You may remember my complaint a few weeks ago about the lack of CD burning software (and great multimedia applications in general) for Linux (and specifically GNOME). My real frustration is that I know we have a great multimedia architecture that’s included with the core GNOME release. The problem has been the lack of uses of the architecture on the application level. Well it seems that a lot of that is changing. Right now I’m ripping a CD using sound-juicer, a deliciously simple application. I didn’t have to mess with any preferences except just to change the directory I wanted to save my music files. No fluff, no crap, very usable–how I like it. It can rip a CD into mp3’s, ogg’s (my favourite), and other formats.
Rhythmbox seems to be getting quite nice for those looking for an iTunes-like player. I’ve also been using Jamboree. I like its simple, clean interface.
As for CD burning software, Optimystic looks really nice, but I haven’t had a chance to try it out. What do all these applications have in common? They all use GStreamer to develop a media application for GNOME. And guess what? There are C# bindings. Already a handful of simple multimedia applications have been written in a short time due to GStreamer doing all the work and C# being so productive.
I also read Miguel’s blog entry about PDC. Interesting stuff. I see so much opportunity for the open source community to innovate here. Some of the stuff that will appear in Longhorn, has either been in GNOME for a while, or is already under development. And judging from what I’ve seen of GNOME 2.5 ( the development branch that will become the next stable GNOME release), we’re in for a treat.
Tags: GNOME
