Rhythmbox

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A new addition to Fedora Core is an audio player called Rhythmbox (see Figure 13-6), and it is now the default audio player in Fedora Core for Ogg files. Rhythmbox, using Sound Juicer as its ripper/encoder, is supposed to function pretty much like the Macintosh world’s iTunes application.

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Figure 13-6: The Rhythmbox sound player

Unfortunately, the Rhythmbox music player seems to have been introduced into Fedora Core before its time, as it is still sort of buggy in certain areas. I can’t really recommend it, especially when the tried and true XMMS audio player (which I will get to shortly) is also installed on your system. I will wait for a couple more Rhythmbox upgrades (which will eventually be available via APT) before making it my default audio player.

If you still want to give Rhythmbox a look, by all means do, but just remember that you cannot play MP3 files (at least, not for the time being), and support for Ogg-format Internet radio streams is quirky at best. This really only leaves you with the ability to play the Ogg files on your disks, which Rhythmbox handles quite nicely. Because Rhythmbox is now the default audio player in Fedora Core for Ogg files, all you need to do is double-click on any Ogg file to run it. Alternatively, you can go to the Main menu and select Sound and Video > Music Player.

The first time you run Rhythmbox, you will be greeted by a three-step setup wizard. To get through the first introduction screen, just click Forward. In the second screen (shown in Figure 13-7), you should tell Rhythmbox where it is you keep (or plan to keep) your Ogg files. As you should already have created an ogg folder while following along with this book, use that folder. In the Path input box type /home/username/ogg (or use the Browse button to locate the folder graphically), and then click Forward. Finally, in the third and final screen, just click Apply, and Rhythmbox will scan your ogg folder and add any songs it finds there to its library.

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Figure 13-7: Setting up Rhythmbox

The Rhythmbox Library and Browsers

If you are familiar with Apple’s iTunes, then you should pretty well understand the library in Rhythmbox too, as it is essentially the same concept. Basically, every time you tell Rhythmbox to check your ogg folder for new songs (by going to the File menu and selecting Add to Library), it scans that folder and adds any new songs it finds to its library. You can also add other single audio files, or folders containing such files, by right-clicking the target file or folder and selecting Add to Music Player Library in the pop-up menu. The library is thus, in essence, a database of all the songs you have in your ogg folder and any others that you point Rhythmbox to.

When you want to play songs in Rhythmbox, you just need to click Library in the Source pane on the left side of the program window. This will show all of the songs that you have listed in your library. You can click the play button to start playing them all, or scroll down to a song you want to start with and double- click that.

Of course, as your library grows, this can all become rather problematic — there might be a day when you are feeling a bit more Roxy Music than Britney (and thank goodness for that).

Fortunately Rhythmbox has a nice browser function that allows you to see lists of the artists and albums listed in its library. If you click a specific artist in the Artist pane, a list of albums by that artist will appear in the right pane (see Figure 13-8). You can then double-click one of the albums in that right pane to play it. If you want to play all of the albums you have by that artist, just double- click the artist’s name in the left pane. All in all, a very handy feature.

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Figure 13-8: Selecting music by artist in Rhythmbox

Creating Playlists

Rhythmbox allows you to create playlists, which are your own personalized assortments of songs. To create a playlist, go to the File menu and select New Playlist. A dialog box will then open in which you can give your list a title; then click Create. The new list will appear in the left pane of the Rhythmbox window.

To add songs to your list, just drag the songs you wish to add from the main list to the new playlist icon. Once you are done, click your new playlist, and its contents will then appear in the main list pane. After that, just click the play button to play the songs in your new playlist.



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Linux for Non-Geeks. A Hands-On, Project-Based, Take-It-Slow Guidebook
Linux for Non-Geeks: A Hands-On, Project-Based, Take-It-Slow Guidebook
ISBN: 1593270348
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 188

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