Eike has been collecting KDE sightings in movies and tv series for quite a while already. It seems he’ll have to add books as well now. One of our attentive users (thank you!) brought this to my attention today:
Amarok gets mentioned in “The Fuller Memorandum”, the new SiFi book by Charles Stross. Rocking! 
Comment by Alejandro Nova
August 10, 2010 @ 2:08 am
What’s happening in Amarok land? 
I haven’t see any blog update since May.
Comment by Lindsay Mathieson
August 10, 2010 @ 3:24 am
Not for me – the UI is going in a direction I do not like at all. Clementine is where its at.
Comment by Lydia
August 10, 2010 @ 10:03 am
@Alejandro: We have some pretty cool stuff in the pipeline. Please stay tuned a little longer. Hopefully bloggable soon.
@Lindsay: Oh come on. It was a pun…
Comment by Stu Jarvis
August 10, 2010 @ 10:37 am
Ace 
I was reading a book the other day that was littered with references to Apple software – nice to see KDE getting a bit of love too
Comment by James Bob
August 10, 2010 @ 2:13 pm
I also have given up on amarok. So many great things about the 1.x series (like the filter bar and the perfect default layout) were dumped like yesterday’s garbage in favor of, well, I still don’t understand exactly what. I realize that programming new features is fun and exciting, but when it comes at the expense of proven success, that’s not a good thing.
Amarok 1.x was great because:
* It gave me a perfect, easy, intuitive way to narrow down my 6000-song collection with the filter bar, searching on key fields such as genre and length (I had about 10 custom filters saved which I would simply copy and paste into the filter bar)
* It didn’t try to force me into creating playlists, when I find it much more efficient and intuitive to use the filter bar over the entire collection
* It gave me a normal, useful layout that resembled a simple table which I vastly prefer over the complicated 2.x system that refuses to be configured as a simple table
I agree, clementine looks promising but still has a ways to go before reaching the level of amarok 1.x.
Comment by Lydia
August 10, 2010 @ 2:18 pm
@James: Please try the current and soon to be released next version of Amarok 2. I think all of your concerns are addressed there.
Comment by James Bob
August 10, 2010 @ 4:34 pm
OK I’ll give it another try. Maybe I’m just different, but I greatly prefer the method of loading my entire collection and then narrowing it down, rather than narrowing it down first and then loading it. Seems much quicker and easier, because I don’t normally play music by album or artist but instead prefer to use random play over a set of crieria such as “-genre:Classical -genre:New Age length:<8:00" (this was called my "upbeat" playlist for example).
Comment by Realmkeeper
August 10, 2010 @ 5:25 pm
@Lydia: You say…
“@James: Please try the current and soon to be released next version of Amarok 2. I think all of your concerns are addressed there.”
So, I’ve had a look at 2.3.1 (that is the latest release?) and the layout still has the same hard-wired version 2 look/theme. And it’s a pain to look at and use on smaller monitor sizes; with no way to rearrange nor toggle view the different panels.
Perhaps also, the ability to place panels horizontally, vertically or a combination, instead of just vertically, would be good.
Comment by Lydia
August 10, 2010 @ 5:50 pm
@Realmkeeper As I said you can change that. Both the panel layout and playlist layout can be changed.
Comment by cotko
August 10, 2010 @ 6:47 pm
@Realmkeeper
it seems you didn’t look around much; go to view-> uncheck lock layout and then you can drag and drop all elements however and wherever you want. I think amarok is slowly going from being usable to being useful and I hope that next update will be a huge update
Comment by Nathan
August 10, 2010 @ 7:01 pm
@Realmkeeper, Lindsay
Come on, can’t you let the Amarok people enjoy a little moment of fun without dropping back to the usual ‘but i still can’t do X from 1.x’ whining?
Comment by Eruaran
August 10, 2010 @ 7:03 pm
UI complaints? Still? How many music/media/songlist players have a UI with the flexibility that Amarok gives? If you don’t like the default appearance you just drag and drop the various UI elements where you like. Sheesh… There’s just no satisfying some people…
Comment by Lydia
August 10, 2010 @ 7:10 pm
@cotko thanks
It will likely be the one after the next that has the really sweet stuff.
Comment by hobofood
August 10, 2010 @ 7:59 pm
Charles Stross is a pretty big OSS nerd, he is responsible for robots.txt:
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/06/how_i_got_here_in_the_end_part_3.html
Comment by contrast
August 11, 2010 @ 3:08 pm
It blows my mind that these are _LINUX and/or KDE USERS_ that are whining about “missing” features that are no more than a couple clicks away. One of the biggest joys of the Linux ecosystem, and especially KDE, is how much you’re encouraged to explore your options and adjust your environment to your needs. If you’re really intent on having something worthwhile to whine about, go back to Windows– You’ll find no shortage there (coming from a four-year Linux-only user who just recently started using Windows only for gaming).
Lydia: I’ve been loving Amarok 2 since 2.0, and every release since has shown great improvements. I can’t wait to see what you fine folks have cooked up for us next… Visualizers
Comment by Thomas Dempton
August 11, 2010 @ 10:53 pm
I used Amarok-2.x for some time. I always wondered how such a simple audio player can be so slow and use so much memory. Its not feature-rich, nor fast or very stable.
Comment by Lydia
August 12, 2010 @ 10:07 am
@contrast thank you
@Thomas When have you actually last tried it?
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