DeadBeef Not Your Style? Check Out These Linux Music Players!

So, I’ve been on this quest to find a decent music player for my Linux machine, something that doesn’t suck, you know? I used to be all about Foobar2000 back when I was stuck with Windows, and I’ve been trying to find something similar for Linux. I heard a lot of people talking about this thing called DeaDBeeF, saying it’s the closest thing to Foobar, so I figured I’d give it a shot.

First, I found some instructions online on how to install it. It seemed simple enough. I installed DeaDBeeF on my Linux Mint 21.2. Seemed to go off without a hitch, so far so good.

First Impressions

After installation, I launched DeaDBeeF. The interface is pretty clean, not too cluttered, which I liked. It’s got that bare-bones, no-nonsense kind of vibe, which is cool if you’re not into all those flashy, resource-hogging players.

Loading My Music

Next, I needed to get my music into it. I keep all my music in WAV files with CUE sheets, it’s just how I roll. I pointed DeaDBeeF to my music directory and, boom, it started loading everything up. It handled the CUE sheets perfectly, splitting up the tracks just the way I like it. No issues there, which was a relief.

Trying to Import Playlists

Now, here’s where things got a little tricky. I have all these playlists from back in the day, and they’re set up to look for files on my old Windows drive, like “D:music”. Obviously, those paths are totally useless on Linux. I tried importing them, but no surprise, it didn’t work. They were just pointing to nowhere.

Playing Around with Features

I decided to mess around with the player itself a bit. It supports all the usual suspects, like MP3, OGG, FLAC, and even some more obscure formats. I tested out a few different file types, and they all played flawlessly. No stutters, no weird glitches, just smooth playback.

Customization

DeaDBeeF seems pretty customizable. It’s got this modular design, so you can add or remove different plugins to tweak it to your liking. I haven’t dived too deep into that yet, but it looks like there’s a lot of potential there to make it your own.

Overall Thoughts

So, after spending some time with DeaDBeeF, I’d say it’s a solid choice. It’s lightweight, stable, and plays everything I throw at it. My old playlists are still a problem, but that’s more of an issue with my file paths than the player itself. It’s got a ton of features for something so simple, like supporting ID3v1, ID3v2, and APEv2 tags. It also plays the most common formats, such as MP3, OGG Vorbis, FLAC, APE, WV, and WAV.

• Pros:
• Lightweight and fast
• Plays pretty much any audio format
• Handles CUE sheets well
• Customizable with plugins
• Cons:
• Might take some work to get old playlists working if your paths have changed

Overall, I am really happy with this music player, although there are a ton of great music players on Linux, DeaDBeeF is a good choice. For a free, open-source player, it’s pretty darn impressive. If you’re looking for a solid, no-frills music player for Linux, I’d definitely recommend giving DeaDBeeF a try. You might just find your new favorite player, like I did.