Winamp is officially dead.
 

After 15 years of llama-whipping, AOL shuts down Winamp for good

How dead is it?

That dead.

Apart from the obvious "we all started with Winamp" factor, Winamp was a huge influence on Linux's audio players. Slackware 14.1 still ships with xmms, which is a faithful Winamp 2 clone. And I believe Audacious is still compatible with Winamp 2 skins.

WTF? Do we have epidemic that kills good stuff now? Like recently Opera died now Winamp dies..who is next?
Not so fast! Winamp is definetly something we all remember but it doesn't mean we all started with it. For example before Winamp there was built-in Windows Media Player on Windows 98 and CD Player in Accessories..but after 2.x and 3. Winamp no longer was enjoyable so i can suggest move to others like Apollo(great but outdated so use only if have great sound system otherwise pick something freshier) or Aimp(this one is updated and does job much more elegant than Winamp).
That's what they think... http://www.filehippo.com/download_winamp/history/

Windows 98?? Darn Newbies. Some of us started with the Commodore 64 midi player and piggybacked our own SID chips to get stereo.

He asked(not really asked but you got idea) about music player not about OS(Norton Commander btw)! There really is no reason to be rude. Some people(like you did) just got lucky more and got computers earlier. :P

I can't help but see Winamp as something that was unofficially dead since ages ago. And for good reasons: the UX leaves a lot to be desired.

I think the great thing about old versions of WA is that they were simple yet powerful and pretty much just worked. What more could you want from a music player? Sure, if you're into specialist stuff, or like to organize albums etc then you'd want something a bit more elaborate, however if you had a list of tracks that you wanted to play with a lightweight free tool then Winamp hit the spot. It certainly has a place in my heart from growing up in the 2000's :) .

What I most liked about Winamp was its skinability. I still use some of my old Winamp skins with XMMS, though mostly I use VLC now because it just works.

Dang, thats a shame. I have very fond memories of Winamp, and messing with it's plugins. Hell I still have Winamp on my system, even though I am only running Slackware now, I still have Winamp installed under Wine...

Goodbye winamp!

Winamp....good? I stopped using it because it was unstable on my systems (various versions).

Apollo is IMO vastly overrated, and its so far out of development (last release was 2007) I wouldnt suggest it to anyone, even if I did think it had better sound quality than other players.

Older versions were not bad.

FINE! Use Foobar2000 then for offline music. People still brag how great this one is... :rolleyes:

Also Firefox is next in line for Chrome disease..

The best part of foobar2000 is that you can customize the UI. I'll take that option over a static UI anytime. Otherwise, it does everything that every other music player does.

[OT]

I really hope it isn't :)

[/OT]

http://msujaws.wordpress.com/2013/11...landing-plans/ :(

Oh, you were referring to the upcoming Firefox UI? I thought you meant that Google Chrome was taking over and FF was going the same route as Winamp. Well, Australis doesn't look that bad (though it's very similar to Google Chrome indeed).

So flat...

When I said that I found winamp unstable, it wasnt newer versions but 1998-2003 (mostly 2.X) releases.

FINE?

You are _way_ too late with your foobar suggestion, and there was no need to be dismissive. I dont use foobar anymore because I'd rather use a linux native player.

Not quite, theres a few codecs, etc. that are only supported on foobar. They are silly 'we can get a 1% improvement over codec XXXX, arent we smart' codecs. So rather pointless at best. But it does show that many of the people who do play witrh audio files and codecs use foobar for whatever reason.

There are other players that let you customise the GUI, but I havent found any with as many options as foobar.

I've always been a big fan of the honesty of foobar. Rather than telling you how foobar sounds better than other players, they state blunty-

http://www.foobar2000.org/FAQ

Do you remember Gnome 2? KDE 3? Bash init scripts? Firefox 3? Cars with no electronics in them which you could actually repair and service in your garage? Cell phone with physical buttons? The list is almost infinite.

Ok, unfortunately I've gotten accustomed to Gnome 3 to the point I actually like it now, aside from the new lock screen (really, swipe up with a mouse??)

I can't agree with you more about cell phones with physical buttons. Made things a hell of a lot easier, even blind dialing.

Cars with no electronics... yeah I still have my near acient cars (ok, 90s cars) for that reason, it's easy to work on, but still fuel injection is nice, rather not have to fiddle with a carb. Just not too much of the electronic crap in the 90s to get in the way.

I guess you’ve lost that good old Gnome 2 feeling. ’Cause it’s incompatible with Gnome Shell.

Read again. That is what i also said. Old version site is about older versions while filehippo site has newest.
BTW! Is there even such Winamp 2.97 release?!
Ummm...: Gnome and KDE - should be available yes but it should be time to move on; Bash init script - can't comment yet; Firefox 3 - and why would you need that(can find it in oldversion website)? Just get latest v25 and put this Firefox 2 theme(saw Fx3 theme too which was not supported yet but 2 will work and looks similar) on it and voila - no more need for Fx v3; Cars with no electrics - sounds boring and lame. Also some car companies(Dodge for example) still release cars with 'little to none' electronics; Cell phones with physical buttons - question of taste. Not to mention they are still available in shops or "unofficial shops"(places) or just use advert website like same eBay; list goes on to almost infinite but But BUT you have to understand that humanity needs to progress in technology aswell so it's nothing to be ashamed of to get new stuff as long as you learn to properly use it and appreciate it. :)

Watched the screenshots. Firefox still has new style of managing addons with this theme so doesn't really help. Addons were in a separate window back then, remember?

Really? You will reject this offer because of this small minor change that has no effect on browsing or design? First World Problems.

When I was using windows back in the day, Winamp was one of my favorite music players. But when I got started with linux way back, XMMS was the first music player I've used.

Sorry, you've eitehr misread or mistranslated.

I said that I stopped using winamp becuase I found it unstable. You posted that the older versions werent bad. I replied that it was older versions I had found unstable.

I cant remember if that was unoffical release from a developer who left the winamp team, or if I'm confusing it with a different media player.....

Or not. There is project to save winamp active - Save Winamp.

Long ago I liked Winamp. Than linux found me and shortly after so did VLC. There came a time I just stopped using Winamp because I really didn't need it anymore. I remember the dev saying that he would never make a linux version of Winamp. So with that memory I say let it die. There are plenty of current and up-to-date alternatives. VLC is one that comes to mind.

:twocents: Right, who cares about winanything? I also say VLC or:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ar-4175484428/
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...0/#post5071052
and on... :D

The Slackware users respond with, "say what?"

Personally I don't get all that sorrow across the web. Winamp 2 was one of my first audio players and a favourite one. Pretty much like for everyone I know of my generation. It was straitforward to use and its skinnability made it absolute #1 in its time. But times do change. Now Amarok is my #1 player. It does all Winamp could do (except changing skins that I wouldn't do anyway) and much more. Nowadays I wouldn't use a player that doesn't have a collection, can't fetch lyrics and covers from the web and so on. So it was a natural death for Winamp.


[offtopic] Btw I'm excited that Amarok is a Linux application. It's much superior to anything I tried on Windows and I tried a few audio players. Having to use Windows regularly I did my best to find a player I would like. Finally I found... Amarok in Clementine reincarnation.[/offtopic]

I agree with that. For me, Amarok is simply the best audio player in comparison with all audio players I've tried in other platforms. Didn't know there was a Clementine version for Windows; I'll install it next time I boot Windows.

Today someone reminded me of Winamp. Dunno why because i prefer to not use it anyway. And winamp website seems to have changed but works!

You were playing Quake, you played like a llama, and you got your ass whipped?

Napster? ;)

You think that they are newbies...Until this thread, I've never heard of Winamp. My first computing experience was Windows ME on our family computer. I remember I would type a letter every week and mail it to my uncle in a nursing home until he died... there were [looks in the directory] ...wha? :scratch: I kid you not, there are 128 typed letters in there. I didn't even know what binary was back then....wow.
Who would have thought that this forum would have lead me to discover that???

Back to WinME- I never remember having any problems with it... regardless of what people say, for a 8-to-10-year-old, it worked fine. But then again, we had dial-up, so I never touched the Internet until we got DSL during 8th grade.

When we got our XP desktop in 05 (which we still have and use), my dad copied over ALL of our files through two 512MB flash drives...and we had to reboot ME every time we unplugged

Wow, I really got off topic there...sorry :redface:

And to prove your point, I spend a lot time in the newbie forum :)

win... dows? :Pengy:

Actually no. My family was not that rich and only got PC later. :hattip:

To be honest, Winamp died when AOL took over and slowly fired all of the original Nullsoft. They've been at version 5 for quite a while now....

By the way, MPD deserves a mention here. It's great for building entertainment centers, and has clients for a variety of PC and mobile platforms.

that's really sad that wimamp is dead.

All our good memories are maybe gone now, so far, of our early ages of computer in 95s...

Long live VLC! Oh, sorry had to blurt it... :D

VLC is nothing to be compared to Mplayer.

Usually Windows users prefer VLC rather than SMplayer or mplayer, because it is simple to use.

I've only used mplayer for CLI (lots of choices...) plus VLC goes deeper than most users realize especially winblow$ users.

Nonsense, but you are entitled to your opinion.

Both are fantastic, although personally I've been using mplayer for a long time. It is hugely configurable, and supports everything from ladspa plugins to jack to the framebuffer.

Coming back to the original discussion, Winamp might come back, I mean, yes they've got to remove the "proprietary" code that AOL "owns", but the company that bought it will do something with it, rather than just close it down. They would have done better to just release the code as they did with Mozilla, but I don't think it would have mattered much. Sure, it plays mp3, but so does everything else.

I am more concerned about Opera. Decades of developing the Presto rendering engine, and they're just gonna call it quits? What's gonna happen to the code? Actually, they would have done better to release it as open source, but I doubt they will. For one, it still runs their opera mini transcoders (or does it?)

You guys aren't using vlc and mplayer to listen to music, right? Right?

I do. http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ar-4175441857/

people should sit back wait and see what the new owners are doing with the two services ok.
http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/14/aol...audio-company/

The horror, the horror...

:D

Nah but it can be used for that task if nothing else works. Speaking of such stuff....i remembered KMPlayer. If you need also audio convertion i guess JetAudio works too otherwise it is too much bulky.

DJ Shaji likes this
 

MPlayer uses even less resources than mpg321, and outputs to every known device/daemon there is. I personally use MPD on my file server, but MPlayer is not a bad option.