For the last eight years, the whole time I've ran Linux for my primary workstation, I only used XMMS for listening and managing mp3's. If I did try something different, it was not for long, and when my buddy told me he switched to Amarok, I called him a wimp and told him to go download Vista, HA. Annoyingly, he would not shut up about getting rid of XMMS, and after some time I downloaded a binary of the software and was completely blown away: Amarok is the coolest application I've seen on any Operating System. It downloads song lyrics, fetches album covers from Amazon.com, searches the web for guitar tabs, provides links to band sites, and displays trivial information about current song and albums playing. It's also the easiest way to manage an IPOD in linux. When you look at your collection or move something to the current playlist it shows all the cover art for the release, displays content about the artist and keeps statistics on how often you play an artist or Album. It supports MySql and other databases, but by default it uses a zero configuration setup with SQLite. I installed release 1.4.3, and so far, it's way more stable than Window's Media Player; the only time I've had any trouble was using 3rd-party plug ins, which anyone can write with the intuitive templates provided in the install. It runs on KDE natively, but does fine on Gnome with some added libraries. Unfortunately, it eats RAM similar to most KDE 3.x apps, but with the features you get, it's worth it! Someone please let me know if there is an app on any platform that can compare with the functionality I'm describing. I've never had an IPOD or ran Itunes, so I don't know if Amarok's developers took their ideas from Apple or somewhere else. Here's a link to a lot of different binaries for your OS, and the source should be somewhere near there. [amarok.kde.org] 95% of all computer techs don't know crap, and 99.5% of computer techs think they know everything.

Ditto....amarok is cool. It can even suggest other tracks based on your listening habits.

Lol, there IS no comparable app to Amarok, not that I've seen as of yet anyway. I like XMMS, it isn't a BAD app by any means (Songbird is nice too, though I HATE the egg icon, hehe). I do wish Amarok was a general Linux app and not specifically for KDE. You can get Amarok working in other desktops, but it looks a bit out of place and a couple of features don't work properly unless in KDE IIRC.

KidTangerine, Amarok is deadkewl alright but your praise sounds a bit like 'WoWSpeak' :-) Today's subliminal thought is: 'Calm down ... it's only ones and zeros.'