Goggle is my candidate for a lightweight music player
Off the Beat: Bruce Byfield's Blog
Like many people, I've always had a few tracks of music on my computer. However, I've only started taking a strong interest in music players since I started digitalizing my music collection a few months ago. I'm relatively sure that Amarok will handle the 50 or so gigabytes of music that I'll have when I'm done, but for the netbook I'm thinking of buying, I've been looking for something lighter. Currently, I'm thinking that Goggle Music Manager (GMM) may be the lightweight and easy to use player that I need (that's "Goggle," please note, not "Google" -- although, just to add to the confusion, Goggle is hosted on Google).
GMM packages are available for several distributions, including Arch, Debian, FreeBSD, Gentoo, Mandriva, and openSUSE. However, if the Debian package is any indication, you can't count on any dependency resolution. If you do have dependency problems, you can get a full list of dependencies from the instructions for installing from source code. You are likely to have several of the dependencies installed, but you might have to install SQLite for GMM's database and the Fox Toolkit before installing GMM.
When you have solved any dependency problems, GMM opens nimbly in a window with minimal frills. A window pops up, asking you to direct GMM to your music library, which it scans quickly; on my machine, GMM scanned a thousand songs in just under a minute.
The window layout is plain, especially when compared to Amarok's, but efficient. The left hand pane serves as a menu, with default listings for Music Library and Internet Radio, as well as any playlists you create. On the top right are panes for Artists and Albums, to which you can add Genres. On the bottom right is the playlist sorted by track number by default, but capable of being arranged by any tag or shuffled from the View menu. As soon as you start playing music, you can reduce GMM to a mini-player window, or configure it in Edit -> Preferences -> General to show an icon in the notification tray.
Despite its small footprint, GMM includes a respectable number of configuration options. You can set the list of tracks to repeat or to play randomly, and edit each track's tags, either within GMM or within the track's files. Similarly, you can choose to remove a track from the current list of tracks, or from your hard drive.
From Edit -> Preferences, you can configure even more features. You can set the sort options to ignore what GMM calls "leading words" such as "a" and "the" -- a small mercy that I wish more applications would adopt. You can also configure GMM to work with Last.fm, set whether certain widgets display in the window and where, choose several themes for the window, and even whether to use Alsa, Pulse Audio, or even OSS.
Since you can sort and shuffle your current listing of tracks, you may feel little need of playlists. However, if you do want to save the current listing, all you need to do is create a new playlist via Music -> New Playlist, then drag the current listing to the playlist in the left hand pane. The one drawback to this arrangement is that it is not immediately obvious, because no other operations require drag and dropping -- the current list is updated automatically as you select genres, artists, and albums in the top right panes.
GMM does have some limitations. If you care about cover art, you may be disappointed to find that support for it is available only through metatags, a usage that is relatively rare to find elsewhere. I also miss the ability to mass-edit all the tracks in one album that is included in Amarok. But, in general, GMM manages to avoid feature bloat on one hand and ignoring user's expectations of customization on the other hand. Although I'm still looking around, GMM is very likely the lightweight music player for which I've been looking.]
comments powered by DisqusSubscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
TUXEDO Computers Unveils Linux Laptop Featuring AMD Ryzen CPU
This latest release is the first laptop to include the new CPU from Ryzen and Linux preinstalled.
-
XZ Gets the All-Clear
The back door xz vulnerability has been officially reverted for Fedora 40 and versions 38 and 39 were never affected.
-
Canonical Collaborates with Qualcomm on New Venture
This new joint effort is geared toward bringing Ubuntu and Ubuntu Core to Qualcomm-powered devices.
-
Kodi 21.0 Open-Source Entertainment Hub Released
After a year of development, the award-winning Kodi cross-platform, media center software is now available with many new additions and improvements.
-
Linux Usage Increases in Two Key Areas
If market share is your thing, you'll be happy to know that Linux is on the rise in two areas that, if they keep climbing, could have serious meaning for Linux's future.
-
Vulnerability Discovered in xz Libraries
An urgent alert for Fedora 40 has been posted and users should pay attention.
-
Canonical Bumps LTS Support to 12 years
If you're worried that your Ubuntu LTS release won't be supported long enough to last, Canonical has a surprise for you in the form of 12 years of security coverage.
-
Fedora 40 Beta Released Soon
With the official release of Fedora 40 coming in April, it's almost time to download the beta and see what's new.
-
New Pentesting Distribution to Compete with Kali Linux
SnoopGod is now available for your testing needs
-
Juno Computers Launches Another Linux Laptop
If you're looking for a powerhouse laptop that runs Ubuntu, the Juno Computers Neptune 17 v6 should be on your radar.