Revisiting Linux Part 1: A Look at Ubuntu 8.04
by Ryan Smith on August 26, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Linux
Applications: Audio Organization/Playback
Windows Default: Windows Media Player
What I use: iTunes/Winamp
Ubuntu Default: Rhythmbox/Totem
There are 3 things people will never agree on in this world: Politics, the Yankees versus the Red Sox, and what multimedia player to use. It doesn’t take much effort to find someone who hates any given player and has their own idea of what the best player is, so looking at the players included with an OS is somewhat academic. No matter what OS it is, a number of users are going to replace the default with something else. So for our discussion on multimedia playback, I’m going to preface this with a thought: the Ubuntu defaults aren’t the only options, there are other programs out there if the defaults aren’t satisfactory.
With that said, when it comes to audio organization and playback Ubuntu comes with two programs: Rhythmbox and Totem. Rhytmbox is Ubuntu’s dedicated audio organization and playback suite – analogous to iTunes – while Totem is a combined audio/video player, similar to VLC or the classic versions of Windows Media Player. In spite of the fact that Rhythmbox is the dedicated audio suite, I mention both of these since Ubuntu will in fact use both. Attempting to open an audio file from the file browser will default to Totem, while Ubuntu’s application menu calls Totem “Movie Player”, leaving the “Music Player” distinction to Rhythmbox. As a result Ubuntu is a bit schizophrenic about its audio software – it’s inconsistent throughout the OS.
Since Totem is an audio/video player, we’ll save it for our Video section and focus on Rhythmbox. As I mentioned previously, Rhythmbox is analogous to iTunes; even the manual specifically mentioned that the program was “originally inspired by Apple’s iTunes.” In fact there’s not a lot to be said about Rhythmbox: it looks mostly like iTunes, it acts mostly like iTunes, and it does most of what iTunes does. Consider it iTunes-lite, and that’s Rhythmbox in a nutshell.
As iTunes-lite, Rhythmbox holds both the benefits and the downsides to such a design. Monumental among these are the fact that Rhythmbox isn’t nearly as bloated as iTunes can be. Rhythmbox gives you the basic iTunes experience while eating less than half the memory and loading in less than half the time it takes for iTunes to load. iTunes may have a lot of features, but you’re paying for them somewhere. For most people, the complete iTunes feature set is overkill and they would be better served by lighter program like Rhythmbox.
The price of that lightness however is the feature set that Rhythmbox doesn’t implement. Among other things it lacks its own ability to extra audio from CDs, instead relying on another Ubuntu program, Audio CD Extractor (Sound Juicer) to accomplish this. Similarly, it lacks the ability to quickly encode existing songs in to another format. Last, for purchasing music it doesn’t have access to a full-featured store – the included interfaces are for Magnatune and Jamendo, which are best described as indie stores. Purchasers looking for mainstream music would be limited to Amazon’s store, which has a proper web interface and may be a curse or a blessing depending on how much you like the iTunes Music Store being integrated in to iTunes.
Rhythmbox does have the ability to synchronize music with portable media players, however since Apple actively blocks their iPhoneOS based devices from syncing with anything besides iTunes, Rhythmbox can’t actually sync with the portable media players most people have. This meant that I was unable to sync my iPhone with Rhythmbox, and had to dual boot instead. We don’t have a legacy iPod on hand, but it sounds like the latest Classic/Nano models won’t work either. Users with legacy iPods would need to seek out something like GTKPod, which is designed specifically for iPod synchronization and should do the job.
Ultimately the usefulness of Rhythmbox depends on how well you know iTunes and how many of its deeper features you use. For basic music organization and playback it does just fine – you may as well be using iTunes. But power users will probably be unsatisfied. Meanwhile Windows Media Player users will find it a tossup; it still has fewer features than WMP, but WMP has always needed to take a hint or two from iTunes when it comes to layout.
Final Verdict: Satisfactory/Only Meets Some of My Needs
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
195 Comments
View All Comments
Eeqmcsq - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
for your time spent on writing this article. I've made the jump to from Windows to Ubuntu (and Xubuntu for my older computers) back around 7.10 and 8.04 and I went through some of the headaches in adjusting to Ubuntu, but I eventually solved all of them and I'm quite settled in now.One comment about finding help in the form of command line instructions, rather than GUI instructions. GUI instructions for Ubuntu would not be useful for Kubuntu or Xubuntu, since they use different window managers. The command line solutions usually work for all three.
Also, boot times were noticeably improved in 9.04. Perhaps you can run a quick retest on it.
And you CAN install stuff when using the live CD. I've installed a couple of temperature monitoring utilities when I was stress testing my motherboard.
Finally, thanks again for writing such a thorough look into your Ubuntu experiences. It was a great read in seeing how far Ubuntu has come and what it still lacks.
fepple - Thursday, August 27, 2009 - link
Yeah, you can set the APT sources to use a CD. There is an option for it 'system' > 'administor' > 'software source', or you can edit the /etc/apt/sources.list fileclarkn0va - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
[quote]since SMB is the predominant protocol for consumer file server gear, it’s a fair test of such use.[/quote]While this comment is not false, it presents a lazy approach to comparison; it's a one-sided contest, and Linux, pitted against Windows on home turf, doesn't stand much of a chance.
You as much as acknowledge this in the article, so why not provide some counterpoint? For example, consumer file server gear, even if it supports SMB almost ubiquitously, is usually *nix-based. So instead of just showing Windows and Linux clients interacting with Windows servers, show them interacting with *nix servers as well. Do some NFS transfers as well; NFS is well supported in consumer NAS these days.
You also really missed the boat on the video drivers. 8.04 was not the first Ubuntu release to include the Restricted Drivers Manager (known simply as "Hardware Drivers" in later releases). This handy app will identify hardware, such as AMD and NVIDIA GPUs, that can take advantage of proprietary drivers, and will offer to to install the same via synaptic (APT) with just a click of the mouse. No CLI, no headaches.
Still, a thorough review, and generally well-researched. I'm looking forward to the 9.04 follow-up.
Since you mentioned hardware HD decoding, I recommend taking a look at smplayer from the testing ppa (https://launchpad.net/~rvm/+archive/testing)">https://launchpad.net/~rvm/+archive/testing). Unfortunately vdpau doesn't work with the nvidia blobs in the default Ubuntu repos, but I believe there's a PPA providing vdpau-compatible blobs for anybody not wanting to do CLI installs.
db
VaultDweller - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
[quote]While this comment is not false, it presents a lazy approach to comparison; it's a one-sided contest, and Linux, pitted against Windows on home turf, doesn't stand much of a chance. [/quote]This isn't Linux pitted against Windows on home turf, it's Linux pitted against Windows in the real world.
clarkn0va - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
Well, no doubt SMB is the dominant method of sharing files for consumers in general. Obviously comparing Linux to Windows makes sense in a world where Windows is the incumbent, but it's not the whole story.I hope Part 2 will address some of the objective benefits of Ubuntu, and not fall into the trap of "worse because it's not the same as Windows".
VaultDweller - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
I agree in principle, but there has to be a distinction between "Worse because it's not compatible with Windows," "Worse because it's not as easy as Windows," and "Worse because it's not the same as Windows." Die-hard *nix advocates tend to dismiss the first two as if they were the latter, and this tends to undermine their argument.Also, in some cases "Worse because it's not the same as Windows" can be a valid point, because the public has been trained to the point that the Windows way is the "intuitive" way. Of course, this isn't truly intuitive, as people who learned Linux first would find Linux methodologies more intuitive - but that's largely a moot point, as that's not the reality we live in today. You could say the same thing about the color red - in the western world, when we see red we can intuitively guess that it means Stop, or Warning, or Error, etc. The fact that this is not an understanding we're born with but rather a socially acquired intuition does not mean it would be any easier to suddenly change the color of traffic lights and expect people to adjust without problems.
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
All of the NAS gear I can get my hands on is either SMB only, or is a Time Capsule which is SMB + AFP. I don't have anything that does NFS, which isn't so much a comment on testing (I could always set up another box) as it is usefulness. NFS just isn't common on consumer gear; SMB is a more important metric if you're looking at file transfer performance, because that's what most people are going to be working with. This doesn't preclude doing NFS at a later time though.And the Restricted Drivers Manager is limited to the drivers in the Hardy repository, which means they're a year+ out of date.
amrs - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
Interestingly, if one checks the SmallNetBuilder NAS charts, it looks like out of 87 NAS devices, 49 have NFS. 56% in other words. And you say NFS isn't common? Really now? Seems a little biased to me.ekul - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
While a lot of your issues have complicated solutions or lengthy technical backstories I can solve your complaint of smb shares mounted in nautilus not being useful in non-gtk applications in one simple command (or as you seem to hate commands the gui can do it too).theory: make a symlink to the directory nautilus mounts to so it can be easily accessed. Symlinks to directories or files are transparently (to users and applications) identical to the location they refer to. Windows doesn't have symlinks (only useless shortcuts) so it isn't surprising you were not aware to do it.
howto: gvfs uses the directory /home/$USER/.gvfs as a mount point so link to it:
ln -s ~/.gvfs ~/linkname
howto gui: in nautilus go to your home folder then choose view -> show hidden files. Right click on .gvfs and choose make link. Then you can rename the link to whatever you want and hide hidden files again.
hint: symlinks are your best friend. My home dir is littered with links to places on the filesystem I visit a lot to avoid a lot of clicking/typing
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
I suddenly feel very humiliated...The symlink is a very elegant solution, I'm embarrassed I didn't think of that myself. It's a bit of a lousy solution in that there even needs to be a solution, but as far as things go that's a very insightful suggestion.