Why XMMS should be in every distro...well...maybe almost every distro!

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Contributed by: woodsmoke

Category: Misc

Distribution: All

License: Linux Forums Article License

Posted: 06 December, 2009

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Advocating that XMMS would be a fun way for new, and possibly some older, folks to Linux to learn the Linux file structure, and some other items. WordCount: 1232, more or less.

Woah! I'll bet THAT title caught some folks' attention!

'How can the old woodsmoker have the chutzpah to tell ME that I should have ANY program in MY distro!' you say?

Don'cha just hate that shouting type! Lol.

Anyway...... there is a reason..well, several of them, so.....read on and ye shall see!

In the Land of Linux long, long ago, and far, far away.... there used to be a ..well....certain way of doing things.

One of those ways.....could be stated as: one need, one application.

This is not so in the world of Linux today....now...it is one stop shopping. Please, if you would, think of the many present day applications that are being asked to add more and more functionality. And, it seems to me, that it is the poor music player that is being asked to do the most!

Nowadays, music players are expected provide lyrics, album covers, links to blogs, links to articles, notifying about e-mail arrival.... almost everything except brew coffee!

(And, speaking of coffee...we might wonder how many folks even remember the "Tea Timer"?! let alone use it.)

Now, don't get me wrong here....I love Amarok.... Amarok introduced me to the wonderful world of streaming music. And, Songbird is going to be a wonder to behold....really.....That player can do just about everything AND do it all very well. So I'm not complaining. I mean, I just LOVE the way the buttons actually LOOK like they are being depressed when you hold them down! It is so cool!

Anyway, back to the big idea.

'So....woodsmoker'....you say....if you like Amarok and Songbird so much, then of what use is XMMS in the wonderful new world of Linux?'

'Ahem', getting up on my soapbox and pulling up my suspenders, 'ahem!'.

It is proposed here that XMMS can be the Old Professor to a whole new generation of Linux students(oops...users!).

'What POSSIBLE reasons can you have for that rather .ODD.... statement?' you say?

Read on! Avaunt!!

There are several Raison d'tre! for the old woodsmoker's proposal! (Don't know that I used that prase in it's EXACT usage, but....hey...I like it!

A) It is wild and wooly in there!

By "in there" I mean, of course...the file structure of XMMS which is not .clean....it is not..........tidy.....it is cramped, almost like going into the Caves of Moria(with apologies to another great professor... J.R.R. Tolkien) ........it is.........well.....all dotty and grey and jaggy in there!

One sees the REAL structure of the Linux file system, the OLD way.... not with all this new fandangly clean shiny newness....one is peering deep into HISTORY with the way that XMMS presents the file structure.

A few lines above I wrote that Amarok introduced me to the wonderful world of streaming music, but XMMS taught me the file system!

And that, one thing to me is enough to make my proposal, ....but let us continue!

B) To get back to the venerable adage of Linux.... "One application one use. "...

Well, XMMS is basically one application for one use....It always works.....given that the powers that be haven't decided to drop it for some upstream or downstream reason..... whenever floats their boats off into another direction!

'But,' you users of XMMS say,.....'woah there old woodsmoker! There are add-ons that will do many, many wonderful things in XMMS. '

And I reply yes.....[url= http://freshmeat.net/search?q=xmms&submit=Search] but they are add-ons.[/url] ... The pure, pristine XMMS basically does one thing and does it well.

Yes, it can display album covers and all sorts of neat other things, but the principle remains.

C) AND...what about those Dallas Cowboys! oops.... I meant to say... What about ALL those SKINS!!

I mean....from the sublime to the.... ridiculous(as Daffy Duck so eloquently puts it). .... from the smoothest sleekest shiny black to...............to...yeeech....PINK there are SOOO MANY of them that there has to be one that will fit almost any decor of your desktop!

And, AND.... and there is the learning of where the skins are supposed to be placed in the Linux file structure. So......again....there's another "teaching moment" about the file structure!

Here's just a few! and take a look at the underwater kingdom/Smashing Pumpkins one at the bottom!

D) And there is the holy grail of many Linux old timers....that of....Minimimalism! And....... SYSTEM MONITORS!!

Grab a look at the XMMS website if you want to see minimalist.

Install gKrellm and you have all those glorious monitors...mail... weather, webcams, CPU, temp, you name it....and of course.........it hooks GLORIOUSLY into XMMS!! How cool is that!

The new users, and maybe some old users get to see the ABSOLUTE ELEGANCE of how those "one use one applications" can interact with each other! They certainly aren't going to see much of that in the MS world, let alone being able to DO IT themselves!! In THAT world they have to pay and pay and pay...because they are not considered SMART enough to be able to do something....ohmigosh...for themelves!

You get a minimalist XMMS, a minimalist set of system monitors, and... going back to the skins thing..... gKrellm has even MORE..skins... 191 of them....and.even one with a gargoyle on it! .. it's WAAAY down at the bottom....of all those skins! ...

I mean....if you want to decorate your desktop, in a minimalist sort of way..., the combination of XMMS with gKrellm gives you a whole Crayola box of ways to do it!

E) What about "visualizations" you say?

Oh, you didn't say "What about visualizations? oops.. sorry. :(

Well, lets talk about visualizations anyway!

There's plenty, and they are even shared with Amarok so there we are again, another old Linux adage of doing the most with the least.

So, lets get back to item D(above), the minimal desktop.

How many of the "old hands of Linux" are(well, were) continually complaining about the blizzard of icons that festoon the desktops of new folks. "They oughta learn the advantage of being neat!"....

Well, if you want minimalist....here ya go.......... I dunno as Songbird can get as small as XMMS outside of just minimizing it to a bar...and yes, the Songbird bar is a good and wonderful thing, but...maybe you get the drift I hope.

But, as I was saying, XMMS in that svelte shiny black skin is a pretty good addition to ANY desktop, minimal or not!

I could go on and on.....but really........how many times have we seen people writing post after post about how the folks that are new to you favourite distro... "Don't even know the file structure!"

The big idea here is that...instead of just complaining.....here is a fun way for new folks to learn some of the important stuff about Linux.

I've always looked for the teachable moment. And I think that the venerable old XMMS is about as good an Old Professor as the Linux community could get.

And, in keeping with the spirit of the season.. what was that line from Dickens "A Christmas Carol" about the newly changed Scrooge?

Maybe XMMS can have a public renewal just as good as Scrooge!

"It was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possesed the knowledge."

Possibly, we might have a small turn of the phrase:

"It was always said of XMMS that it taught the Linux file structure well, if any little music player possessed the ability."

woodsmoke

Comments about this article

Like your style

writen by: rokytnji on 2009-12-09 04:04:10

Liked the article woodsmoke. I run xmms for different reasons than stated. One, it comes stock in some distros I run. Two, It incorporates with streamtuner also. In Antix I can rip music from radio while I listen to it if I so wish. Makes me smile, it does.

RE: Like your style written by rokytnji:

Refreshing Exuberance

writen by: Transmogrifox on 2009-12-09 16:32:36

I agree xmms is a nice tutor for the newbie...the old professor, indeed. I also like the simplicity. I like the Linux file system, and I don't want a fancy GUI application managing it for me. I was disappointed when I installed FSPOT on my machine, and suddenly all my photos were reorganized into 100 different folders in to its own directory....great, now I have two locations burning hard drive space with the same exact photos in both.... If I ALWAYS used fspot to view my photos, then great, it can organize them however I want...but what if I just want to enter a directory and use a 1-liner to copy a directory containing a group of photos to my thumb drive? Now I suddenly have to figure out what photos were taken during what time period....using fspot....and all my own organization structure on the filesystem is bunged up.

Anyway, it is not my point to complain about F-spot...it's actually a well-done program, but it honors the Microsoft trained computer user and not the dignity of a capable individual.

I think the average user does not care whether it's Windows or Linux, they don't want to have to know anything about the file system. The more of the computer's inner-workings that can be hidden from the user, the better (from their point of view). I have met Windows users who don't even know where their photos are stored. They cannot find their photos without Microsoft's built-in viewing/organizing utilities or other 3rd party. If I ask them to open their home directory, they don't know what I'm talking about. In order to drop some photos onto a thumb drive for me, they have to open this special program and export them....for all that clicking and browsing, they could have gone to My Documents, Photos, Folder_of_interest then drag and drop to the thumb drive....but no, they even need a special program to even use their thumb drive. :(

Nobody can work efficiently on any computer regardless of the OS and file system if they do not understand the basic structure. Instead, gross kludges are developed to remove this as a requirement, and in the end you spend 15 seconds clicking tabs and buttons

RE: Refreshing Exuberance written by Transmogrifox:

thanks for the nice comments.

writen by: woodsmoke on 2009-12-09 17:46:21

just what it says.

Thanks guys

woodsmoke

RE: thanks for the nice comments. written by woodsmoke:

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