Media Player Comparison

This page was made to compare the current Xubuntu Oneiric Ocelot media player, gMusicBrowser, against other media players in an attempt to propose a change for the next LTS release that would, hopefully fit most user needs.

The nature of this proposed change comes from the fact that gMusicBrowser forces a whole new set of concepts upon the users, unusual ways of doing things and confusing propose interface.

I will analyze those things that make me think that gMusicBrowser should not be added by default, please be aware that this is just my, GridCube, opinion and its not intended as an attack to this software.

The Interface

• For some reason gMusicBrowser rezises the window it uses, this has happened on all versions of gMusicBrowser i've used, it does so when it shows a name on the playback area thats long enough, this moving the close/minimize/maximize icons, and the gear/configuration button away from focus. This is probably a bug, but it has been there since i can remember.

The Playlist

• When you start the program for the first time you are not prompted for a music folder to create your media collection, you have to go to the [Gear] icon >Collection >Add Music, this is not hard to do. Then you find that your music collection has been nicely ordered on the side, and an empty playlist area, this playlist gets populated once you select an artist from that artists area, or even when you search on that search box, but those two things do not change the fact that what you are actually seing is not your music collection as you might think, its a playlist, an ordered playlist. you can not choose to combine different artist to add on a current playlist, because obviously you should use the "queue" list... Changing the design to make it "look like" some other programs do not change the way the playlist is managed.

User Experience

• When you start using the program you feel its good, but then you find its behavior its weird and nonstandard, which makes you simply change for another program as fast as you can type apt-get.

Comparison