Linux is often criticized as an offbeat operating system for desktop usage, considering the relatively lower number of users. The tag is completely unnecessary and inappropriate, the number of active Linux users have nothing to do with the operating system being offbeat. Actually, the Linux effort should be lauded keeping in the mind the lack of corporate funding and advertising behind the projects and the stability and security of Linux systems.
Multimedia enthusiasts using Linux also donât need to feel left out. Just like other operating systems like Windows or Mac OS X, Linux also have a handful of pretty wonderful audio players available. Letâs take a look at the prime 10 of them here.
1. Amarok
The granddaddy of all audio players in Linux, Amarok has a strong user base, rock solid stability and fantastic development behind it. It is to be noted that Amarok is the most popular audio player used in Linux. The program is part of KDE but uses a release cycle that is independent of normal KDE releases. The latest stable version is 2.4.3 which was released on 1st August this year.
Amarok supports a plethora of music files of different formats, including but not limited to MP3, AAC, WAV, WMA, Apple Lossless AAC, FLAC, and Ogg. True to the spirit of open source software, Amarok does not support playing music files having embedded DRM, so the DRMed tracks bought from iTunes etc will be completely unusable. Amarok also supports editing tag files associated with audio files like MP3, AAC, FLAC, Ogg, and WMA etc. It can automatically search Amazon for a particular track and album and download related album art and associate with a music file. Music sync, retrieval, playback and uploading on digital media players are easy and effortless with Amarokâs advanced features. It also boasts of native Last.fm support, allowing users to scrobble their listened tracks and retrieval of similar artists from Last.fm. Podcasting is also possible using Amarok, you can stream or hear to podcasts using the client.
2. XMMS (The X Multimedia System)
XMMS is the one of the very first full featured audio players available on the Linux platform, with the first version on November, 1997. XMMS stands for X Multimedia System. Winamp, a very popular Windows based audio player was also released 1997 and XMMS resembled the original Winamp in a various ways. Although initially XMMS was not an open source project, it is now available under GNU General Public License. The connection between XMMS and Winamp is really strong and relevant as the former supports Winampsâ skins natively.
XMMS has the latest stable release version 1.2.11 which was released way back in 16th November, 2007. The player is highly modular and supports a lot of music files through different plugins. Using appropriate plugins as needed, XMMS can be used to play MP3, AAC, FLAC, Audio CD, OGG, WAV etc. files. The UI is a bit dated for todayâs taste but it works pretty well nonetheless.
3. Beep Media Player
Beep Media Player is a fork of the original XMMS project which uses GTK+2 instead of the XMMSâs older version of GTK+1 toolkit. It also helps Beep Media Player to integrate more natively with current GNOME interfaces. Just like XMMS, Beep Media Player also supports Winamp skins to be used.
Latest version of Beep Media Player is 0.9.7.1 was released on 22nd October, 2005. The player has a standard feature set and supports MP3, AAC, FLAC, OGG, WAV, WMA files among others and have support for building playlists and maintains the song entire song library of user.
4. Audacious
Audacious is a free open source audio player available on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X platforms which started as a fork of previously mentioned Beep Media Player. Audacious focuses on building a solid audio player with lowest possible usage of system resources, high audio quality and supporting a wide number of audio formats available.
Audacious looks quite similar to foobar2000 which is a Windows based audio player. The latest stable version is 3.0.3 and was released on September 18th, 2011. It comes installed as default media players in Linux distros like Ubuntu Studio and Lubuntu. It offers the standard array of features and supports all of the popular media formats and then some.
5. Banshee
Banshee is an open source media player built upon Mono and GTK# frameworks. The audio player has gained quite a lot of attention in recent times and found in almost all popular Linux distros now. It uses GStreamer multimedia platform to encode and decode media files.
Latest stable version of Banshee is 2.2.0 which was released on September 21st, 2011. It works upon a plugin-based modular foundation. Banshee consists built in Audioscrobbler, music sharing, searching for metadata using Musicbrainz, Last.fm music recommendations, Mini modes, Notifications support, Podcasting and online radio among others.
6. Exaile
Exaile is perceived as Amarok for GTK+ by some people and it was intended to be exactly like that. Exaile is a actively developed media player and it took a lot of cues from Amarok. The program is written in Python and uses the GStreamer media framework available with GTK.
The usual features from Amarok are all seen here, like advanced tagging, multiple format support, library and playlist support, multiple media player support via appropriate plugins etc. The latest stable version is 0.3.2.2 which was released on July 18th, 2011.
7. Rhythmbox
Rhythmbox is an audio player for GNOME environment that comes straight from the developers of GNOME team. The software is originally inspired by Appleâs flagship media player, iTunes and shares a lot of similarity in terms of user interface. Rhythmbox works pretty stably under GNOME using GStreamer Media Framework but it can also be used under other desktop environments like KDE etc.
Rhythmbox is actively developed by GNOME developers and the latest version is 0.13.3 which was released on 16th January this year. Standard features like multiple format support, gapless playback, music importing from media players, audio CD burning, album art downloading, lyrics display and last.fm support are built in to the player. It is also very interesting to note how integrated Rhythmbox is with GNOME environment as GNOME 3 consists of a lot of features that directs to the default media player Rhythmbox including pop up notification support, Nautilus file manager integration etc.
8. Sonata
Sonata is a GTK+ based audio player for the music player daemon. Music Player Daemon or MPD is a server side programme for playing audio files and also modular and highly customizable. Sonata provides a front end for MPD and works flawless. The users who want to stream their music through the connected computers in their network can easily use Sonata for a streamlined interface without messing with command line.
The latest version of Sonata is 1.6.2.1.
9. Quod Libet
Quod Libet is free open source software which is also cross platform i.e. available in multiple platforms namely different operating systems. Quod Libet is written on Python and based on popular GTK+ framework. The program is written primarily to handle huge song libraries having more than 10k songs. It also includes standard feature set of audio players and supports scrobbling to Last.fm and Libre.fm. The latest version is 2.3.1 and it was released on July 16th, 2011.
10. GNOME Music Player Client or GMPC
GNOME Music Player Client or GMPC is a frontend of Music Player Daemon, like previously mentioned Sonata. It boasts of a fast startup time, even on a relatively slower network, lower memory usage, cross platform support, extensibility etc. other than the standard feature set of Music Player Daemon. The latest version of GMPC is 0.20.0.
