Best New Music Player Linux Mint 21.3 (Easy Guide for Beginners)

Alright, so I’ve been messing around with my Linux Mint 21.3 setup lately, specifically trying to find a good music player. You know, something that just works and lets me enjoy my tunes without a headache. I used to be a Windows guy, and I gotta say, Foobar2000 was my jam back in the day. So, I started hunting for something similar in the Linux world.

First off, I remembered that Linux Mint is supposed to be super user-friendly, especially if you’re coming from Windows. I figured, “Okay, this should be easy.” I started by checking out what people were saying online about music players on Mint.

I learned about this thing called Strawberry. It’s supposed to be good for folks who have big music collections and really care about audio quality. I thought, “Cool, I’m a bit of an audiophile myself.” Plus, it can handle streaming from some services, although it’s not officially supported. I gave it a shot, installed it, but it just didn’t click with me. It felt a bit too much for what I needed.

Then I stumbled upon cmus. Installing it was a breeze, just a simple command in the terminal. When I launched it, it showed this neat album/artist view. But honestly, it felt a bit too bare-bones. I mean, I like simplicity, but this was a bit too much on the minimalist side.

Next up was Rhythmbox. Now, this one’s the default player on Ubuntu, so it’s gotta be decent, right? I heard it’s reliable and all that. I fired it up, and yeah, it’s not bad. It plays music, organizes stuff, pretty standard. But it didn’t really “wow” me, you know? It just felt like… another music player.

• Tried Strawberry: Too complicated.
• Checked out cmus: Too simple.
• Gave Rhythmbox a go: Just okay.

Then, someone mentioned VLC. I was like, “VLC? Isn’t that for videos?” But apparently, it’s got some pretty solid audio features too, like volume normalization. I’ve always had VLC installed for videos, so I tinkered with its audio settings, and I was pretty impressed! The sound quality is great, and there are tons of options to play around with.

So, after all that, I think I’m sticking with VLC for now. It’s familiar, it works well, and it sounds good. Plus, I don’t need to install anything extra.

My conclusion

Finding the right music player on Linux Mint was a bit of a journey, but I think I’ve landed on a good one for me. VLC might not be the first thing that comes to mind for music, but it’s definitely worth considering if you want something versatile and reliable. And hey, if you’re coming from Windows like I did, you might find the transition to Linux Mint pretty smooth. Just remember, Linux isn’t Windows, but it’s got its own charm!