Amarok 2 (new version of a Linux music player) sucks just as much as old Amarok rocked. A lot of major functionality regressions, not to mention screwed up, less configurable user interface (as of 2.1, you can't even fully disable this stupid 'context' panel in middle, let alone use system skin).
That's really sad. It takes intelligence to fix or improve something that's broken or missing. Fixing other people's bugs is not easy, as well as addition of new functionality. Whereas fucking up user interfaces is very easy and every moron can do that; partial 'rewrites' with lot of regressions are relatively easy as well. So when
morons take over when transmissible zombie-like insanity takes over the developers, naturally, there's always huge user interface redesign, lot of fixing of things that are not broken, and lot of regressions in functionality, all while nothing that's broken gets fixed. If I were more paranoid, I'd think KDE4 in general is being sabotaged, but as it is I think it's just got damaged by it's own popularity. (edit: Sorry for the harsh language, but that's how development looks from outside when there is a huge usability regression in a 'stable' release; I don't mean bugs and lack of support for various things [evidently ipods are supported now], I mean craziness like, for example, not reimplementing quite successful layout, but rather trying various totally weird stuff like putting 'context' in the centre, in the way of drag and drop path. Rewrites for new frameworks do not have to result in SO massive usability regression; there's no reason not to reimplement old layout at least until new layout is designed)
Instructions for getting Amarok 1.4 back, for Mandriva:
- Set up repositories for mandriva 2009.0 , via easyurpmi
- Install Amarok 1.4.10 through package manager
- As root, edit /etc/urpmi/skip.list , and add /^amarok/ to prevent auto'updates'.
Similar instructions may work for other RPM based distros.
"So when morons take over, naturally, there's always huge user interface redesign, lot of fixing of things that are not broken, and lot of regressions in functionality, all while nothing that's broken gets fixed."
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately for your otherwise very efficient rant, no one has "taken over" Amarok, most of the core developers are the same that brought you Amarok 1.
So why you are obviously not happy with the current state and/or direction of Amarok 2, as per your own instructions, Amarok 1.4.10 is still available and will alway be so.
With Amarok 2 we decided to take some radical changes. We were facing a complete rewrite in any case to get it running with Qt 4, and many parts of Amarok, such as the old playlist, was such a mess that porting it to Qt 4's model/view architecture would have been next to impossible. Also, many developers felt that Amarok 1.4 was as good as that particular breed of application could ever be so in order to stay motivated, it was decided to try to take the lessons learned from Amarok 1 and move to a platform where we could leave behind some of the constraints of the 1.4 series.
Yes, this was painful and yes, we are still getting the last of the missing features from 1.4 in place and yes, some things will never work quite the same way as it did in 1.4, but we now have a larger more motivated developer team than ever, we are progressing faster, and we have a framework where we can actually build the cool features that we have been thinking about for a long time but could not add to Amarok 1.4.x without causing major breakage or bloat. This is of course without mentioning all of the cool features that are already present in 2.x that Amarok 1 never had.
Of cause doing such a major change is risky, and we knew that we would loose some users along the way, but while 2.0.x was really rough and likely should not have been included as the default in any major distros, 2.1.1 is actually quite usable and as we mature Amarok 2, hopefully some of those users will find their way back, and many new users will be gained. From a "project health" perspective, it was absolutely the right thing to do as we now have cleaner and much more manageable code, more developers, more motivation and a world of possibilities for trying to stand out from the crowd in a crowded world of media players.
"no one has "taken over" Amarok"
ReplyDeleteAre old core developers still majority? It does look from outside like development has totally derailed, has lost key contributors or those lost the influence when it comes to user interface design, or motivation to control the user interface design. Especially if you got larger 'more motivated' team.
"most of the core developers are the same that brought you Amarok 1"
I'm actually going to check that sometime.
"that porting it to Qt 4's model/view architecture would have been next to impossible".
Surely, you're not trying to say it would be impossible not to screw up the user interface, not to add ridiculous stuff like 'context' panel in the middle, not to implement custom skin before basic functionality? Why the hell cannot that panel be disabled entirely, with just 1 splitter between play queue and library? What's about dock-able panels which you dock any way you like?
A media player quality is not so much matter of coding as matter of user interface design. Which had gone down the drain. Amarok 1.4 was excellent, Amarok 2 is merely average (or rather, median) - and median sucks.
"in order to stay motivated"...
Indeed, there is a motivation boost rewriting thing entirely anew. Whenever that is a good thing though... It doesn't seem to affect motivation to reimplement stuff that was already done, to fix regressions, etc. so much.
BTW, do you guys even realize that a successful user interface is worth something?
ReplyDeleteThe double-click to queue, easy queue and playlist management, etc. It was quite ground-breaking, in terms of usability. Lot better than creating new queue and drag-n-dropping, for example. System theme in the days of fancy themed players, as well.
What new things in Amarok 2 are similarly ground-breaking in terms of usability? Frankly, I see none. Dockable everything (custom layouts) would perhaps make it worthwhile, but as it is, UI seems unable to even remove context panel from the centre.
BTW I see its improving somewhat lately - you got dock-able pretty much everything (very recently), and layouts can be locked. Good job on that, perhaps when it's stable, Amarok would be good again (if useless stuff can be removed and layout can be made sensible). But if you make 2.2 be third 'stable unusable' release in the row, you're totally doomed.
ReplyDelete"I'm actually going to check that sometime."
ReplyDeleteFeel free, I stand by that one! :-) While we also have many new contributors, many of the old guard are still around (Mark, Seb, Ean, Leo, Jeff, Martin, Dan*2, ...) as for myself, I am sort of semi old guard as I joined development around 1.4.3.
"Surely, you're not trying to say it would be impossible not to screw up the user interface, not to add ridiculous stuff like 'context' panel in the middle, not to implement custom skin before basic functionality? Why the hell cannot that panel be disabled entirely, with just 1 splitter between play queue and library? What's about dock-able panels which you dock any way you like?"
No, not impossible, but a lot of work. And as I stated previously, no one was motivated to do all this work and simply end up with a Qt 4 clone of Amarok 1.4.x. (after 2.0.0 was released there have been many people talking about wanting to do a Qt 4 port of Amarok 1.4.x, but after actually looking into the amount of work this would entail, no one has been willing to actually try).
It is also worth mentioning that the original concept of Amarok 2 was created long before we actually started working on it. While you can feel free to blame me for much of the new stuff in Amarok 2, the basic ideas were drawn up long before I joined the project. Putting the context view in the center is actually the cornerstone of these ideas, as many felt that the context information in 1.4.x was what really set Amarok apart from other, similar players. It was felt that we would rather try something new to set us apart from the other players that were all becoming very good, even on part with Amarok 1.4.x, even if this entails a risk of failure, than to simply be one of the pack of players that all mainly look and work basically the same way.
I will admit that the context view has so far not lived up to its full potential OR the overall vision we had of it) in any of the Amarok 2 releases, as it has proven more work than anticipated to get it "right", but for 2.2 it is looking to take a giant step forwards, especially thanks to a new contributor who is spitting out cool new context applets at an amazing rate and tweaking the context panel in general to look and work much better.
Oh, and lastly, in 2.1.1 there is an option to disable the context view, and in the upcoming 2.2 it can be moved, tabbed together with another panel, floating or disabled completely as you see fit.
I tried to disable context view in 2.1.1 . I still have a panel here which can be made small but not removed.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate that you guys are trying to make a better player than Amarok 1.x. Had it been named properly (as Something 0.1) you would get compliments and no rants.
"Putting the context view in the center is actually the cornerstone of these ideas"
I almost can't believe that Mark who came up with 'twin panel' concept came up with this third unrelated panel in-between two related panels (in-between drag source and drag target, even).
Though its not so inconceivable considering that twin panel UI came from Norton Commander and is not truly original idea.
Do you at least realize now that after you post a video about few new features with dockability last, and people's response is largely "Hurray, at last I'll be able to disable context!", some re-thinking has to be done?
"as many felt that the context information in 1.4.x was what really set Amarok apart from other, similar players"
Yes and many felt that it was overall usability which did really set Amarok apart from all the winamp/itunes/etc clones.
"No, not impossible, but a lot of work. And as I stated previously, no one was motivated to do all this work and simply end up with a Qt 4 clone of Amarok 1.4.x."
Yep, so your layout is closer to itunes (playback controls on the topleft, etc).
"I tried to disable context view in 2.1.1 . I still have a panel here which can be made small but not removed.."
ReplyDeleteThere is a checkbox in the settings menu for disabling the view completely. Not a really pretty solution, but as the entire layouting system changes for 2.2 it is really just a small holdover.
"Do you at least realize now that after you post a video about few new features with dockability last, and people's response is largely "Hurray, at last I'll be able to disable context!", some re-thinking has to be done?"
Imo, this is really a case of the sucess of Amarok 1 being our worst enemy when trying to do something new. Since many people are very used to Amarok 1, any change we make will have some people wanting the old look and feel back.
We still believe strongly in the context view but we have taken the feedback seriously, which is why there is not an option to disable it and it will be completely rearrangable in 2.2. in fact, between the playlist layout editor, dockable panels and the new playlist searchig stuff being worked on, you can make Amarok 2.2 look and work almost like 1.4 if that is what you really want. This is not going to be our default or even a reccomended mode, but its simply a side effect of the great flexibility that we are building into the application.
"There is a checkbox in the settings menu for disabling the view completely."
ReplyDeleteMust have missed it. Don't want to install 2.1.1 again.
"Imo, this is really a case of the sucess of Amarok 1 being our worst enemy when trying to do something new."
It was Amarok's team decision to use name of a media player for, I dunno, brand new "context viewer".
2.2 might be usable as media player, judging by the video, when it comes out I'll try it. For now, I'm fixing a bug in Exaile. Right now.
Just a quick addition:
ReplyDeleteThere is ipod support in Amarok 2. Just plug in your ipod and mount it. Wait a few seconds and it should show up a new collection.
My point is, things like bugs and problems with media devices* are a totally understandable and excusable result of rewrite. Unlike just abandoning good user interface that's associated with Amarok name.
ReplyDelete*no, I didn't check 2.1.1 with ipod. I know 2.02 did not work [from a friend], and I have crappy creative zen thing which has severe problems with libmtp. I know it isn't amarok that deserves praise or blame for device integration.
Moving to Amarok 2 was such a big mistake!! My album art is messed up, my ipod is no longer recognized, it has trouble importing all my songs (skips songs in certain albums) worse user interface (bring back the double-click to queue, or at least give an option to change things, it's ridiculous how little settings are available...)
ReplyDeleteSeriously, this is 0.2 not 2.1 !
Amarok 2 sucks so bad that I'm leaving Linux alltogether... It was the one app that had me willing to beat my head against the constant Linux driver headaches, etc but now that it sucks, Windows 7 looks appealing now.
ReplyDeleteI am forced to agree with this. Amarok 1.4.x had a great UI and lots of features. The 2.x branch so far has been a major regression with lots of UI tweeks that don't make a lot of sense. Why the enormous buttons? Why the loss of the mc style layout that made the older versions very simple and efficient to use? That context panel is worthless, even with the ability to hide it now, you still have all the unneeded menu animation and such things that only serve to slow things down and reduce usability. I had used amarok for several years, but now that the 2.x branch is what's out there, I suppose I'll be forced to look at exaile as an alternative, even though I'm sure it doesn't have many features that Amarok 1.4.x has, but unfortunately 1.4.x is a dead end.
ReplyDeleteThe UI is really what kills it for me, I could accept the argument that features will trickle back into the application, but the UI is just clunky and non-intuitive. It's nearly as bad as iTunes now.
2 cents from an irritable Debian 'sid' user:
ReplyDeleteAnalogy: Amarok 1.4 was like a Pizza with everything; Amarok 2.x is like a slab of white bread toped with ketchup and sour cream then baked.
So far what I hate most is shuffling a playlist -- can't be done, or at least it's not obvious after futzing around for many frustrating minutes. (Even getting a sorted playlist to play in shuffle mode is unintuitive and ugly.) Fail, fail, fail...
Nothing against innovative coders starting fresh, but they should never give a radical experiment a standard name. And Debian sucks for making worthless 2.x replace functional 1.4.
Plenty of apologetic blather circulating about the underlying code improvement, how unmaintainable and ugly it was; maybe so, but one sin shouldn't justify another.
on my mandriva 2010.0 amarok 2 looks broken (the middle panel has text overlapping buttons), album art is never downloaded, artist info is never displayed, lyrics are never displayed.
ReplyDeleteso basically I ignore the middle panel alltogether.
however I don't seem to be able to do the same queuing and searching I'm used to on the playlist panel.
and finally it crashes, it hangs and it consumes crazy amount of CPU power.
since mandriva switched stopped providing amarok 1 I ended up not listening to music less and less (and wasting more time looking for alternatives).
until last week I did the configure old repos trick and I'm back to using amarok 1.4
I can't imagine how anyone would defend amarok 2 (kde 4 is full of annoying regressions but at least u can understand what the developers are trying to achieve, with amarok 2 it feels like madness).
Aside from all the truth everybody else has already brought out in this thread (especially the pizza analogy), I, for one, cannot recall a single case where Amarok 1.4.x just stopped playing sound on me for no reason...
ReplyDeleteI agree - I've stuck with Amarok 1.4 after various bad experiences trying out the 2.0 version.
ReplyDelete"I, for one, cannot recall a single case where Amarok 1.4.x just stopped playing sound on me for no reason..."
ReplyDeleteI actually do get this problem with Amarok 1.4. It happens to me several times a day. It must have something to do with the Xine engine PulseAudio, so it's not directly an Amarok problem. In any case, the reason that it happens to me several times a day with Amarok 1.4 is that I use Amarok 1.4 all day because Amarok 2 is simply not up to the job. It's not as bad as it was a few months ago, and not being able to import podcasts from 1.4 is not too serious, but being unable to index files with spaces in their names is not exactly a great usability plus.
What would help would be if the Amarok developers were to be more candid about the problems. I have had to uninstall Amarok 2 completely in order to install 1.4, so I'm not going to reinstall it until I feel confident the problem has been solved. Honest information and projections from the developers would be helpful in this regard.
I too highly dislike the "new" Amarok. Simply put the older version was more feature rich, and simply easier to use.
ReplyDeleteBlah on A-2.x!!!!
So will it be back to at least its formal self in 3.x?
The only reason Amarok radically changed is because it is so tightly tied to kde that whan kde radically changes it forces all apps tied to kde to radically change.
ReplyDeleteAmarok does suck now and it's sad to see people who can't write their own libraries for fetching and playing music and have to rely on libkde to make an application.
I was a long time KDE user. What really put me off was the force-fed KDE4x bullshit they pulled on us.
ReplyDeleteAnd Amarok... no equalizer? seriously WTF? Well hope you all are satisfied with the 7 people who are left with the POS you are so proud of. Fail!
Thanks for all the fish!
I used 2.* for a while until this update of Ubuntu, and now a large number of bugs have appeared for no obvious reason. Time to switch back to 1.4...
ReplyDeleteThe problem is the changes to the UI were made with no thought at all. It is change for changes sake.
ReplyDeleteAmarok 2 sucks ass.
After using Amarok 2 for a year and waiting and waiting I am looking for a different player. Amarok 1 was simply amazing. Amarok 2 is the worst piece of trash I have ever forced myself to use. Complete G A R B A G E.
ReplyDeleteI am using (well trying) to use Amarok 2 on Ubuntu. I like Linux, but I am not the real kinda geek spending hours of installing stuff and being obsessed by config files.
ReplyDeleteWell, getting software up and running is really straightforward these days on Ubuntu, except for Amarok 2. Well, a fried told me about it, that it is sooo great. It is not!
First of all, there is this issue about phonon backends. Why should the user care about that? Is it that complicated to deal with that?
Then there is the problem of zombie processes, which are started immediately after you have started Amarok 2. Great.
And finally there is a bunch of extra tiny error messages in the lower right corner, which disappear by themselves. Awesome experience, the whole thing does not work, and it will not tell you clear error messages.
Amarok 2 really reminds me of the really bad old days, when some Linux people would not talk to you, once you told them you are still using the shit of Microsoft.
Amarok 2 developers, you seem to have developed a great piece of software, except for the fact it does not work very reliably.
I had Amarok working fine until the latest K3b updates group, at which point anytime I invoked Amarok, it crashed. Not impressed.
ReplyDeleteAmarok2 sucks because mysql is a toy database. I can't imagine why the hek postgres is not more supported.
ReplyDeleteThe worst thing about amarok2 is its interface. An interface should make it easier to use the app, not harder (discounting learning the interface). Also, I really miss the context that lists similar songs...
ReplyDeletemmm... Clementine
ReplyDeleteI can finally listen to music all day again.
I see that this is now a rather old thread but, as Dmytry pointed out there was a working interface that everyone liked. The developers feel a need to change it because they want to program. The users wants what is successful. Had this been a business, and many businesses make the same mistake, they would have gone under because of this interesting idea of having to change it even if it's not better.
ReplyDeleteThere is a manic need to continuously change things. You see things peek and then turn downhill. I've noticed it in most industries; Must change something!...
Take the fiasco with KMail. It was my all time favorite mail client, and I've been computing since long before there was an internet, and used them across many platforms. With KMail the developers wanted to continue coding and came up with these ideas that at least on paper looked like a good improvement. Unfortunately there was no project manager who was exterior to their desires and simply looked at user pro's and con's.
The result, implementing a beta database solution for all the email. Which caused severe data and access damage to a huge amount of people.
When these type of changes are done they need to be user optional during install (and after).
With KMail it was even worse because mail is so vital. Messing with peoples email like they did was an astonishing example of low responsibility. No warning, just wham!
After a week of no reliable email I switched to Thunderbird. Which is not a great replacement if you really liked KMail. But it works. More adult people maybe, who know not to aim at both feet and fire, just because of an urge to code and change things.
The way you do it is to offer a new development version for those who want to try it out. Then default to true and tested.
What's so ironic here is that while Amarok cannot tell who is playing, the volume control tells me who and what the song is.
There is one and only one saving grace for Amarok at this moment. The fact that I can change the volume with the wheel on my mouse. For some odd reason that has not caught on with other players.
Holy #$%$% I just tried KDE on the weekend and started up Amarok.
ReplyDeleteWTF is this thing? I couldnt figure out how to make or see a playlist.
I COULDNT EVEN FIND THE PLAY BUTTON!!!
Amarok is hands down the worst interface I've ever seen.
I had a song by Ott playing and it gave me a huge text field in the center... for the wrong band!
Also, it has no progress indicator. I imported one of my directories and it sat there for half an hour (40k files) looking like it had hung the computer. Just wanted to vent. There are some good features in this player but the default setting is unreal it is so bad.
Developers, you blew it completely with 2.X.
ReplyDeleteIt's time to switch to something else, probably Clementine player...
Thanks for the great time I had with 1.4 and good bye!