Regular readers of this site will know that I’m no fan of Rhythmbox. When I recently installed Ubuntu 10.04 on my desktop PC, I decided to give Gnome’s default media player a few days to win back my affection. Unfortunately, while Novell’s Banshee project appears to be moving ahead with lots of great new features, Rythmbox still suffers from the issues that I outlined in my now infamous lambasting of it, nearly 8 months ago. To be fair, the pre-installed version of Rythmbox is only 0.12.8 on Ubuntu 10.04 (the same one that I reviewed previously), while the project has forged ahead to version 0.13.2.
Regardless, I prefer to listen to my music with Banshee, and I’m itching to try the latest version. On November 10th, the project released Banshee 1.9.0, and it looks positively excellent. I decided to give it a go, and downloaded the source tarball from the project’s website. Following are the steps that were necessary to install it:
- Head over to a terminal and install intltool, libgtk2.0-dev, libgtk2.0-cil-dev, libmono-dev, mono-gmcs, libmono-addins-cil-dev, monodoc-base, boo, libboo-cil-dev, libmono-addins-gui-cil-dev, libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil-dev, libgdata-dev, libgdata-cil-dev, libtag1-dev, libtaglib-cil-dev, sqlite3, libsqlite3-dev, libgconf2.0-cil-dev, libmtp-dev, libmono-zeroconf1.0-cil, libmono-zeroconf1.0-cil-dev, libwebkit-dev, libwebkit-cil-dev, and libsoup-gnome2.4-dev with the following command:
sudo apt-get install intltool libgtk2.0-dev libgtk2.0-cil-dev libmono-dev mono-gmcs libmono-addins-cil-dev libmono-addins-gui-cil-dev monodoc-base boo libboo-cil-dev libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil-dev libgdata-dev libgdata-cil-dev libtag1-dev libtaglib-cil-dev sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev libgconf2.0-cil-dev libmtp-dev libmono-zeroconf1.0-cil libmono-zeroconf1.0-cil-dev libwebkit-dev libwebkit-cil-dev libsoup-gnome2.4-dev
- Next, you’ll need GStreamer and a few of its base plugins package: libgstreamer0.10-dev and libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev
sudo apt-get install libgstreamer0.10-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev
- If you want to play music encoded in non-free formats like mp3, you’ll also need a few restricted GStreamer libraries like gstreamer-plugins-good, gstreamer-plugins-bad, gstreamer-plugins-bad-multiverse, gstreamer-plugins-ugly, and gstreamer-plugins-ugly-multiverse.
sudo apt-get install gstreamer-plugins-good gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-plugins-bad-multiverse gstreamer-plugins-ugly gstreamer-plugins-ugly-multiverse
- Since I don’t have an iPod or similar Apple device, I’ve configured my installation to disable Apple device support. If you have an iPod, you can lose the –disable-apple-device and –disable-ipod flags after the configure command, but you’ll also need to add a couple of extra libraries to your system. To compile and install Banshee, navigate to the folder where you unzipped the tarball, and type the following in your terminal:
./configure –disable-appledevice –disable-ipod
sudo make
sudo make install
Banshee should now be installed. From your terminal, type
banshee-1
as a sanity check. Once the application launches, select Help > About and ensure that the version number is 1.9.0. If so, you should be good to go.
I’ll try to post a full review of this latest version of Banshee within a couple of days. In the mean time, happy listening!
Or for those who can’t be bothered with all that fluff, install a prebuilt binary from launchpad
System -> Administration -> Software Sources -> Other software -> Add..
ppa:banshee-team/ppa
Then install using synaptic / ubuntu software center / apt-get / your fav package manger
e.g.
sudo apt-get install banshee