Peter
Apologies for the FOSSwire radio silence recently. I've been really really busy with university stuff. My Christmas break starts next week, so with any luck FOSSwire should get some more content over the festive period. Thanks for bearing with us!
The Amarok team have officially unveiled the 2.0 release of the popular open source music and media player application.
The world of digital music management has changed a great deal since the birth of Amarok four and a half years ago. Amarok 1 established a reputation for innovation, but maintaining development with the old framework became more difficult as Amarok grew, often in directions we never imagined.
Some of the things this new release brings to the table include:
- New user interface
- Integration with many online music services (Last.fm, Magnatune and others)
- New scripting API
Crucially, Amarok 2.0 is built against KDE 4, rather than KDE 3, making it an ideal music player for KDE 4-based desktops as it now runs natively.
There are also Beta versions of this 2.0 release available for other platforms as well - with Windows and Mac OS X versions available. The use of the Qt library underneath KDE means that the versions for these other systems integrate well (for example, Amarok 2.0 uses global menu bar when run under Mac OS X - so it 'feels like' any other Mac app).
I haven't yet had a chance to play with the new release, but you can read further release notes and download the 2.0 version from the Amarok site.
