Trying to say goodbye to Windows 7 and 10, Just need Windows Media Player in Mint or Ubuntu!

raglafart

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 21, 2013
Messages
227
Hi
I really want to get away from Windows 7 and 10. I'm not a gamer and don't do much photography anymore. I don't want to buy another PC just to make Windows work.
I really like Windows Media player. I have used it for I can't remember how many years and it allows me to find all my downloaded CD's and music that's come from the web with ease.
I play blues harmonica and with Media Player I've added a separate column for the key the harmonica is being played in and I really don't want to lose this ability.
Is it possible to use Wine to run any of the Microsoft versions of Media Player? If not what is the closest app to Media player. Mint has Rythmbox and MPV Media player, are these as good as it gets?
I have two drives I'm swapping for my Linux systems. One is Mint 19.3 and I've also set up a Ubuntu 20.04 drive.
I have had success installing and running a windows program "Amazing Slow Downer" on my Mint 19.3 system but had problems getting it to run on the Ubuntu drive.
I prefer the feel of Mint to Ubuntu, other than that I'm trying to find my way.
Many thanks JG
 
I have downloaded the package for VLC too. I'm just trying to get all my music into one of them! I'm stumbling along trying to do things like you'd do in Windows and to be fair Mint 19.3 seems to be a very close comparison in some ways.
I'll get there in the end!
 
WinAMP would have been my alternative if I'd wanted to play stuff locally from a library simply, but it looks like it's still not been ported natively to Linux. Instead, one I just found that serves this function to a degree is Audacious which should be available in the software store on Mint.

VLC as mentioned above is another option, though I find it's library functionality to perhaps fall short of what I'd want from a media player, but it'll definitely play what you feed it!
 
WinAMP would have been my alternative if I'd wanted to play stuff locally from a library simply, but it looks like it's still not been ported natively to Linux.
winamp was going to be my first suggestion but google said no linux support. forgot about audacious, good call.
 
WinAMP would have been my alternative if I'd wanted to play stuff locally from a library simply, but it looks like it's still not been ported natively to Linux. Instead, one I just found that serves this function to a degree is Audacious which should be available in the software store on Mint.

VLC as mentioned above is another option, though I find it's library functionality to perhaps fall short of what I'd want from a media player, but it'll definitely play what you feed it!


Maybe try out XMMS2?

XMMMS was the Winamp clone for Linux, XMMS2 was supposed to be more versatile (Music library, not sure what else)
 
Maybe give plex a try?
Plex server was able to scan all my media and serve it up to all my local plex clients.
 
It's not going well, I have copied my Win 10 file "Music" across a common hdd. Now the "Music" file has albums, album art, and single tracks (mp3's) all over the place. Is there anyway to drag and drop any of these files across to any of these music players you've listed? I was able to copy all the single mp3's but they all wind up all over the place, not in the logical way they are found in my Win 10 media player. I've got just under 17 gig of stuff in the file and if it can only be filled in a long list it really is useless to me.
I must be approaching this the wrong way. Any input would be appreciated.
 
It's not going well, I have copied my Win 10 file "Music" across a common hdd. Now the "Music" file has albums, album art, and single tracks (mp3's) all over the place. Is there anyway to drag and drop any of these files across to any of these music players you've listed? I was able to copy all the single mp3's but they all wind up all over the place, not in the logical way they are found in my Win 10 media player. I've got just under 17 gig of stuff in the file and if it can only be filled in a long list it really is useless to me.
I must be approaching this the wrong way. Any input would be appreciated.
Some media players can automatically group the music by album and artist. That's the bad side of VLC and the likes, they're not incredibly easy to use. The built in media player in many linux distributions will do a better job at maintaining your media library.
 
It's not going well, I have copied my Win 10 file "Music" across a common hdd. Now the "Music" file has albums, album art, and single tracks (mp3's) all over the place. Is there anyway to drag and drop any of these files across to any of these music players you've listed? I was able to copy all the single mp3's but they all wind up all over the place, not in the logical way they are found in my Win 10 media player. I've got just under 17 gig of stuff in the file and if it can only be filled in a long list it really is useless to me.
I must be approaching this the wrong way. Any input would be appreciated.

What do you mean by this? The files copied all over, or the files are organized in a media player in an unexpected fashion? If your media files are not organizing properly, it's probably due to the way the data is in the file and how the file interprets it. A lot of my older music files have really unpredictable identification data and become very difficult to manage with software tools--so I personally don't. That isn't a *nix/Windows issue, that's a file issue (I had the problem for years before I switched my main desktop). Honestly I gave up years ago trying to do any sort of automation of my media collection organizing, because it's too much of a pain. My newer stuff is fine (all automated in creation), but the old stuff is just all over the place. Some media systems use the file names, some the meta/tag data, some use both, checksums, etc. For me it was a waste of time so I generally just use a player with my own folder structure where I can drag and drop. Audacious is very similar to Winamp and you can just drag files into it and play them, and you can have multiple tabs of playlists. Works pretty well. I once had a disaster where I let iTunes organize my files and it... well it wasn't compatible with my organization method. What a mess!

If the files are ending up in unexpected physical locations, something went terribly wrong with your file copy. It shouldn't do it, and cp or rsync or whatever isn't really prone to that so I'd look at how you performed the copy.

Welcome to desktop Linux. It looks OK until you have to use it. :ROFLMAO::(

It works fine if you're used to Linux or willing to learn and you're willing to try a couple different distros to find the one that works for you and your hardware. You do have to be willing to overcome some issues, but it's totally doable these days.
 
Some media players can automatically group the music by album and artist. That's the bad side of VLC and the likes, they're not incredibly easy to use. The built in media player in many linux distributions will do a better job at maintaining your media library.
afaik linux doesnt include any media player, they are added.
It works fine if you're used to Linux or willing to learn and you're willing to try a couple different distros to find the one that works for you and your hardware. You do have to be willing to overcome some issues, but it's totally doable these days.
oh yeah "works totally fine but you gotta search to find one that does" lol
 
It's not going well, I have copied my Win 10 file "Music" across a common hdd. Now the "Music" file has albums, album art, and single tracks (mp3's) all over the place. Is there anyway to drag and drop any of these files across to any of these music players you've listed? I was able to copy all the single mp3's but they all wind up all over the place, not in the logical way they are found in my Win 10 media player. I've got just under 17 gig of stuff in the file and if it can only be filled in a long list it really is useless to me.
I must be approaching this the wrong way. Any input would be appreciated.
start renaming and organizing your files. if they were properly done on windows they would be the same on linux, so they obviously werent.
 
If you want a player/organizer that will read tags and group like music via Artist > Album > Song try Clementine. Clementine is a fork of Amarok v1.4, before Amarok went to total crap with v2.0 and beyond.
 
afaik linux doesnt include any media player, they are added.

The entire operating system is adds, if you hold the "Linux is just a kernel" line. Most graphical distros come with some sort of media player pre-installed, and have several available in their repos.

oh yeah "works totally fine but you gotta search to find one that does" lol

It's not really different than... anything. There are hundreds of distros, and tons of them are strange one-offs and "off brands" that aren't going to give good support with anything. The major distros will normally support most things well, but sometimes one vendor is more up to date than others. It wasn't that long ago that you had to have specific drivers from the manufacturers for each Windows driver for all hardware, and if the company didn't support it you were SOL (sometimes still are). That's not any different than desktop Linux. It sounds like you're much more comfortable with desktop Windows, which is great, so why waste your time on something you dislike so much? :/
 
afaik linux doesnt include any media player, they are added.
oh yeah "works totally fine but you gotta search to find one that does" lol
Many distros include a mediaplayer. Vanilla Ubuntu includes the 'Rhythmbox' media player for example.
 
blah blah blah, so why waste your time on something you dislike so much? :/
nice assumption. i dont hate it, i dont use it much but ill try to help if i can. unlike your post, a bunch of rambling and then "try different distros"...

Many distros include a mediaplayer. Vanilla Ubuntu includes the 'Rhythmbox' media player for example.
oh ok.
 
Lots of great Linux music players... some are basic players that focus on being efficient, with high quality playback. Others have all the playlist stuffs it sounds like your looking for.

Some ones to try. Don't download things from the web... install via your package manager. If your new to Mint and Ubuntu I included terminal commands to install latest versions of all 3.

https://audacious-media-player.org/ (one of my favorites good 96/24 playback nice simple playlist setup. Allows you to use ALSA sound system direct, just know that means no sound from other stuff while your using ALSA. In general leave things set to use Pulse audio)
sudo apt-get install audacious audacious-plugins

https://deadbeef.sourceforge.io/ (yes its called deadbeef... its also very good)
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:spvkgn/deadbeef
sudo apt update
sudo apt install deadbeef

https://www.guayadeque.org/ (been around for years but seems to be getting popular lately)
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:anonbeat/guayadeque
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install guayadeque
 
Okay, I copied the "MY MUSIC" folder and put it on a common drive.
It is all the albums I've ripped to my drive over 20 plus years. There are individual tracks I've also downloaded and in Windows Media Player, you are able to group them by artist which I of course did. The albums I ripped from my CD's are all in there own folders. It is those folders that if I have to open each one to copy the individual wave or mp3 files is going to kill it for me. This is what I'm used to seeing on Media Player, as you can see I've been able to enter the key of required harmonica for each song if I choose. I've grouped a lot of these tracks that would have been down loaded from YouTube. I've grouped them as per the respective Albums they come from which is why not every album has a full compliment of tracks, I only save what I like. I also use the rating system for sorting what I intend to do with the tracks or what major group of recording they are. All in all, I really like the Windows Media Player which is why I'd like something that is as close to identical to it as possible.
Media Player snipe.PNG
 
It works fine if you're used to Linux or willing to learn and you're willing to try a couple different distros to find the one that works for you and your hardware. You do have to be willing to overcome some issues, but it's totally doable these days.
This is really a yes and a no...

As much as I've used desktop Linux at home and work over the years, significantly more so recently (see: Microsoft licensing for enterprises), the experience is simply not on the level of Windows or Mac OS. So much of the choice in the Linux (and FOSS in general) world revolves around finding the solution that has been developed enough to address your current problem. Very few things have been developed to a '1.0' state where they actually do everything that might be expected by users.

I still find Linux fascinating for so many reasons and again, will continue to use it as much as possible, but I'm also careful to be clear on the limitations :).
 
For music playback I love Clementine, for video playback you just can't beat VLC.

As far as distro hopping to find the right distro for you is concerned, that's the strength of Linux - You have options. Personally I wouldn't have it any other way and don't experience any issues.
 
I use Debian Linux with a KDE desktop. The default KDE Dragon Player seems to work well for both audio and video playback. Very simple, light on resources, and is a KDE app. For a full-featured audio only app, maybe Vvave?
 
You could run Windows Media Player using Wine But I doubt that would work.
I would suggest you use VLC media player or SMplayer.
Both are great.
If both are not ok to your taste then use Clementine. Although I don't use it personally, I have heard great reviews about it from others in the community.
 
You could run Windows Media Player using Wine But I doubt that would work.
I would suggest you use VLC media player or SMplayer.
Both are great.
If both are not ok to your taste then use Clementine. Although I don't use it personally, I have heard great reviews about it from others in the community.
MS removed the possibility to setup WMP since WMP8. Since that it's built in Windows to deny anyone the chance to use it outside of new Windows versions. Hostile move from MS but what else is new.

Personally, I'm amazed that someone actually used WMP and wanted its functionality. It never even crossed my mind.
 
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