Include projectM with Amarok 2.0!

Mon Mar 19 14:12:10 UTC 2007

Well its the distros job to include stuff like ProjectM. And really I
think Kubuntu et. all probably should. Feel free to bug them about it.
;)

For Windows and Mac the distro is whoever makes a binary, so I think
you make a good point: they certainly should make bundling projectm a
priority.

Ian

On 3/18/07, dexomsrc <dexomsrc at ornia.hampshire.edu> wrote:
>
>
> Hello...
>
> Okay, so I'm fairly certain the e-mail list is the best place to raise
> discussion about this, as IRC seems a bit fleeting for what I have to say.
> First off I think it's inevitable that Amarok is going to completely
> obliterate iTunes marketshare once Mac OS X and Windows versions are
> released.  I've been using Amarok for some time now, and watching its growth
> has been nothing short of impressive and delightful.  There are so many
> areas I can easily sell people on what a great music program it is, and it
> truly is somewhat of a killer app for GNU/Linux.
>
> In short, I want to make a feature request for version 2.0; something that
> wouldn't require a new feature being created from scratch persay, but taking
> a preexisting project and merging it with the Amarok codebase.  I feel as if
> this is the best route of action when compared to other options for reasons
> I will explain below, and I feel very strongly that this is something that
> will raise the appeal of Amarok to a significant degree.  I feel as if the
> projectM visualization plugin should be part of Amarok itself, shipped with
> the project in addition to the already existing libvisual support (so people
> can add their own plugins of course).
>
> First off, why do I feel as if this is something that should be bundled with
> Amarok in the first place?  Well, I'm a college student and a big Free
> software advocate: I switch anyone of my peers' computers over to GNU/Linux
> from a proprietary operating system for free and promise free tech support
> after that.  Through doing this a number of times to various people's
> desktops, MacBooks, and Dell/HP/whatever laptops, I've gained an
> increasingly rounded sense of what is solid about the GNU/Linux desktop
> experience in 2007 and what needs more work.  I'm very glad to say that
> Amarok is pretty much universally loved over iTunes, especially after I bowl
> them over with the list of features it has.  Unfortunately only those
> prepared to make the switch to GNU/Linux get to use it, but that will change
> in time.
>
> There are a number of things that I've noticed are extremely pivotal in
> enticing people to switch to GNU/Linux: Beryl is likely one of the most
> significant projects of recent times that makes it very easy to show people
> the benefits of the Free Software community and development process if
> explained in the correct context.  People always ask what it is I'm running
> to be able to do such advanced and cool effects with my desktop.  But aside
> from that, the second most asked-about element of my software configuration
> is undoubtedly my music visualization program.  I run Debian and have the
> libvisual and libvisual-dev packages and downloaded and compiled the
> projectM 0.99 source against the libvisual headers so I can use it with
> Amarok.  I choose projectM because before Debian+Amarok I ran Windows
> 2000+Winamp and got a healthy taste of Milkdrop within Winamp and the
> existence of a Milkdrop reimplemantation for non-Winamp platforms aided my
> decision to switch to GNU/Linux.  Anybody who has seen Milkdrop/projectM
> (they look essentially the same and use the same .milk preset files) in
> action pretty much agrees hands down that it's the best music visualizer
> around.
>
> See these for screenshots (still images do this no justice though, one must
> experience it with the element of time):
> http://xmms-projectm.sourceforge.net/shots.html
> http://www.milkdrop.co.uk/screenshots.htm
> http://www.nullsoft.com/free/milkdrop/screenshots.html
>
> I leave projectM on a lot in my dorm, and one of the first things that
> people usually say is "Wow, this is wwwaayy better than the iTunes
> visualizer."  I smile, and reply that yes, it is... and it's Free Software
> to boot!  I then explain to them about Amarok and how much better of a music
> program it is, drawing the analogy that projectM is to the iTunes visualizer
> as Amarok is to iTunes itself.  I get asked a lot if my visualizer only
> works with Amarok, or if they can get it as well without first switching
> operating systems.  Now, projectM is indeed cross-platform so I usually
> reply with the truth that you don't need Amarok to run it, but the problem
> arises when people do get Amarok and they expect it to also have the awesome
> visualizer that they saw I had.  It ends up that I have to manually compile
> and install projectM for everybody that requests it, which is certainly a
> pain.
>
> Now there are a couple ways to alleviate the problem that I'm experiencing,
> one of which is to get projectM included in the libvisual-plugins package
> for common distributions like Debian and Ubuntu.  This would mean people
> would only need to install that package to get projectM working with Amarok,
> a far better scenario than exists at present.  But through my experiences
> seeing the reactions of literally hundreds of people to this particular
> visualizer, I can't help but try and relay my observations and try to put
> the message across to the developers of Amarok that this is a *huge* deal
> for a lot of people.  Sure, there are many people who don't care one bit
> about music visualization and would never use it in the first place, but
> there is an unignorablely large section of people (in my experiences I'm
> mostly talking about the 17-24 year old demographic, but damn that's an
> important one in terms of technology) who are really attracted to such a
> well-built visualization plugin.
>
> To have projectM built-in to Amarok 2.0 so that it's available out of the
> box as Amarok's own adopted visualizer in the precompiled binaries for
> GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows would be huge.  It would be just another
> element that directly relates to digital music playing where Amarok would
> flatten the competition hands down, something that would only hasten
> Amarok's already inevitable dominance in the digital media playing software
> world.  projectM itself is GPL/LGPLed, and there are hundreds of .milk
> presets that are both included with it and many many more that can be
> downloaded from the Milkdrop website that work
> jhttp://www.milkdrop.co.uk/screenshots.htmust fine with
> projectM itself
>
> I'm still learning how to program, otherwise I'd add it in myself, but I
> want to make the case that from my increasingly extensive firsthand
> experience in a university environment, this is a feature people care about,
> and this is hands down the best visualizer to adopt for Amarok's default
> release.  I'd like to hear what the various developers think about this,
> about the technical feasability along with any more political reasons that
> might be had to avoid or embrace this idea.  I love Amarok and only want the
> best for it, and I think this would be an ideal addition to an already
> stellar project.
>
> Keep going strong on the 2.0 release!
>
> --dexomsrc
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