Banshee To Replace Rhythmbox In Ubuntu 11.04 – More Mono!
The Ubuntu Developers Summit at Orlando, Florida is over and now we have the tentative list of the default applications that will ship with Ubuntu 11.04 “Natty Narwhal”. There are no major changes in the default applications – Firefox stays, Evolution is still preferred over Thunderbird etc. Of course the choice of Unity over GNOME Shell for the desktop is a big surprise but that is another thing.
A really surprising change is that the music player Rhythmbox will be replaced by Banshee. There is really nothing wrong with Rhythmbox – in fact it is much better than Banshee in my opinion. So, it is surprising that they have decided to ditch Rhythbox.
And Banshee has a little detail that will make a lot of people cringe – it is a mono application. In spite of Miguel de Icaza’s efforts, mono still remains one technology that a lot of people in the open-source community love to hate. With the inclusion of Banshee, Ubuntu has brought up the mono apps count to three – Tomboy Notes and gbrainy being the other two.
Before the official announcement, there are still some little details like CD space issues to be resolved. In any case, that should be resolved and the replacement of Rhythmbox by Banshee is almost certain.
The choice of Unity for the desktop did not please many people. With the inclusion of more mono apps that number should increase. Natty Narwhal should be an interesting release.
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Author: Ricky Laishram
Ricky Laishram is a Linux and FOSS enthusiast. He is passionate about open source technologies and likes to keep abreast with the latest developments in KDE and Ubuntu. He also loves listening to music and is a huge Tegan snd Sara fan. You can follow him on twitter @ricky_lais.Ricky Laishram has written 230 articles for us.
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Ricky – I don’t see the choice of default apps as being a big issue. I feel that those ppl complaining about them are wasting time. You can always load or unload any apps you wish.
Now … the change to Ubiquity. Yikes!
I can see it on netbook version, but the desktop version? What are they smoking in their pipes?
True it does not make any difference to someone who has used Linux for a while. But to a complete newbie who just booted into the Live CD just to check out what the heck this Ubuntu thing is, having a shitty application to do a basic task, like playing music (just an example; not saying that Banshee is shitty :p), can leave a bad impression of Ubuntu as a whole.
I think you meant Unity not Ubiquity :p Ubiquity is the Ubuntu installer.
they should get more democratic and have a voting system for selecting apps
Mono…blah…blah….Mono blah. Mono is part of the Gnome desktop and that is just a fact. The Mono controversy is based on specious pseudo-legal arguments that don’t hold water and are now largely irrelevant. Remove the Mono libraries if you wish, and see if your Ubuntu desktop will even start.
Moreover, Banshee is simply more feature-rich and modern than Ryhthmbox and the contention that it is not is simply absurd if you have ever used Banshee 1.5.x.
If you want to use a 1990s media player, install if from the repos.
I’ve removed Mono and my Ubuntu start perfectly, thank you. I’ve replaced the big-fat Tomboy with gnote and all works well. Gbrainy? Please, who cares.
1990? Do you really think Banshee has a modern interface? Are you a Banshee developer? Rhytmbox is not the best app in the world, but doesn’t crash everyday. Feature rich???? Come on!
Gnome’s changing. Mono’s the worst VM in popular use: Always behind .NET, buggy, not for ARM. (Well maybe Flash). These non-Internet apps with few uses elsewhere don’t need VM weight on them.
Mono’s so odd in Gnome, it would be more natural to reimplement Gnome in QT (something Unity-2D started into). Then we could attract developers to and easy_and_performant toolkit.
Linux Toolkit Key:
GTK: Fast, difficult
GTK-on-Python: slow, easy
QT-on-Python: slow, rare since QT native (C++) is easy-enough
QT: fast, medium-easy, KDE-only-until-now
Mono VM: slow, broken, easy, desktop-specific
Java VM: slow, medium-easy, works, “native” everywhere by default
‘easy’ == dev’s time goes further to get better looking results.