I can understand the want to advertise and share information regarding the OZ project, but posting flames in every pdaXrom discussion is not the way to do it. It is immature and inappropriate to do it in the manner you are going about doing it (and quite annoying). That said, I don't think it would be a bad idea to set up a page comparing the various ROMs and highlighting features, so long as it is unbiased. As long as we all act like adults (*ahem*), this could be a good source of information for those not willing to wade through pages of Forum posts.

But yeah, AmaroK would be cool.

[scheck.r]

Hrw - WTF? There's a reason we have separate sections for different ROMs here- and that reason is to discuss the going-ons and whatnot of that specific ROM. There is no reason to go around and brag about how great OZ is- we are all free to choose whatever ROM we want, and we don't need advertisments (read: pointless flames) to make our decision.

I agree, it's becoming real annoying

[JohnX]

You might be interested in the music player daemon and the glurp or gmpc client for it.  They don't seem to have terribly large memory requirements, low processor requirements, use mad for decoding mp3 and I don't think they depend on much more than a couple audio libs and gtk. Also, I have it on good authority that they run on ARM.  Coolest part is if you're really short for memory you can kill the client process and the music keeps going on in the background.  

[Meanie]

Hrw - WTF? There's a reason we have separate sections for different ROMs here- and that reason is to discuss the going-ons and whatnot of that specific ROM. There is no reason to go around and brag about how great OZ is- we are all free to choose whatever ROM we want, and we don't need advertisments (read: pointless flames) to make our decision.

I agree, it's becoming real annoying
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I don't see where your problem is and why you all need to be so confrontational. All he has done is share with us what is available in his distro which is actually a good thing because if we like the particular features he is pointing out, we can go and 'borrow' the code and port/recompile it for pdaXrom or any distro that we like.  Just look at it from the positive side and either benefit from it or just ignore it if you dont like it.

[Cresho]

There is no reason to go around and brag about how great OZ is- we are all free to choose whatever ROM we want, and we don't need advertisments (read: pointless flames) to make our decision. If we are true Zaurus lovers, we would check out the progress of the different ROMs, and choose on what best suits our needs.
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You are absolutely right.  I for one stick with the sharprom since it works great with some programs i need and is also not available for the pdaxrom.  I flash newer versions of pdaxrom just to see what has been added or become of it.

[stuffman]

Sorry if seemed a bit rash there, but Hrw continually posts those sort of comments even though he's been told not to (for intance, this post from just yesterday). I have absolutely nothing against him personally- he's done some great work for us Zaurus users that I greaty appreciate. We pdaXrom users should also remember to check the other forums to see if similar projects have been attempted in the past on other ROMs, which could prevent a lot of duplicate work from being done.

I guess the way I see it is that Hrw is basically saying, "I have what you want" rather than saying, "I have what you want, and can show you how to get it." I would not be upset at all if he had said, "Rhythmbox and Totem are running on OZ, and here's the code if you'd like to take a look at it and get it working." As a community, even if we are competitive, we should be helping eachother out instead of bragging.


Enough of that... back to the real issue. If I have some free time this weekend, I'll see how plausable it'd be to build AmaroK. It seems like a fairly heavy app, and I'm not sure what we have can meet all its dependencies (I'm sure it wants a lot of the KDE libraries), but it's worth a look.

[adf]

good luck. If it works  that'd..umm...rok

[pgas]

There is beep media player :

https://www.oesf.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=17062

but I guess the interface is too close to xmms.

An important thing to check is if the players can use mad (for mp3) or tremor (for ogg) (or any other decoder using integers only) because you'll get close to 100% cpu usage with a decoder using floating points.

[adf]

why not  try an mplayer front end?  we alredy have a good media player in mplayer rather than putting more stuff on the z entirely wouldn't a  a  better interface to mplayer solve more problems?

Has anyone tried using (compiling in) the standard mplayer gui? are there other options?

[Hrw]

ok - I'll stop

[ScottYelich]

off topic:

Actually, hrw -- I would *love* to see a chart with the roms and the advantages and disavantages of each -- on that's kept up to date.  In that format, I wouldn't mind if
everything was compared to OZ.  These have been attempted in the past, but they
were either poorly done, not complete or not maintained.

back on topic:

For me, I like to have mp3s playing while I do something else -- ie: code ...
I tend to want to use the zaurus when I travel -- and I remember the last
time I flew 8+ hours and attempted to use the zaurus (pdxv?) -- it would
go to sleep every 15-20 minutes (3-4 songs) and that silence would jolt
me awake... so my experience flying was from the 2nd or 3rd hour until
the 7th -- getting woken up every 15 minutes.

Yes, I think this has been fixed now.

So, to me, the *screen* interface isn't as important as the basic stuff like
not going to sleep while listening to music -- making the jog wheel do
volume in a sane way.... making the enter/cancel do something like
next/last (in a sane way) -- and, if possible, disabling the off button :->

libmad also helps -- otherwise, the mp3 playback just takes too much
cpu.

When my zaurus is running and I am not travelling, I tend to access it
via ssh and send remote X clients to a larger pc.  This is when I would
like to arrange playlists -- but when I play on the zaurus, I really only
need load playlist, and play.

Scott
ps:  which is why I went to a script to kill the apm, mplayer the mp3...
not much interface there (unless I wanted to have the keyboard open)