Songbird devs wont support Linux anymore

[Rahim]

In a surprise announcement, the Songbird developers have announced that they will no longer support Songbird in Linux. This is really a socking announcement as Songbird has its root in open source. Songbird will however continue to be available for Windows and Mac.


For those who do not know what Songbird is – it is a cross-platform Music Player cum Manager. Some time back we had also told you about 15 add-ons that can improve your Songbird Experience. (15 more add-ons)

The decision to stop support for Songbird in Linux is because of the lack of engineers in the Songbird team. Due to the limited amount of man-power available with the Songbird Team, the Linux build has been lagging behind the others. According to Georges Auberger, they have to come up with a trade off between continuing development for Linux or bringing in new features. The Songbird team has decided to go with the latter and stop the Linux support.

This is what Georges Auberger wrote:

After careful consideration, we’ve come to the painful conclusion that we should discontinue support for the Linux version of Songbird. Some of you may wonder how a company with deep roots in Open Source could drop Linux and we want you to know it isn’t without heartache. We have a small engineering team here at Songbird, and, more than ever, must stay very focused on a narrow set of priorities. Trying to deliver a raft of new features around all media types, and across a growing list of devices, we had to make some tough choices.

Songbird will however maintain a version of the software for use by their engineers who develop on the Linux platform. This version will be available to the Linux community and they will keep Linux build bots and host the Linux builds on the developer wiki. However, these builds will not be tested for stability and and will not necessarily pick up new features developed by Songbird’s team.

Source

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ab yeh kya nautanki hai?
This is really painful as Songbird was one of the best media managers along with Amarok. I hope other use their source code to continue this wonderful app in Linux.

 

[FilledVoid]

Wow thats a huge hit. Maybe there will be a fork based off of it or the fans might contribute code to keep it running?

 

[celldweller1591]

i got the news too ! No need to worry until we have rythmbox and amarok.

 

[Rahim]

^Rhythmbox has its own set of annoyances and dont forget the load of gnome garbage that comes along.

 

[Krow]

What about Banshee? I never used Songbird much although this is pretty bad.

Come on Songbird fans, keep it running.

 

[celldweller1591]

Banshee is good for video files. Rythmbox and Amarok offer better intrerface to manage big playlists for music freaks like me (20 gb of english songs and counting)

 

[Cool G5]

This is surprisingly shocking. Well now Amarok user base should increase tremendously.

 

[Rahim]

(20 gb of english songs and counting)

^Compare that with my 320 GB audio files and just shut up

What i was trying to say is that Rhythmbox is associated with GNOME Desktop and if you try to remove it(at least in Ubuntu and her sisters) then the whole DE is removed Songbird has no such negatives. Not to forget its codec installation annoying popups even though all codecs are installed.

@Krow: Last time i used Banshee on GNOME was in GUtsy days and it was very slow and laggy. How is it now? Another point is Songbird in Lenny lags while it is snappy in Ubuntu.

 

[skeletor]

They should have rather dropped the support for Mac and continued with Linux. sigh!

iTunes isn't bloatware for Mac and I really don't see any point of using Songbird over iTunes in Mac OS X.

 

[Krow]

@ Rahim: ATM, I am not using Linux. When I do, I will post here about Banshee. I have heard people praising it on other forums.

 

[FilledVoid]

I use banshee . What would you like to know about it ? It definitely fits my needs although I'm a person who barely has any requisites at all .

 

[Rahim]

^I look for snappiness and responsive behaviour and no lag when clicked on various tabs on the sides. Last time i checked Banshee, whenever i use to click the tabs on the side it would take ages to activate it, which annoyed me and i uninstalled Banshee.

 

[Cool G5]

I use banshee . What would you like to know about it ? It definitely fits my needs although I'm a person who barely has any requisites at all .

Sound Quality compared to Amarok, Plugin Support, Media Library Management.

 

[thewisecrab]

This is ironic really, an OSS that's dropping Linux. Anyway, I'm considering removing it from Windows now as its too buggy to tolerate any more.

They could've stopped support for say XP, Mac and concentrated on Linux and Win7, as that is supposed to be their target audience.

 

[amitabhishek]

Thats a sad news! They could have dropped the browser part and at least developed the media player.

Anyways will continue to use the version I have till I can. Loved the lyrics plug-in support!

 

[Rahim]

^Agreed for that browser part. It takes too much resources doing both jobs which kinda makes it buggy and laggy.

 

[Liverpool_fan]

Well this is classic case of a development team getting their priorities WRONG, IMHO.
Who uses Songbird in OS X ? Or even Windows for that matter. :\
Anyway how is the current version of Amarok? Amarok2 had been a dissapointment.
Personally I dont like Banshee, it always was bloated for me, I guess I should try Listen or Exaile again, since I dont like Rhythmbox either.

 

[thewisecrab]

^^
You hit the nail right there, POTI got their priorities wrong.

IMO, I tried it in its beta stages in Ubuntu, and its stable release in XP, both were the same: Totally radical, neat and different, yet incredibly buggy. Sometimes a hog in XP too.

Banshee is nothing compared to this, but Amarok's liteness wins against this (Songbirde is easier to manage though)

 

[Faun]

k im late but wtf is wrong with songbird guys. Anyway i use quodlibet, pretty much awesome

 

[Rahim]

^I doubt if majority of us use Songbird anyway?