What are the major differences between Rhythmbox, Banshee, Amarok, and Clementine? [closed]

Question

Linux distributions have a plethora of music players but perhaps the most known players are Clementine, Rhythmbox,Amarok and Banshee? When choosing between the four, what criteria should one be looking at? In brief, what makes each of them unique?

Answer 1

Banshee is one of those programs that finds the sweet spot between customizability and ease of use. It has a ton of features that let you use it pretty much however you want to, whether that's enqueuing songs in a "Now Playing" window, creating smart playlists, or integrating with external services, and you can tweak the interface to look just how you want it to. It also supports a ton of devices, including the iPod touch and iPhone, which not a lot of third party programs can claim. And, it does all this while keeping a familiar, easy to use interface that newcomers won't be intimidated by. It has a little something for everyone, which makes it a great first stop on your search for a good Linux music player.

Rhythmbox is Banshee's biggest competition, having been the default player in Ubuntu for a long time before it was replaced with Banshee in 11.04. It has a reputation of being a bit more stable than Banshee, and it's still pretty feature filled (though not quite as much as Banshee). The two are quite similar in many ways, though, so they're both worth a look in our opinion.

Amarok, designed for the KDE desktop environment, has a bit less familiar of an interface, but it's really great. Instead of the typical library view, you have three columns: a list of artists on the left, a lyrics and Wikipedia browser in the middle, and your "Now Playing" queue on the left. It only supports music, though, not podcasts, videos, or audiobooks, and it doesn't have quite the flexibility of other programs. It can sync with some devices, though, and has a few cool other features, like smart playlists that automatically update on loose criteria. Incidentally, it's also my favorite music player of all time, on any platform.

Exaile and Clementine are great music players for those that miss Amarok 1.4, before it went through a large interface overhaul. Both embrace Amarok's playlist-based listening, but with a somewhat more familiar library interface. Exaile's interface is very simple, but Clementine is much more feature-filled, containing things like a lyrics view, Last.fm integration, and more.¹

^{1Source:lifehacker}

Answer 2

to be frank I've used only Rhythmbox and Clementine. Out of the two my votes would go to Clementine because:-

• It has a nice Interface as compared to Rhythmbox.
• A vast list of options like you can look at the artist information of the Song from the player itself.
• One more thing, when you change a song, the new song takes 1-2 sec to change which gives the player a kind of DJ effect.

Again these are my personal preferences, your choice may vary.

Thanks

Answer 3

The Amazon MP3 integration of Banshee slays all other contenders in my opinion. Kinda like iTunes for Linux.