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
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Guspaz - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
"Not that it would necessarily be of much use, the last time I saw any statistics for instant messaging network usage, the vast majority of North American users were on AOL’s AIM network."IM use is highly regionalized. As such, AIM is clearly the dominant IM in the USA. However, Canada is dominated by MSN Messenger, and has been for many years (most of us migrated from ICQ to MSN around the release of Windows XP, I believe, due to the bundling of then Windows Messenger).
So, if Canada is dominated by MSN, while I can't speak for Mexico, it's misleading to claim that "the vast majority of North American users". As a Canadian, I can't think of anybody I know in person that uses AIM. They all use MSN or Google Talk without exception.
Aclough - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
For myself, the thing that most bugs me when I have to go back to Windows is all the missing features from the window manager. I've come to rely on having multiple workspaces on my desktop, but I can adjust to having just one fairly easily when I'm not working on a lot of different stuff at once. What really bugs me, though, is how much more effort it takes to move or resize windows in Windows. On Linux I can press ALT and then click anywhere on the window, but with Windows I have to carefully click the title bar or the very edge of the window and that takes a noticeably longer time once you're used to doing things differently.Oh, and I find that the Linux scheduler seems to be noticeably better than the Windows one in preserving responsiveness when the system is under load.
fumacapena - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
Great article!How about some benchmarks of "minimal" distros (like Puppy, Tine Core, ...)??
I like the idea of "ressurect" an old PC, but I would like to see benchmarks in Quad Cores, i7 too!
Anandtech is great, Bench(beta) is awesome!!
(sorry by bad english)
Thanks
InGraphite - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
A few months ago most major trackers unbanned Transmission, but it still doesn't seem to be universally accepted on private trackers.I remember offhand (I could be wrong) that the main gripe was due to the fact it made excessive queries and thus flooded trackers with requests, or had the ability to.
chomlee - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
I think you really need to mention the big picture here.I myself just tried Ubuntu for the first time 2 months ago and although I will admit that I have spent up to 8 hours trying to figure out how to install a specific program (before I found out there was a way to get the package manager to find the install), and I wanted to smash my computer at times. Now that I have learned quite a bit more, I realized that the few things I have installed worked great and flawlessly.
Anyhow back to the big picture. I can understand some of your concerns with how the OS will work with specific programs but what I have found is that most people I know use their computers for 2 things email and web browsing. Most of these people are constantly having problems with the system running too slow and cant seem to get rid of hidden viruses/malware. So I think that those people could easily be much happier with a simple OS like Ubuntu just for email and web browsing (And I would get a heck of alot of less calls from my dad asking my why his computer is running too slow). Lets also not forget that everything is moving to be browser compatible (like you mentioned).
Also, for people like myself, I use my Ubuntu system for a file server as well as a media center (XBMC is Awesome).
So, yes, for burning DVDs/CDs/Playing Games/Microsoft Office, I see no reason why you wouldn't use windows, but I think 95% of the users would be perfectly fine with ubuntu which is something that Mr Bill would not be very happy about when the public realizes this.
Keno - Thursday, August 27, 2009 - link
I think you have missed one small but important part.I am Ubuntu user since 8.04. I came to Linux because of the constant treat of viruses.
Last month I have installed 7 and it is very user friendly and I think it is very user frinedly but after Avira Antivir got crashed by virus I installed Kaspersky INternet security 2010. then it took almost twice as long to boot. Then I gladly returned to Ubuntu 9.04. Because MIcrosoft can not exist without Antivirus I think you should do some real benchmarking and test windows WITH Antivirus.
On Ubuntu I have ClamWin just in case i get some files from Windows users:)
Thanks
ioannis - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
just wanted to point out that you can install software under the LiveCD. Of course it does not install on the hard drive. It remains on a ram-drive, so when you reboot, it's gone. It's still useful, if you wish to test out some package or perform some task with a tool not installed by default on the LiveCDstrikeback03 - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
Even more useful (and not mentioned) is that Ubuntu can easily run off a flash drive, and more recent versions even include a GUI tool for installing it to one. Then all installs and other changes are saved from session to session, and everything runs much more quickly than the LiveCD.Mr Pearce - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
It would be great if you could do more articles on compiler and especially driver performance differences. That was the most interesting part of this article.Ryan Smith - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
This is what Part 2 will look at. I can compile some stuff by hand to see if it closes the Windows/Ubuntu gap, and I have plenty of video cards on hand to test what I can when it comes to graphics.