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.

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.

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!

What is it ? A badly built clone of something that someone else designed ? (just like vehicles and almost everything else from China) :P

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

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.

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 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.