In the beginning, there was winamp, the media player for streaming audio, and it was good. But Linux was without a streaming audio player, and so xmms was developed, and it was also good (once the mp3-plugin was applied). Then along came beep, which was a port of XMMS to GTK+2 to provide it with the look and feel of recent versions of Gnome and KDE, and it was very good. And then came the forks...
After the 0.9.7.1 version of beep was released, the BMP (beep media player) development team announced that it would not be actively developed any longer. Instead, the team would spend development effort on the next generation of BMP, called BMPx. A few days following the announcement, William "nenolod" Pitcock decided to fork classical BMP as Audacious Media Player.
So, where does that leave us, exactly? My suggestion is to simply install xmms, audacious, and bmpx and try out them for yourself.
xmms
To install xmms, in addition to its plugins, use yum:
~>
sudo yum install xmms xmms-aac xmms-acme xmms-adplug xmms-alarm
xmms-arts xmms-cdread xmms-crossfade xmms-esd xmms-flac xmms-libs
xmms-lirc xmms-modplug xmms-mp3 xmms-musepack xmms-nebulus
xmms-normalize xmms-scrobbler xmms-sid xmms-skins xmms-speex xmms-wma
xmms-xosd xosd
Press 'y' when
prompted to install the programs and some additional dependencies.
Please note that not all of the plugins are necessary.
But the xmms-mp3
plugin is vital, as it allows for playback of mp3 files,
which is not
included natively into xmms
due to patent and licensing concerns. To launch the player,
simply type xmms
in a terminal window.If you are having trouble playing audio CDs, right click on the player, and select Options -> Preferences -> CD Audio Player 1.2.10 -> Configure, and click on Digital audio extraction. Hit Ok twice. With regard to skins, I have a hankering for blueHeart-xmms-20.
audacious
To install audacious, in addition to its plugins, use yum:
~>
sudo yum install audacious audacious-arts audacious-crossfade
audacious-esd audacious-extras audacious-itouch audacious-jack
Press 'y' when
prompted to install the programs and some additional dependencies.
Again, not all of the plugins are necessary, but it is
important to install audacious-extras,
which provides mp3,
wma,
etc. playback functionality. To
launch the player, simply type audacious in
a terminal window.If you are having trouble playing audio CDs, right click on the player, and select Preferences -> Plugins -> CD Audio Plugin -> Preferences and click on Digital audio extraction. Hit Ok, followed by Close.
bmpx
To try out the new bmpx media player, which is considerably different than its predecessors, use yum:
~>
sudo yum install bmpx gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-plugins-ugly
gstreamer-ffmpeg
Press 'y' when
prompted to install the programs and some additional
dependencies. The gstreamer
plugins allow for mp3, wma, etc playback. To launch the
player, simply type beep-media-player-2
in a terminal window. See the GStreamer
FAQ for details.