this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2024
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I think I tried Winamp back in the day but never really understood it.
One has to admit it's good that they released the source code (while it was available) so users can learn what their software is actually doing on their computer. Better for yourself as a dev too: you will probably avoid including other people's work in yours. However, wanting contributions while retaining the exclusive right to distribute the software is anti-collaborative. I'm reluctant to say it might as well be proprietary again but since it doesn't meet the standard of software freedom then it's equally not worth trying on my computer.
As you describe it, that is proprietary -- no "might as well be" qualification necessary. Just because you can read the source code doesn't make it Open Source; you've got to have all Four Freedoms for it to count.
Is it not actually four or are they counting some of these as the same thing?
In its day Winamp was the most comprehensive media player and users were super into its skinability which was a big deal at the time. Nowadays the "plays everything" throne is very firmly occupied by VLC, with a little cushioned stool next to it for Media Player Classic to sit on. However, neither of them offer the user interface experience that Winamp does/did.
Winamp was iTunes before iTunes. It was Spotify before Spotify. It did an excellent job of managing the hordes of totally legitimate MP3's we all had back in the day, and did so with an aplomb that nothing else seemed to manage. Really, its playlist and library management was top notch. Newer apps still piss me off because none of them do it the way Winamp did.
Side note, if you have an old iPod kicking around and don't feel like dealing with Apple's ecosystem, Winamp can still, to this very day, stick music on your device natively without having to install or use iTunes. Just saying.
But this source code release thing really baffles me. I have no idea what the point of that was supposed to be.
It's why I still use winamp.
This is why I'm still on the eternal search for a replacement. Library management was really, really good in Winamp. I use Strawberry these days and it's absolutely great at playing stuff but the playlist management is just 'good enough'.
If you're running Windows you can still use old versions of Winamp.
On Linux, I dunno. I'll bet you it'll run in Wine.
Yep, I still use 5.666 on Windows, but I use Windows very infrequently anymore. I switched to Linux as my primary OS earlier this year and only use Windows for games that don't work right in Linux. And thanks to Valve that's becoming pretty rare these days.
I haven't tried getting Winamp to work in Wine but there's probably a guide out there somewhere! Good suggestion, thanks.
WineDB has it marked as silver.
Honestly, for a modern PC I can't imagine Winamp is all that taxing of a program to run. I think the biggest bugbear will be its fairly tight integration with the Windows shell for file management and enqueuing things from an Explorer window, and maybe the external device integrations which would rely heavily on the Windows API and possibly WDM.
The video player in Winamp is also completely non-functional in Wine the last time I tried it, as it relies on DirectShow in Windows which has very iffy Wine support. That may also be why it's marked as silver.
It's too bad as I really liked using Winamp as a video player in Windows, despite it's quirks.
I'd say that mpv also has a place near VLC when comes to playing everything.
What was there not to understand? It was a basic music player with playlist functionality, a plugin infrastructure to support playback of pirated music in underground formats like MP3, at the price of completely free and no ads (the website had banners but not the player).
Not sure what I could have expected from it back then. I just recall it being recommended online and ended up just using Win Media player (with the cool graphical effects).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MilkDrop