Amarok is now Available for Windows
In my last post about everyone’s preferred music player, I mentioned that I was dying to try out the Linux player Amarok because I’d heard great things about. There’s just one problem: I’m a Windows user.
Luckily, the guys at Amarok have decided to give the Windows users a taste of what this music player is all about. The process of porting Amarok to Windows is well under way and seems to be going quite well.
All their hard work is paying off. They recently released a version of the program for Windows users to take out for a test run. There is one small thing though. You can’t just download the program. You also have to have the KDE installer and all its binaries.
Techbase has posted a full tutorial on how to go about setting up Amarok for Windows. The first thing you do is download and run the KDE installer. This will allow you to run all KDE apps (like Amarok) on your Windows machine. Apart from the installer, you will also need to download some libraries. Otherwise you’ll wind up with ‘missing dlls’ and other similar error messages.
Once you’ve set up KDE on your machine, do a test run to check if it is working properly. Once past this stage, download the Amarok package and run it on your machine. Amarok will be installed and all ready for you to try out.
I’m not quite jumping for joy yet. The KDE installer and its binaries are well over 200 MB to download, which is huge for me since I don’t have a very fast connection. Plus I’m pretty much command-line challenged and I’m a little scared that I’ll screw something up and suffer the wrath of the other folks who use the machine. Basically, I haven’t decided yet. Maybe I’ll give it a shot over the weekend.
Are you going to give Amarok a try? What did you like / not like about it? Linux users, what’s the best and worst thing you’ve noticed about Amarok? Let’s hear your voices in the comments.
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FYI, Amarok has pretty solid iPod support.
I’m using 2.x, but I’m still with the 1.4-was-better camp. I understand the reasons for the major code overhaul, but would like to see the feature set moving forward to match where it was as of the abandonment of 1.4. My collection is >40GB and growing all the time, and it scans & updates quickly and efficiently. Playlists are easy to create and manage, moreso than most other players out there – especially dynamic and random playlists! Scrobbling is seamless. Searching is fast. Internet radio support is good – although it could stand some improvement and IMHO, Gnome’s Rhythmbox is better for that.
Gotta throw in the obligatory distro shout – currently running OpenSUSE 11.2 and KDE 4.4 and loving it. I’ve used most distros at one time or another, and do periodic installs of other distros and desktop environments. Gnome, XFCE, Blackbox, & so on, they’re good but I believe KDE packs more punch; Ubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora, Debian, etc., they’re all pretty solid but SUSE just seems to be ahead of the curve on the KDE side of the fence and requires a lot less tweaking & fine-tuning to get it where you want it.
If you’re curious about Amarok, then I suggest you try a Ubuntu install “inside windows” (wubi). I started out on Linux like that, just out of curiosity, and I ended up so happy with it that it’s my main OS (I’ve got WinXP on another partition for iTunes (I have an iPod) and another app I’m married to :-( .)
If you want to try it out, install Ubuntu 9.10 “inside windows” and then use the Software Centre to install Amarok from the repos. I wouldn’t recommend trying out the full blown KDE Kubuntu, since right now Kubuntu has terrible support and it’s a bit behind the times. Additionally, Ubuntu XSplash is awesome :).
So yeah, try out Linux. At the very least, it will be a learning experience. At the very best, you’ll realize your computer had much more potential than you imagined.
to all the people saying amarok is not good , can anyone tell me a media player that natively
fetches lyrics from the internet
thats why i like amarok
I use amarok 1.4. Honestly Amarok 2 was garbage and the support was even worse.
Amarok, especially the old one, 1.4, works nicely on my Linux machine. The features I like most are last.fm integration and collection organisation. it is decent, powerful and flexible program, I use it and I like it a lot. Can’t really say what the ported version may look like and which pitfalls to expect. yet, I would suggest to give it a try.
Or, for the same reason, why not give Linux a try, also? ;-)
I’m also a home linux user who works in a Windows XP corporate environment and I have to agree with ThePav. VLC is great and I use it for playing video on my Home Theater PC which runs Debian 5.0. I’ve never come across a media file that it can’t play. Amarok is a godsend for managing my 70 gigs of music. My old iPod worked perfectly with it, then with the new version of iPod Apple decided to add a checksum that prevented Amarok from adding songs to it. Way to enable the consumers of your product! Lock them into iTunes which you don’t even bother to make a Linux version of, thanks. Had I known I never would have bought the new iPod. And to the guy above who said iTunes is open source, I think you are confused. It might be free to download but that doesn’t mean it is truly free software, the source code remains proprietary. If I were a Windows user I wouldn’t download KDE for windows I would just switch to Ubuntu or Debian.
thanks for
wow, you’re on crack i you think winamp and windows media beat amarok
Amarok is a great piece of software however for a windows user I would recommend using aTunes for the time being. (also free and open source)
I’m a full time linux user and a full time windows technician, so I reckon I have a good grasp on what’s what in both camps, though I have to admit I do have a preference for quality software that is open to peer review such as what is available through Linux, so I will do my best to be totally impartial with my comments.
I have yet to see amarok take more than a 30 seconds to update my average size collection of music (~40 hours worth non-stop) when running in Linux, never knew it was being ported to the windows platform though. As for all great programs being ported from the original platform to a different system, there will be many teething issues and I think all the negative feedback and issues posted here are not unlike any other alpha, beta or release candidate testing process where the developerss are looking for feedback on symptoms and issues.
When running under Mepis Linux, I have seen none of the issues identified above, though if we are to compare media players, here is my take.
iTunes is a real PITA with every update requiring a full download of everything it has to offer approx every 2-3 weeks. As a player, I find it deprecated due to its strictly proprietary nature, making it less than ideal for much more than a few media types. Apart from those annoyances, I would classify the streaming radio stations available through iTunes to be one of the best around and the classic interface to be one of the most useful.
Windows Media Player was previously a reasonable program, but since it has become riddled with DRM, version 11 has become what I would consider to be the worst and most crippled player I have seen in my many years of working with computers.
Winamp is a mighty fine player, but as I don’t use windows, I can’t give much more feedback than that. I personally do not care for flashy looks, I go for function over form 20 to one, so therein lies my reasoning for winamp.
Realplayer, while useful for certain media types is aweful for its phoning home, so I would use only an alternative version with all the additional rubbish stripped out, other than that, I would have no use for it if I was a windows user. It was a nice-ish player, but for me, it never got off the ground due to the unnecessary bundled extras and largely useless real.com offers.
Unfortunately, the other proprietary players are heading in the same direction, so it’s no wonder that I am no longer a windows user, or an advocate of such a horrendous (ref:vista) system.
VLC is probably the best media player I have seen outright. It has a small footprint and a very simple GUI, but it is not short on features, easily outperforming most, if not all of the other players on the market, and it is truly cross platform. It does not phone home to nark on your usage statistics and it totally disrespects CSS as well as having a streaming server built in, plus it can rip anything you can play to a different format if you know what you are doing.
Having said that, I use amarok as my primary music player. I find its footprint a little bigger than I’d like, but nothing compared to the proprietary windows and mac counterparts. I find amaroks visualisations (if I were to use them) not quite as extensive as those in WMP10, but in some instances, much nicer. I find Amarok able to play more useful audio media format types than WMP and iTunes combined, with the exception of certain protected media, but I would never purchase hobbled music from any provider, so that has never been a problem. It does not fully support the latest ipods, but I prefer Sony’s offering to Apples because Sonys player can be used on any system without the need for proprietary software, and it plays the open source audio formats.
As for size, the player is not 200Mb and it is not a clone of any sort. To say such a thing exposes the ignorance and narrow-mindedness of the poster. Windows media player will not play without windows, a 2.5Gb behemoth, Amarok only requires some libraries from KDE, which once again is not a clone, but a complete working desktop environment that easily outstrips anything I have ever seen for sheer power, flexibility and integration, having features as standard for the last 6 years that are now only just being incorporated, or shall I say “cloned” byt he microsoft developers.
When I had has Linux computer, I used amarok and I loved it to pieces, more than media monkey but with my PC running 30kb/s download, I really don’t like the sound of a 200mb file :/
The Amarok Tech Preview is stone-aged, primitive and incredibly ugly when compared to the beta installed on my Linux box.
But like the guy said, if you’re not going to contribute to it there’s not much point in downloading it at this point. I’m just overjoyed that it works as all, I can’t wait to see the final release!! Hopefully it will look a little prettier (like in real KDE) and support Last.fm (like in real KDE)… et cetera et cetera
Ahhh, 10/10 so far. Jumping up and down with excitement for the final release!
you mean a clone of some over sized, fat application from USA that thinks it’s better than anything else ? :)
ttplayer is good because it comes from China ?
What is it ? A badly built clone of something that someone else designed ? (just like vehicles and almost everything else from China) :P
try ttplayer,made in china!hah!
it’s so good!
http://www.ttplayer.com
Well, only 2 things that I miss since transfer from Win to Lin are XMplay (numero 1 lightweight player) and Foobar2000 (numero 1 player for people that have large collections) and Amarok does pretty good job for replacing the second one (still no player like XMplay:).
Enihu, it perfectly integrates wiki and lyrics,has nice support for playlists and collections (my whole music coll. is scatered across network so this is a big thing for me). Cover manager is worth mentioning (ussualy finds every single cover if tags are ok)….last.fm offcourse :)
Bad is collection update or rescan as mentioned before…takes soooooo long. And eq is quite uselles in comparison to foobar’s for instance.
Another enihu, try it…it’s very good ap. It pushed out my WINE+Foobar after just few days of use:)
salut
I don’t think I’m installing Amarok as of now. I’d prefer to wait until it’s more stable.
@darkkosmos
To be completely honest none of those match amarok.
Anyways im glad to see them port it over sorta. I kinda have mixed feelings about it. Since i use *nix @ work and home i feel its a slight rip. But looks like Windows users will get some quality software.
My favorite feature is all the music organization options – all the different ways to view your collection and the playlist options and such. It’s so easy to use, and does exactly what I need it to.
The worst thing about Amarok, in my opinion, is that I can’t get it to work with my Sansa Rhapsody, and that the tags that it generates never transfer anywhere else. Also, updating the collection takes FOREVER even if I only added one new song. That’s annoying.
Awesome app though. If I were still using Windows, I’d definitely get it.
Amarok is the application that got me hooked on KDE. My favorite features are the last.fm integration (something that I didn’t think I’d like before I tried it) and the library organization. Rather than install KDE on Windows, which is very unpolished at the moment, I suggest that you download a Kubuntu LiveCD and run it from the optical drive or wubi. Note that it will be much slower than a real Linux installation, but it will give you a taste of what you’re missing. Hint: unless you are married to some obscure Window-only application, then you are missing a lot!
We won’t release Amarok final on Windows until it’s easier to install, no worries. Our goal is to be a smaller download than iTunes and that shouldn’t be too hard.
Amarok 2.0 Tech Preview was only intended for folks interested in contributing to Amarok. If you’re not, then don’t bother. It’s old at this point anyways.
Erm.. to be fair winamp, foobar 200 or even windows media player beat amarok