I have been persevering with Amarok 2 for several months and been quite patient as it has slowly been taking shape.  However, I have just upgraded from KDE4.1 to KDE4.2 and Amarok simply no longer works.  I have tried for about two days to sort it out but to no avail.  So it is goodbye 2.0, welcome back 1.4.  I have to say having reloaded 1.4 it has made me realise just what long way V2 has to go.  I will give version 2 another go in the future, but not for a while.

I have given  up on Amarok2 as well.  The interface is just way too buggy and makes no sense.  The playlists constantly complain when I remove a song, I can't sort by my star rating and creating a new playlist based on star rating, just isn't there.  The middle pane is a huge waste of real estate. The lyrics section never fills the entire middle panel.  It just stops and you can't resize it.  I honestly don't know what the devs were thinking.  The 1.x interface is a lot easier to use and makes more sense.  I just nuked amarok2 and went back to 1.x.  Oh well, good luck with amarok2 guys.  I'll check back in 6 months.

We're sorry to hear that, but at the same time not _too_ sorry

You cannot be all things to everyone, that's just a fact. I personally enjoy Amarok 2 greatly (especially the upcoming 2.1 version), and I'm very proud of it. But I can fully understand that some people would dislike it, for one reason or another.


Thanks for the effort, and come back sometime

Why didn't you just make an amarok 1.5 and everything would have been fine ...

There are four main points that bother me in version 2:
* Amarok renames my music! I find songs listed under wrong artists, several songs do not appear at all
* I really disagree on how amarok 2 sorts my playlist. What's the point?! It seems there isn't any system at all
* Where have the "playlists" gone??? wtf?
* For a gnome user, that works on screens from 10 to 24 inches, the graphical interface in amarok 2 is really buggy and non usable

What I wanted to say: I also go back to amarok 1.4 which is a great great player btw!!!

The only real advantage Amarok 2 has over other music players is the ability to quickly catalogue large music collections.  However, that advantage is erased if in the process it corrupts your data, which it does!

darkscot wrote:The only real advantage Amarok 2 has over other music players is the ability to quickly catalogue large music collections.  However, that advantage is erased if in the process it corrupts your data, which it did in my case. Your personal experience may vary

Fixed it for you...

Thank you!  Good to see that censorship is alive and well!

harold wrote:Why didn't you just make an amarok 1.5 and everything would have been fine ...

Hmmm... where to start?

* Because KDE was moving to Qt 4 we had to as well, causing us to have to rewrite much of Amarok in any case. (or live with a ton of deprecated support stuff)
* Because the Amarok 1.4 codebase is a mess and was getting unmaintainable
* Because there were and still are many features we would like to add that would either not be possible on the 1.4.x or cause bloat because of the way it is structured.
* Because no one working on Amarok was motivated to do so. If no one is motivated, no development will happen. Since starting work on Amarok 2 we have more active developers than ever.
* Because we think we can do better than Amarok 1.4.x. For some it might take a while before we get there, but we are working very hard on it.
* Because Amarok 1.4.x is still around for those whose who don't like Amarok 2.

- Nikolaj

darkscot wrote:Thank you!  Good to see that censorship is alive and well!

now now... censorship would be editing the original post... I merely pointed out the error!

Freespirit wrote:

harold wrote:Why didn't you just make an amarok 1.5 and everything would have been fine ...

* Because we think we can do better than Amarok 1.4.x. For some it might take a while before we get there, but we are working very hard on it.
* Because Amarok 1.4.x is still around for those whose who don't like Amarok 2.

Excellent point - it took quite a few years before Amarok 1.x was really useful and relatively bug-free... that sort of effort is not going to be able to disappear overnight.
In general, if your distro upgrade leaves you without something that is the be-all and end-all of your world, then either learn to compile it yourself, or have a good hard think about whether you really NEED to "upgrade" to the latest version of your distro right away.
There's nothing wrong with choosing to use Amarok 1.4 - it's an awesome program. I still use it myself, when I can get near my desktop PC. But have some respect for those of us who also think A2 is the way forward.

Hello Amarok 2, I am back! :} Not entirely through choice though. 

I am running Mandriva 2009 Beta 1 on one of my machines and it won't let me install Amarok 1.4.  Is that some sort of conspiracy?

However, I am delighted to see that the supplied version (2.0.1) seem to be very stable and is very responsive.  So far so good.  If it only had replaygain and 'suggested songs' playlist I would be a happy man.

darkscot wrote:If it only had replaygain and 'suggested songs' playlist I would be a happy man.

Good news: ReplayGain is already implemented in SVN, and will be part of 2.1. Check our blogs for more details

I agree with the title sentiment here.

And that 1.5 would be nice... I'll work on getting 1.4 for now though...

My issue is that the middle screen has been filled with useless rubbish! I hate album art, and 'now playing' info, they are useless and entirely annoying. I liked the old style big library view.... And where are all the options?! You've over simplified them! I used to use the OSD when I could specify what info it displayed, and the size, and position ((anywhere on screen).

The feeling of disappointment is heightened as I was really looking forward to getting Amarok back after a long time using windows only (so no Amarok, cause I'm lazy). Now I have to put effort in to 'roll back' to the Amarok I want, while my windows install has mediamonkey happily ready for use. (incidentally, media monkey now surpasses Amarok for me).

Hey ho, I guess that's the price I must pay for disageeing with the common consensus on what a media player should do...

thelevellers wrote:My issue is that the middle screen has been filled with useless rubbish!

A little style goes a long way, eh? Thanks for the rubbish criticism.

Hello there,

I have been using Amarok for a couple of years now and still finding it very difficult to come to terms with v2. And I'm not that old a dog either. My main issue regards "Various Artists".
I prefer the Artist/Album view without Year. Initially, Amarok will list each track by the name of the Artist. I simply choose the "Show under various artists" option. However, these tracks, although shown under various artists, will list as different albums. In general, I don't understand why tracks of the same album will refuse to be listed under one album..instead I get the same album title repeatedly over and over. (I've checked my tags).
Oh, and while writing this I noticed that album tend to multiply if you try to sort them out. That's not the kind of magic I expected.
I don't mind waiting around for a while, you guys made a really good player nevertheless
Cheers