Linux Multimedia Hacks

Try Rhythmbox

Use Rhythmbox to manage your audio collection much like the iTunes audio player.

There are many different approaches to audio players under Linux. Some players focus on minimalism, others focus on features, and some aim to provide similar functionality to a media player on another platform. Rhythmbox falls into the latter category, as it was created to provide an iTunes-like interface for audio under Linux.

Rhythmbox is a popular package, and most major distributions package it. If your distribution doesn’t, you can download the source from the official project page at http://www.rhythmbox.org and compile and install it yourself.

To start Rhythmbox, launch it from your application menu or type rhythmbox in a console. The first time you run it, Rhythmbox will take you through an initial configuration wizard so it can find your music files. This step is optional, but I recommend you go through the full wizard so that Rhythmbox can find your files.

After you are finished with the wizard, Rhythmbox will begin scanning your entire MP3 collection (or other media files) for its internal database. Instead of organizing your collection by directory path, Rhythmbox organizes your collection based on the ID3 tags it finds in your MP3s or Oggs, so you can quickly build collections or find songs based on the artist or album. The initial scanning process can be a bit time consuming (ten to thirty minutes, depending on your machine and the size of your collection), and you can watch ...