Banshee
Well, my ‘ooh shiney’ exploration of SuSE continues, and the first app to get its own article is the music player Banshee. I might be overlooking some better software (the ‘Music’ folder in SuSE’s equivalent of the Start Menu contains sixteen items… dubya. tee. eff.) but Banshee is what opened the CD I popped in, and I’m already hooked.
Despite being a longtime Windows user, and having experienced just about every media player that OS has to offer (WMP, iTunes, Winamp, dbPowerAMP, jetAudio, every shitty iteration of Sonicstage, et al), I can honestly say that Banshee is the nicest music player I have ever used. Aside from the ‘blue active, white inactive’ gnome title bar, the whole program is based on an ‘offwhite plastic’-type look. Utterly fabulous.
Within seconds of my slipping ‘Bullet in a Bible’ into my drive, Banshee had found the CD information, and downloaded album art. This isn’t even music that I’ve imported into my library (it can do that, apparently, and I will test this later), I am just playing this CD and it just does everything it’s supposed to, without prompts or disclaimers.
What’s really impressed me though, is the sound quality. I have never heard anything so fabulous. The sound I’m getting out of my laptop’s (understandably shaky) single built-in speaker is brilliant. Usually with music players you have to choose between looks (Sonicshit) and functionality (Winamp), this has both. Fantastic.