15 ms·

Audacious 4.0 released, switches from GTK to Qt 5

204 points by jrepinc 7y ago

Naac 7y ago
Looks like this is moving from GTK2, not GTK3 ( latest ).
- MuffinFlavored 7y ago
  Does this mean GTK2 and GTK3 are... to be avoided for new projects / dead? How do Qt projects look + feel when ported to Mac OS X? Do they look near native or can you tell it's a Qt project and not a Cocoa project?
  - empyrical 7y ago
    Qt5 can be made to look pretty close to a native Mac app, but one thing I haven't figured out yet is if there's a way to get that "bouncy" effect you get when you scroll to either end of a list.
    - unixhero 7y ago
      Well if that's the means to an end, then this world has gone just crazy.
    - syockit 7y ago
      Is this "bouncy" effect the elastic one pulling against the end, snapping the list back to position when you release it, or is it the the one where the scroll ricochets off the end when you apply great force in order to quickly scroll to the end? The former is a very nice UI cue, but who on earth thought the latter was a good idea? As an Android user, I wish there was a way to disable the ricochet on all apps.
      - empyrical 7y ago
        I am referring to both styles of "bounce". Would be nice to have the former to implement "pull to refresh"
  - kelvie 7y ago
    They don't look quite native, but I feel the trend is moving away from native-looking apps anyway (like via electron, or forgoing an UI at all and just doing a web UI).
  - jcelerier 7y ago
    > Does this mean GTK2 and GTK3 are... to be avoided for new projects / dead? not dead but... here's for instance how Wireshark looked on macOS when it was using GTK : https://blog.wireshark.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/osx-x11.png https://blog.wireshark.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/osx-x1... and here's how it looks now that it is using Qt : https://news-cdn.softpedia.com/images/news2/wireshark-3-0-released-as-world-s-most-popular-network-protocol-analyzer-525173-2.jpg https://news-cdn.softpedia.com/images/news2/wireshark-3-0-re...
    - ori_b 7y ago
      Yeah, nobody set a theme for GTK in that screenshot, and GTK themes tend to look different from the native theme on non-Linux OSes regardless. But, the trend is towards Electron, which also integrates poorly with the OS -- so, I'm not sure how much looking native matters any more.
      - LaGrange 7y ago
        Eeh. It might be perception, but I feel like it was the other way around — around the time iPhone came out, a lot of apps eschewed compliance in favour of achieving clearer identity. I think that cleared the way for electron — I actually vaguely remember some people talking about using html-based apps because they made achieving a specific visual design easier, not because of the portability benefits. And for example AFAIK the new Apple Music app is using a web view for some parts of itself, and as much as I like having "light" apps, I generally prefer interacting with Electron UIs over most QT apps.
    - gray_-_wolf 7y ago
      I like the first one more, am I weird?
      - toast0 7y ago
        The first one isn't Mac like --- the menu bar doesn't go on the top of the window. I don't necessarily think that's great, but that's the way it should be on a Mac.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    > How do Qt projects look + feel when ported to Mac OS X? They're in the uncanny valley.
    - bjoli 7y ago
      a lot of apps look non-native on os X, with apple starting the trend of ignoring their own HIGs about 5 years ago. I don't really mind, since osx happens to be my daily driver since about a year, but whenever people claim that osx is visually coherent I can't shake the feeling they are stuck in 1998 and Mac os 8.
      - chrisseaton 7y ago
        Looking different is ok. The problem is that Qt and other cross-platform frameworks tend to look glitchy, as in their differences are non-intentional and jarring. They also tend to just look pretty old-fashioned, because these frameworks are pretty old now and the controls, layouts, and workflows they provide are a bit old-fashioned. So the first impression you get for software using Qt is old and glitchy. Which isn't great.
        jcelerier 7y ago
        > So the first impression you get for software using Qt is old and glitchy. honest question, is that the impression you get from using the Blizzard launcher (https://media.mmo-champion.com/images/news/2013/june/launcher03.jpg https://media.mmo-champion.com/images/news/2013/june/launche...) or stuff like Substance ? (https://www.awn.com/sites/default/files/image/featured/1015753-allegorithmic-releases-substance-painter-beta-steam.jpg https://www.awn.com/sites/default/files/image/featured/10157...)
        magduf 7y ago
        What's wrong with something looking "old-fashioned"? That seems to be better from my point of view. I just finally got switched to Windows 10 on my work computer. Every time I start up a simple calculator, it takes up most of the space on my gigantic 27" QHD screen! Do they think I'm blind or something? The old Windows 7 calculator looked just fine and was an appropriate size.
  - baybal2 7y ago
    > GTK3 are... to be avoided for new projects / dead? Despite rooting for GTK, I think this is where it is going. A lot of criticism as of late was that GTK is turning from a Gimp ToolKit into a Gnome ToolKit, and you can see how dramatic was the drop in mindshare has been since that trend started. Just like Gnome didn't really survive the 3.0 transition because the project been really stolen by thew few people who force fed Gnome Shell onto the wider community, the GTK did not survive the transition from GimpTK to GnomeTK.
    - pengaru 7y ago
      It's more like the gnome people picked up abandoned torches.
      - bronson 7y ago
        The existence of MATE indicates the torches were never abandoned.
        pengaru 7y ago
        Only if you conflate the users with the existing pool of GTK/GNOME developers and maintainers of the time. I'm thrilled to see that fork attract enough new talent to apparently maintain itself and meet the needs of what's a relatively small fraction of linux desktop users.
    - markstos 7y ago
      Didn't survive? The most popular desktop distro, Ubuntu, switched their DE from Unity to Gnome.
  - cycloptic 7y ago
    I think GTK3 will still be viable for a least a few more years. It's currently in maintenance mode -- no new features will be added, and all feature development is happening in git master in preparation for the GTK4 release. The first release of GTK4 is currently planned for this fall.
  - aasasd 7y ago
    > How do Qt projects look + feel when ported to Mac OS X? I haven't seen any cross-platform toolkits that abide by Mac standards. Funny enough, the closest is Mozilla's toolkit. Other than that, there are always telltale signs—e.g. no one seems to grok Mac's toolbars even though they're organized by the basic laws of proximity and grouping. Qt apps have the lazy grid toolbars just crammed from left to right, occasionally with extra-large icons for the ‘designy’ look, and always with colorful icons unless something app-specific is made (like in Calibre). Plus the noisy dividers. Also, since Qt handles all the graphics and input, it has to reimplement everything high-level that the systems provide out of the box, and presumably to track changes in all of that. Hence the past bugs of one-pixel offsets between elements where they can't be in the system. And the present non-support for system-wide key rebinding on Mac—e.g., home/end instead of cmd-left/right. But yeah, Qt is better than something like not-obsessively-tuned Swing. As for GTK, it seems to depend a lot on the author specifically not forgetting to bundle the native-look theme.
    - torstenvl 7y ago
      wx seems to be sufficiently Mac-like...
      - matthewbauer 7y ago
        Doesn't wx just use GTK under the hood?
        zerr 7y ago
        On Linux, yes. On Mac it uses Cocoa and on Windows - Win32 API. i.e. it is a wrapper for native controls.
      - aasasd 7y ago
        Alas, can't speak in regard to that, because I've never seen a Wx app aside from a few smallish Python projects— which I think I only passed by on Github, nodding appreciatively and then not running any of them.
  - pojntfx 7y ago
    NO. GTK has really been getting more and more import for FLOSS as the Librem 5 and the vast majority (Ubuntu switched to GNOME by default, so GNOME is now the default on - Ubuntu - Fedora - OpenSUSE - Debian - CentOS - ... GTK+ since version 3 is really neat. They rust re-did the site as well: https://www.gtk.org https://www.gtk.org
  - lmm 7y ago
    Qt was always the better practical choice, and its license issues were sorted out decades ago. Couple that with a world where choosing C over C++ makes less and less sense (compilers having got a lot better) and the writing has been on the wall for years now.
- puzzlingcaptcha 7y ago
  They did have a GTK3 port at one point (audacious 3.5) but walked back from it: https://audacious-media-player.org/news/32-audacious-3-6-released https://audacious-media-player.org/news/32-audacious-3-6-rel... https://redmine.audacious-media-player.org/boards/1/topics/1269 https://redmine.audacious-media-player.org/boards/1/topics/1...
randyrand 7y ago
Any screenshots?
- MawKKe 7y ago
  I just built it on ubuntu 18.04. It looks pretty much identical to the native 3.9 version, except for icons. FYI anyone reading this, take a backup of your $HOME/.config/audacious before trying the new version. It did something funny there and no files would play on the old version anymore...
- jccalhoun 7y ago
  there's one on the front page: https://audacious-media-player.org/ https://audacious-media-player.org/
  - cpach 7y ago
    According to the filename, that is an old version of Audacious (3.6).
overgard 7y ago
GTK integration in terms of look and feel on windows and macos has been so bad for so long that I think the only valid use case for it is if you're targeting gnome specifically.
- edgarvm 7y ago
  Qt's license and cost is another valid reason to continue developing on GTK
  - emilsedgh 7y ago
    Qt is free and LGPL for Audacious, any other FOSS app, or any other project that is not looking to ship a patched version of Qt.
    - slavik81 7y ago
      It's even free if you want to ship a patched version of Qt, as long as you also share the modified Qt code.
  - mixedCase 7y ago
    All the important parts of Qt are available under LGPLv3. This only makes a difference to you if you want to do Tivoization of your software (Gtk uses LGPLv2, this being the only major difference AFAIK). In which case you still have the option to buy a commercial license.
    - jjoonathan 7y ago
      Yeeeeahhh.... at the moment. They have gotten really aggressive about commercial licensing recently, and even a conservative extrapolation should give one pause. Today they might limit themselves to forced registration, SEO, and spamming business contacts with carefully crafted statements designed to stir fear, uncertainty, and doubt around free licenses by strongly suggesting (without actually claiming) that commercial use without a commercial license is illegal. But tomorrow? Also, keep in mind that a business partner who isn't already familiar with Qt and LGPL is going to be about 10x more susceptible to the FUD. That's the whole idea. My guess: 30% chance of an ugly fork and lots of drama in the next few years. Then, absent a change in direction, another 30% chance in the few years after that, and so on.
ssivark 7y ago
Back in the day when I used desktop music players on linux I cycled through a whole bunch: Audacious, Rhythmbox, Banshee, Amarok, Songbird(Mozilla!), Moc(Oh, so minimal!), Cmus, mpd (server/client), and probably more that I'm forgetting now. Feel a touch nostalgic for the uncomplicated time when I had music on my devices, regularly "organized my music library" and could play whatever whenever, and shared them with friends. I can still rummage through my old disks and spin up some of that music from time to time. Mostly use cloud players these days; crazy to imagine that there's nothing I can do if my favorite song/recording today is not available ten years later!
- nine_k 7y ago
  Buy music, don't rent it. Pay for downloadable files, or for physical media if you are into it. This is rather widely available.
  - RussianCow 7y ago
    It's significantly more expensive if you listen to a wide range of music. Buying albums, or even just individual songs, can very quickly surpass the $10/month you pay for Spotify. Maybe that's worth it to you, but I can't blame most people for just paying for a subscription.
    - KozmoNau7 7y ago
      The issue is control. Albums are regularly disappearing from the Spotify catalogue, sometimes reappearing later. Sometimes specific albums in a band's history are missing because that particular label doesn't have an agreement with Spotify. And you never know if it's a crappy modern brickwalled remaster. Not to mention the woefully bad curation, mixed up artists, incorrect genres/years, you name it. With music you buy, you are in control. It's about quality over quantity.
      - distances 7y ago
        Same with video streaming. With Netflix you aren't guaranteed the show won't suddenly just disappear before you finish it -- happened multiple times for me. I've been partly going back to Blu-ray for better availability and picture quality. Netflix is still very good for exploratory watching though, but Blu-ray is very very good for stuff like classic HBO series and BBC nature documentaries.
rubyn00bie 7y ago
Kind of a tangent, but why switch from GTK to Qt 5? Or rather, why Qt 5 rather than some other cross platform UI framework or even GTK 3? Is it ease of porting it for new features compared to something else? And/or is Qt just that much nicer to use?
- paride5745 7y ago
  GTK3 is becoming very GNOME3 specific, while Qt5 is still agnostic and easy to port on different platforms.
  - cycloptic 7y ago
    Can you elaborate? If you're talking about the client-side decorations in GTK, those are up to the app developer to choose if they want them or not.
    - ori_b 7y ago
      As a user, I don't want them, and I don't want the app developer to make that choice for me.
      - arghwhat 7y ago
        The developers makes every decision on how an application works and looks (It's part of the code). The top row of pixels is no different.
        infinity0 7y ago
        It feels like everyone someone voices an opinion about GTK3 explaining why they don't like it, some GTK3 fanboy has to chime in questioning the opinion and implying it isn't rational. Yeah, this makes me want to stick with GTK3 even less. People don't have to explain their preferences in a rational way, they will just switch away from GTK3. It's cheaper. Successful developers will try to interpret these users' feedback in a self-critical, introspective and positive way, and tweak their product based on the feedback. As opposed to continually challenging the giver of the feedback to explain their opinion in more detail, as if by repeatedly digging deeper and deeper into an opinion, you will at some point find some fundamental logical contradiction in their views that will make them re-evaluate their life philosophy on why they just don't like GTK3. I for one think the two opinions given above are perfectly clear ("GTK3 is becoming very GNOME3 specific", "As a user, I don't want them") and can't see why further clarification is being requested. If you really need clarification on these perfectly clear opinions, it is your problem.
modzu 7y ago
just posting to say thank u and share some love for audacious
aasasd 7y ago
It's alive! Which reminds me, foobar2000's Mac port seems to be chugging along—though not open-source.
Paianni 7y ago
Cross-platform toolkits are the lazy way. Good quality graphical apps are available in derivatives that match the interface guidelines and optimum toolkits/APIs of their platforms.
- betenoire 7y ago
  I think I have a similar preference, but lazy and good are not mutually exclusive
  - DagAgren 7y ago
    In this case, though, they are. There are no good cross platform UI kits, and there probably never will be.
    - dependenttypes 7y ago
      > There are no good cross platform UI kits Qt is one.
      - DagAgren 7y ago
        It is very, very far from "good" on macOS.
      - ptx 7y ago
        It's certainly the best one IMHO, but not necessarily good.
- simonh 7y ago
  Good quality graphical apps sounds great, but do those exist for every single use case? Unfortunately not. It doesn’t matter how great the native graphical sketching apps on MacOS and Windows are, that isn’t going to help me when what I want to do is analyse packet captures. That’s when I reach for Wireshark, and do so full of appreciation to the devs for the excellent tool they have provided. Would it be better us every platform I use it in had an equally high quality fully native port with full feature parity across platforms? Sure, but I also understand the huge extra commitment of resources that would require, so I’m content to let them choose the trade off that works for them.
toastercup 7y ago
Audacious is pretty slick (especially with this latest release), but lacks the features that foobar2000 has that I need (namely, a directory/folder view that can replace the active playlist when clicked). If anyone is looking for a decent foobar2000 alternative, Foobnix (https://github.com/foobnix/foobnix https://github.com/foobnix/foobnix) has worked really well for me. It has some rough edges and doesn't seem (that) actively maintained, but it gets the important stuff right. Haven't come across anything else quite like it for Linux yet, unfortunately. If there was a foobar-like folder view plugin for Audacious, I'd switch to it in a heartbeat.
- Arnavion 7y ago
  I just run foobar2000 under wine. The font rendering is a bit iffy (some lines of text get clipped horizontally and vertically, as if the calculated dimensions are smaller than the rendered dimensions), but it doesn't bother me enough to investigate. That said, most of my music listening these days has been pointing mpv at an internet radio steam.
  - toastercup 7y ago
    Yeah, foobar2000 has worked well under Wine for me in the past. It doesn't work as well when playing music from my NAS via NFS, though..
- MavropaliasG 7y ago
  Try clementine
- justaj 7y ago
  Have you tried DeaDBeeF Player? It was supposedly created as an alternative to Foobar2000 https://github.com/DeaDBeeF-Player/deadbeef https://github.com/DeaDBeeF-Player/deadbeef
newscracker 7y ago
I always appreciate the perseverance and dedication of FOSS developers and teams. They bring a lot to the table for a whole lot of people. But something about the fonts and the UI layout always puts me off (primarily) Linux targeted (or developed) applications. Even Windows 10 doesn’t use good fonts, IMO. I don’t know why developers can’t use good native fonts or bundle some good free fonts with the application, while also having better laid out UIs. We live in the age of 4K monitors (though most people are still on 1080p or lower) and smartphones with pretty good screens that many users are used to, and yet we have applications that look like they were developed two decades ago. Even large efforts like LibreOffice aren’t immune to these deficiencies. I’m not arguing for form over function, but definitely see a need for getting more UI designers into FOSS (I’m not one, so my contributions are limited to monetary donations to projects I like or use). To reiterate, this is not to put down the humongous efforts (which many a times remain thankless or not adequate for putting food on the table) of FOSS developers.
- nkkollaw 7y ago
  Most FOSS contributors are devs, and might even despite design. They definitely prefer functionality over looks.
rudilee 7y ago
Seems like the Qt5 front-end is just set as the default one, and the GTK front-end will be deprecated. There wasn't really any noticeable difference between both from the usability comparison in my opinion.
strategarius 7y ago
Natural selection in action. If you don't put enough effort for your framework to catch up modern language features and design principles, users would consider something else.

204 points by jrepinc 7y ago

Naac 7y ago

Looks like this is moving from GTK2, not GTK3 ( latest ).

MuffinFlavored 7y ago
Does this mean GTK2 and GTK3 are... to be avoided for new projects / dead? How do Qt projects look + feel when ported to Mac OS X? Do they look near native or can you tell it's a Qt project and not a Cocoa project?
- empyrical 7y ago
  Qt5 can be made to look pretty close to a native Mac app, but one thing I haven't figured out yet is if there's a way to get that "bouncy" effect you get when you scroll to either end of a list.
  - unixhero 7y ago
    Well if that's the means to an end, then this world has gone just crazy.
  - syockit 7y ago
    Is this "bouncy" effect the elastic one pulling against the end, snapping the list back to position when you release it, or is it the the one where the scroll ricochets off the end when you apply great force in order to quickly scroll to the end? The former is a very nice UI cue, but who on earth thought the latter was a good idea? As an Android user, I wish there was a way to disable the ricochet on all apps.
    - empyrical 7y ago
      I am referring to both styles of "bounce". Would be nice to have the former to implement "pull to refresh"
- kelvie 7y ago
  They don't look quite native, but I feel the trend is moving away from native-looking apps anyway (like via electron, or forgoing an UI at all and just doing a web UI).
- jcelerier 7y ago
  > Does this mean GTK2 and GTK3 are... to be avoided for new projects / dead? not dead but... here's for instance how Wireshark looked on macOS when it was using GTK : https://blog.wireshark.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/osx-x11.png https://blog.wireshark.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/osx-x1... and here's how it looks now that it is using Qt : https://news-cdn.softpedia.com/images/news2/wireshark-3-0-released-as-world-s-most-popular-network-protocol-analyzer-525173-2.jpg https://news-cdn.softpedia.com/images/news2/wireshark-3-0-re...
  - ori_b 7y ago
    Yeah, nobody set a theme for GTK in that screenshot, and GTK themes tend to look different from the native theme on non-Linux OSes regardless. But, the trend is towards Electron, which also integrates poorly with the OS -- so, I'm not sure how much looking native matters any more.
    - LaGrange 7y ago
      Eeh. It might be perception, but I feel like it was the other way around — around the time iPhone came out, a lot of apps eschewed compliance in favour of achieving clearer identity. I think that cleared the way for electron — I actually vaguely remember some people talking about using html-based apps because they made achieving a specific visual design easier, not because of the portability benefits. And for example AFAIK the new Apple Music app is using a web view for some parts of itself, and as much as I like having "light" apps, I generally prefer interacting with Electron UIs over most QT apps.
  - gray_-_wolf 7y ago
    I like the first one more, am I weird?
    - toast0 7y ago
      The first one isn't Mac like --- the menu bar doesn't go on the top of the window. I don't necessarily think that's great, but that's the way it should be on a Mac.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  > How do Qt projects look + feel when ported to Mac OS X? They're in the uncanny valley.
  - bjoli 7y ago
    a lot of apps look non-native on os X, with apple starting the trend of ignoring their own HIGs about 5 years ago. I don't really mind, since osx happens to be my daily driver since about a year, but whenever people claim that osx is visually coherent I can't shake the feeling they are stuck in 1998 and Mac os 8.
    - chrisseaton 7y ago
      Looking different is ok. The problem is that Qt and other cross-platform frameworks tend to look glitchy, as in their differences are non-intentional and jarring. They also tend to just look pretty old-fashioned, because these frameworks are pretty old now and the controls, layouts, and workflows they provide are a bit old-fashioned. So the first impression you get for software using Qt is old and glitchy. Which isn't great.
      - jcelerier 7y ago
        > So the first impression you get for software using Qt is old and glitchy. honest question, is that the impression you get from using the Blizzard launcher (https://media.mmo-champion.com/images/news/2013/june/launcher03.jpg https://media.mmo-champion.com/images/news/2013/june/launche...) or stuff like Substance ? (https://www.awn.com/sites/default/files/image/featured/1015753-allegorithmic-releases-substance-painter-beta-steam.jpg https://www.awn.com/sites/default/files/image/featured/10157...)
      - magduf 7y ago
        What's wrong with something looking "old-fashioned"? That seems to be better from my point of view. I just finally got switched to Windows 10 on my work computer. Every time I start up a simple calculator, it takes up most of the space on my gigantic 27" QHD screen! Do they think I'm blind or something? The old Windows 7 calculator looked just fine and was an appropriate size.
- baybal2 7y ago
  > GTK3 are... to be avoided for new projects / dead? Despite rooting for GTK, I think this is where it is going. A lot of criticism as of late was that GTK is turning from a Gimp ToolKit into a Gnome ToolKit, and you can see how dramatic was the drop in mindshare has been since that trend started. Just like Gnome didn't really survive the 3.0 transition because the project been really stolen by thew few people who force fed Gnome Shell onto the wider community, the GTK did not survive the transition from GimpTK to GnomeTK.
  - pengaru 7y ago
    It's more like the gnome people picked up abandoned torches.
    - bronson 7y ago
      The existence of MATE indicates the torches were never abandoned.
      - pengaru 7y ago
        Only if you conflate the users with the existing pool of GTK/GNOME developers and maintainers of the time. I'm thrilled to see that fork attract enough new talent to apparently maintain itself and meet the needs of what's a relatively small fraction of linux desktop users.
  - markstos 7y ago
    Didn't survive? The most popular desktop distro, Ubuntu, switched their DE from Unity to Gnome.
- cycloptic 7y ago
  I think GTK3 will still be viable for a least a few more years. It's currently in maintenance mode -- no new features will be added, and all feature development is happening in git master in preparation for the GTK4 release. The first release of GTK4 is currently planned for this fall.
- aasasd 7y ago
  > How do Qt projects look + feel when ported to Mac OS X? I haven't seen any cross-platform toolkits that abide by Mac standards. Funny enough, the closest is Mozilla's toolkit. Other than that, there are always telltale signs—e.g. no one seems to grok Mac's toolbars even though they're organized by the basic laws of proximity and grouping. Qt apps have the lazy grid toolbars just crammed from left to right, occasionally with extra-large icons for the ‘designy’ look, and always with colorful icons unless something app-specific is made (like in Calibre). Plus the noisy dividers. Also, since Qt handles all the graphics and input, it has to reimplement everything high-level that the systems provide out of the box, and presumably to track changes in all of that. Hence the past bugs of one-pixel offsets between elements where they can't be in the system. And the present non-support for system-wide key rebinding on Mac—e.g., home/end instead of cmd-left/right. But yeah, Qt is better than something like not-obsessively-tuned Swing. As for GTK, it seems to depend a lot on the author specifically not forgetting to bundle the native-look theme.
  - torstenvl 7y ago
    wx seems to be sufficiently Mac-like...
    - matthewbauer 7y ago
      Doesn't wx just use GTK under the hood?
      - zerr 7y ago
        On Linux, yes. On Mac it uses Cocoa and on Windows - Win32 API. i.e. it is a wrapper for native controls.
    - aasasd 7y ago
      Alas, can't speak in regard to that, because I've never seen a Wx app aside from a few smallish Python projects— which I think I only passed by on Github, nodding appreciatively and then not running any of them.
- pojntfx 7y ago
  NO. GTK has really been getting more and more import for FLOSS as the Librem 5 and the vast majority (Ubuntu switched to GNOME by default, so GNOME is now the default on - Ubuntu - Fedora - OpenSUSE - Debian - CentOS - ... GTK+ since version 3 is really neat. They rust re-did the site as well: https://www.gtk.org https://www.gtk.org
- lmm 7y ago
  Qt was always the better practical choice, and its license issues were sorted out decades ago. Couple that with a world where choosing C over C++ makes less and less sense (compilers having got a lot better) and the writing has been on the wall for years now.
puzzlingcaptcha 7y ago
They did have a GTK3 port at one point (audacious 3.5) but walked back from it: https://audacious-media-player.org/news/32-audacious-3-6-released https://audacious-media-player.org/news/32-audacious-3-6-rel... https://redmine.audacious-media-player.org/boards/1/topics/1269 https://redmine.audacious-media-player.org/boards/1/topics/1...

randyrand 7y ago

Any screenshots?

MawKKe 7y ago
I just built it on ubuntu 18.04. It looks pretty much identical to the native 3.9 version, except for icons. FYI anyone reading this, take a backup of your $HOME/.config/audacious before trying the new version. It did something funny there and no files would play on the old version anymore...
jccalhoun 7y ago
there's one on the front page: https://audacious-media-player.org/ https://audacious-media-player.org/
- cpach 7y ago
  According to the filename, that is an old version of Audacious (3.6).

overgard 7y ago

GTK integration in terms of look and feel on windows and macos has been so bad for so long that I think the only valid use case for it is if you're targeting gnome specifically.

edgarvm 7y ago
Qt's license and cost is another valid reason to continue developing on GTK
- emilsedgh 7y ago
  Qt is free and LGPL for Audacious, any other FOSS app, or any other project that is not looking to ship a patched version of Qt.
  - slavik81 7y ago
    It's even free if you want to ship a patched version of Qt, as long as you also share the modified Qt code.
- mixedCase 7y ago
  All the important parts of Qt are available under LGPLv3. This only makes a difference to you if you want to do Tivoization of your software (Gtk uses LGPLv2, this being the only major difference AFAIK). In which case you still have the option to buy a commercial license.
  - jjoonathan 7y ago
    Yeeeeahhh.... at the moment. They have gotten really aggressive about commercial licensing recently, and even a conservative extrapolation should give one pause. Today they might limit themselves to forced registration, SEO, and spamming business contacts with carefully crafted statements designed to stir fear, uncertainty, and doubt around free licenses by strongly suggesting (without actually claiming) that commercial use without a commercial license is illegal. But tomorrow? Also, keep in mind that a business partner who isn't already familiar with Qt and LGPL is going to be about 10x more susceptible to the FUD. That's the whole idea. My guess: 30% chance of an ugly fork and lots of drama in the next few years. Then, absent a change in direction, another 30% chance in the few years after that, and so on.

ssivark 7y ago

Back in the day when I used desktop music players on linux I cycled through a whole bunch: Audacious, Rhythmbox, Banshee, Amarok, Songbird(Mozilla!), Moc(Oh, so minimal!), Cmus, mpd (server/client), and probably more that I'm forgetting now. Feel a touch nostalgic for the uncomplicated time when I had music on my devices, regularly "organized my music library" and could play whatever whenever, and shared them with friends. I can still rummage through my old disks and spin up some of that music from time to time. Mostly use cloud players these days; crazy to imagine that there's nothing I can do if my favorite song/recording today is not available ten years later!

nine_k 7y ago
Buy music, don't rent it. Pay for downloadable files, or for physical media if you are into it. This is rather widely available.
- RussianCow 7y ago
  It's significantly more expensive if you listen to a wide range of music. Buying albums, or even just individual songs, can very quickly surpass the $10/month you pay for Spotify. Maybe that's worth it to you, but I can't blame most people for just paying for a subscription.
  - KozmoNau7 7y ago
    The issue is control. Albums are regularly disappearing from the Spotify catalogue, sometimes reappearing later. Sometimes specific albums in a band's history are missing because that particular label doesn't have an agreement with Spotify. And you never know if it's a crappy modern brickwalled remaster. Not to mention the woefully bad curation, mixed up artists, incorrect genres/years, you name it. With music you buy, you are in control. It's about quality over quantity.
    - distances 7y ago
      Same with video streaming. With Netflix you aren't guaranteed the show won't suddenly just disappear before you finish it -- happened multiple times for me. I've been partly going back to Blu-ray for better availability and picture quality. Netflix is still very good for exploratory watching though, but Blu-ray is very very good for stuff like classic HBO series and BBC nature documentaries.

rubyn00bie 7y ago

Kind of a tangent, but why switch from GTK to Qt 5? Or rather, why Qt 5 rather than some other cross platform UI framework or even GTK 3? Is it ease of porting it for new features compared to something else? And/or is Qt just that much nicer to use?

paride5745 7y ago
GTK3 is becoming very GNOME3 specific, while Qt5 is still agnostic and easy to port on different platforms.
- cycloptic 7y ago
  Can you elaborate? If you're talking about the client-side decorations in GTK, those are up to the app developer to choose if they want them or not.
  - ori_b 7y ago
    As a user, I don't want them, and I don't want the app developer to make that choice for me.
    - arghwhat 7y ago
      The developers makes every decision on how an application works and looks (It's part of the code). The top row of pixels is no different.
      - infinity0 7y ago
        It feels like everyone someone voices an opinion about GTK3 explaining why they don't like it, some GTK3 fanboy has to chime in questioning the opinion and implying it isn't rational. Yeah, this makes me want to stick with GTK3 even less. People don't have to explain their preferences in a rational way, they will just switch away from GTK3. It's cheaper. Successful developers will try to interpret these users' feedback in a self-critical, introspective and positive way, and tweak their product based on the feedback. As opposed to continually challenging the giver of the feedback to explain their opinion in more detail, as if by repeatedly digging deeper and deeper into an opinion, you will at some point find some fundamental logical contradiction in their views that will make them re-evaluate their life philosophy on why they just don't like GTK3. I for one think the two opinions given above are perfectly clear ("GTK3 is becoming very GNOME3 specific", "As a user, I don't want them") and can't see why further clarification is being requested. If you really need clarification on these perfectly clear opinions, it is your problem.

modzu 7y ago

just posting to say thank u and share some love for audacious

aasasd 7y ago

It's alive! Which reminds me, foobar2000's Mac port seems to be chugging along—though not open-source.

Paianni 7y ago

Cross-platform toolkits are the lazy way. Good quality graphical apps are available in derivatives that match the interface guidelines and optimum toolkits/APIs of their platforms.

betenoire 7y ago
I think I have a similar preference, but lazy and good are not mutually exclusive
- DagAgren 7y ago
  In this case, though, they are. There are no good cross platform UI kits, and there probably never will be.
  - dependenttypes 7y ago
    > There are no good cross platform UI kits Qt is one.
    - DagAgren 7y ago
      It is very, very far from "good" on macOS.
    - ptx 7y ago
      It's certainly the best one IMHO, but not necessarily good.
simonh 7y ago
Good quality graphical apps sounds great, but do those exist for every single use case? Unfortunately not. It doesn’t matter how great the native graphical sketching apps on MacOS and Windows are, that isn’t going to help me when what I want to do is analyse packet captures. That’s when I reach for Wireshark, and do so full of appreciation to the devs for the excellent tool they have provided. Would it be better us every platform I use it in had an equally high quality fully native port with full feature parity across platforms? Sure, but I also understand the huge extra commitment of resources that would require, so I’m content to let them choose the trade off that works for them.

toastercup 7y ago

Audacious is pretty slick (especially with this latest release), but lacks the features that foobar2000 has that I need (namely, a directory/folder view that can replace the active playlist when clicked). If anyone is looking for a decent foobar2000 alternative, Foobnix (https://github.com/foobnix/foobnix https://github.com/foobnix/foobnix) has worked really well for me. It has some rough edges and doesn't seem (that) actively maintained, but it gets the important stuff right. Haven't come across anything else quite like it for Linux yet, unfortunately. If there was a foobar-like folder view plugin for Audacious, I'd switch to it in a heartbeat.

Arnavion 7y ago
I just run foobar2000 under wine. The font rendering is a bit iffy (some lines of text get clipped horizontally and vertically, as if the calculated dimensions are smaller than the rendered dimensions), but it doesn't bother me enough to investigate. That said, most of my music listening these days has been pointing mpv at an internet radio steam.
- toastercup 7y ago
  Yeah, foobar2000 has worked well under Wine for me in the past. It doesn't work as well when playing music from my NAS via NFS, though..
MavropaliasG 7y ago
Try clementine
justaj 7y ago
Have you tried DeaDBeeF Player? It was supposedly created as an alternative to Foobar2000 https://github.com/DeaDBeeF-Player/deadbeef https://github.com/DeaDBeeF-Player/deadbeef

newscracker 7y ago

I always appreciate the perseverance and dedication of FOSS developers and teams. They bring a lot to the table for a whole lot of people. But something about the fonts and the UI layout always puts me off (primarily) Linux targeted (or developed) applications. Even Windows 10 doesn’t use good fonts, IMO. I don’t know why developers can’t use good native fonts or bundle some good free fonts with the application, while also having better laid out UIs. We live in the age of 4K monitors (though most people are still on 1080p or lower) and smartphones with pretty good screens that many users are used to, and yet we have applications that look like they were developed two decades ago. Even large efforts like LibreOffice aren’t immune to these deficiencies. I’m not arguing for form over function, but definitely see a need for getting more UI designers into FOSS (I’m not one, so my contributions are limited to monetary donations to projects I like or use). To reiterate, this is not to put down the humongous efforts (which many a times remain thankless or not adequate for putting food on the table) of FOSS developers.

nkkollaw 7y ago
Most FOSS contributors are devs, and might even despite design. They definitely prefer functionality over looks.

rudilee 7y ago

Seems like the Qt5 front-end is just set as the default one, and the GTK front-end will be deprecated. There wasn't really any noticeable difference between both from the usability comparison in my opinion.

strategarius 7y ago

Natural selection in action. If you don't put enough effort for your framework to catch up modern language features and design principles, users would consider something else.