I was going through the boards and found a message that said that AmaroK was enough to make a music buff switch OSes. Well, I\'m that guy. I\'ll be using linux for the rest of forever because of Amarok. That said, I still do have some features I\'d like to request. I\'m going to just copy them out of an entry that I made last night on my weblog (faddat.blogspot.com).

QUOTING********
AmaroK works really well! It makes MusicBrianz work, and it makes AudioScrobbler work! Really, it needs to be released for Windows. Here\'s why:

* Millions of new users for AudioScrobbler, which works best with more users
* Millions of new users for MusicBrainz, which works best with more users

Free the musical revolution where people listen to endless mixes of their favorite songs! I also think that Amarok needs to include more features like MoodLogic has, like the instant mixes and such. I think they are probably working on this, but if not, they should be working on it a lot more. It\'s got a lot of power.

posted by faddat at 10:53 PM | 0 comments
amaroK and Mandrake 10

For one, AmaroK rocks. I\'m sure that its designers know that they are onto something that no one else has. It\'s like MoodLogic + Itunes (which I\'ve never used, but seen) + What I like about LinkFB2K.

The amazing thing here is just how nice Amarok is, though. It is basically my dream media player, and that\'s quite a feat. I\'ve been looking for software this good for a long time, and now I\'ve finally found it.

NO LONGER QUOTING******

I have no idea how hard it would be to port this thing to windows. I do, however, know that if it were ported, you would have *millions* of users overnight. I\'ll keep using AmaroK on linux, even if a windows version comes out because I\'ve wanted to switch to Linux for years, but I\'ve been missing a tool like AmaroK (and OO.o is far more mature).

So, those are my feature requests. Basically, do more of the crazy music voodoo, which it looks like you\'re trying to do anyways.

I keep hearing of this porting talk for amarok to windows. Why on earth would people do that, we\'re helping put linux down rather than bring it into the mainstream. If the best linux apps are available on windows, why would any average user bother changing to linux. Kde is been ported as well. For the love of God, that means in another year or two, instead of linux being sold on desktop pcs, we\'ll have windows stronger than ever geared up with open source software that the linux world created and has been trying to say is better for years. Which means the only people who will bother with linux are people who want unix power and true open source. Your average desktop user wont even know the name of the system that the products they\'re using even is.
Think about it... :unsure: :unsure: :unsure: :unsure:

Typo on last line:
they wont even
know the name of the system that brought them the products they\'re using even is.

now think about it!

If KDE4 gets ported to Windows, we will probably consider porting amaroK as well. Before KDE is ported, there is no way to do it.

I\'m the world\'s biggest fan of open source software and the ideology behind it. Well, maybe not quite, because I know some people who don\'t recogngize good software if it\'s not open source.

-BUT-

The way to get more users for Linux, and the way to make sure that open-source licensing gets out into the world is to port the best open source programs. I\'m going to give just a few small examples:

*gaim
*mozilla
*OpenOffice.org

Now, when we tell people that they can run these programs on a better, Free OS, they\'ll want to. Right now, though, there\'s a lot of resistance to cover on the issue of \"what the hell is this stuff?\" and \"if it\'s free, how the hell can it be good\"?

Let\'s look at what a Windows port would do for AmaroK:

*increase visibility, which would:
*increase donations
*increase user base, which would:
*increase the usage of MusicBrainz and Audioscrobbler, which would:
*Bring us closer to the eventual music utopia

Spreading this sort of high-quality, free software makes people ask questions. It makes them ask questions like: why am I paying $180 for a **** OS when there is all this great Free software out there?

Keeping this an elitist community helps no one.

Here are a few links, check them out. Think about just how much more press open source has had in general since the advent of open source software for windows like Mozilla Firefox.

http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic. ... highlight=
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/6075
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid= ... =4&tid=106

I also ask you to please remember that while Linux is the star chilid of the open source software movement (and it is a movement), it does not comprise the entire movement. There\'s a *LOT* more to OSS than Linux, and I\'m sure of it because I\'ve been using OSS for years while experimenting with linux.

Well, cool + dang! Cool in that I\'m sure it\'ll eventually happen that KDE will be ported to Windows, and Dang in that it can\'t be done now.

As a last note, though, I\'ve just got to say:

The more you do with automated sorting and reccomending of music, the more quantum leaps you take ahead of everyone else who is making a media player. The fact that you\'re doing it with 100% open projects is amazingly impressive.

Finally, I\'ve looked up what exactly \"fuzzy search\" is, and I\'ve got to put a giant \"me too!\" Onto that feature request. It\'d be great.

-Jake

Yes, but as has already been addressed in this thread and others, amaroK gets ported along with the libraries it uses. So on this forum its kind of a silly thing to strongly argue for.