Rhythmbox vs. Banshee

jbuckley2004 · #1 21st May 2011, 08:09 PM

I'm in a quandary. Both Rhythmbox and Banshee seem to be good Linux tools that replace iTunes nicely on Fedora, but I'd like to know which YOU prefer.

I'll be using it for a 2nd gen shuffle, and I must confess that I'm having problems with both right now (I made the mistake of using iTunes, and now the play refuses to work unless I load music using iTunes *only*. Bummer. "Restoring" (or merely removing the iTunesStats file) allows me to load music, but the device won't play until I sync with iTunes - sniff!). I'm hoping that the newer version of the libgpod I'll see next week helps that situation.

Banshee seems to be updated regularly and has an active forum, but Rhythmbox seems to be more stable.

Any advice is appreciated!

domg472 · #2 21st May 2011, 08:43 PM

I can tell you why i never considered banshee: controversy (whether baseless or not)

http://techrights.org/2009/10/22/dis...about-banshee/

Other than that, i am just satisfied with the default Rhythmbox.

screamin_jesus · #3 21st May 2011, 08:48 PM

I prefer banshee, but it does not have gnome-shell integration so atm I am using rhythmbox.

dd_wizard · #4 21st May 2011, 08:56 PM

Have you tried Exaile? I like it a lot.

dd_wizard

flyingfsck · #5 21st May 2011, 11:42 PM

Neither - I use XMMS.

Cygnia · #6 22nd May 2011, 01:24 AM

Clementine is really great too.

jtfolden · #7 22nd May 2011, 03:30 AM

I prefer Banshee. It seems better supported / maintained and some of the plugins seem more stable/useful (for example, the LiveRadio plugin is great on Banshee).

screamin_jesus · #8 22nd May 2011, 03:33 AM

Also regarding banshee, the next two releases look like they will be excellent. Lots of under the hood changes going on, and removing old cruft. Also banshee 2.2 will have GTK3/Gnome shell integration.

Clementine is also excellent. I actually use that on my windows machine.

Wayne · #9 22nd May 2011, 03:38 AM

When I used Gnome I always used Rhythmbox. I went through all the alternatives but always returned to it. Now I'm using KDE but I don't use any music players since I use a combination of iTunes and VLC on my Mac Mini.

iTunes doesn't play FLAC, which some of my files are encoded in...

jbuckley2004 · #10 22nd May 2011, 04:07 AM

Thank you all for the replies. I'll look into the other alternatives, but I sort of like the Banshee/Rhythmbox iTunes like presentation.

I should have mentioned that I'm using KDE, so the Gnome shell integration has no meaning for me.

And yeah, I've had to use iTunes on my wife's machine because of the problem I experienced, and not being able to handle FLAC has been - discouraging.

The second part of my problem remains.

Has anyone been able to use anything like the suggested applications AFTER using iTunes? I tried using iTunes to restore the shuffle to what was supposed to be the factory state, but unlike my initial experience, I wasn't able to get it to play after using Banshee to load music onto it. (And I've been having the same experience with Rhythmbox.)

Thanks

flyingfsck · #11 22nd May 2011, 04:51 AM

iPods are the crappiest players ever. You got to use gtkpod for those, since it can fix the database.

jbuckley2004 · #12 22nd May 2011, 06:23 PM

Flyingfsck, I'm not sure I understand. Since the shuffle works using iTunes, it's not clear that anything needs to be "fixed". The fact is (and I've seen it reported in both the Banshee and Rhythmbox forums) that once you use iTunes then you can't simple use 3rd party software to load stuff. That seems to be an incompatibility, and it should be resolvable by restoring the player to it's original state.

I can understand why iTunes doesn't do that (it's the way the game is played). But I don't understand why there's an incompatibility in the first place. If a utility can create the device's database in the first place, then what's there to be incompatible with? Of course, I also don't get why none of the 3rd party software provides a "restore" function.

I could understand if it's a library that's out of date (and I've seen indications that this is the case). But then why would gtkpod work? And if it does, then can I still use Rhythmbox or Banshee?

I'm hoping that the problem resolves itself with F15.

Planckton · #13 22nd May 2011, 07:37 PM

I prefer Banshee, but currently have a problem in that Banshee won't play anything (I think it throws a 'Gstreamer resource error: notfound') until I've played a song on Rhythmbox, after which Banshee works fine.
If anyone has a suggestion on how to solve this it would be much appreciated.

flyingfsck · #14 23rd May 2011, 05:26 AM

Howdy,

For an iPod, use GTKPod. I have repaired many an iPod with that. I would not recommend an iPod to anybody. The Samsungs are much better, they don't require special software and they don't mess up.

Jack Brown · #15 20th June 2011, 05:14 PM

for OP

2nd gen ipod shuffle.

have you tried:
http://shuffle-db.sourceforge.net/

works on win and linux

just transfer mp3, m4a, m4b using file manager (you can arrange them in folders)
from any computer you happen to be at.
- run the executable which you place in your shuffle root

(you can run the python file if you make it executable on linux)

Have never used itunes with my ipod shuffle 2gen ever since i got it brand new, except to initialize it.

itunes just seems like a complexity for such a nice simple product such as the shuffle.