This overview will (attempt to) acquaint you with Exaile, “a music player aiming to be similar to KDE’s Amarok, but for GTK+ and written in Python. It incorporates many of the cool things from Amarok (and other media players) like automatic fetching of album art, handling of large libraries, lyrics fetching, artist/album information via Wikipedia, Last.fm submission support, and optional iPod support via a plugin”.
If for whatever reason you want to use Exaile instead of Amarok in Ubuntu, this overview will guide you through installing Exaile and review some of its key features.
- To download the Exaile packages for Ubuntu or Fedora (or the source to compile on your own), visit www.exaile.org/downloads. This tutorial uses the Ubuntu package, so the installation steps are specific to Ubuntu.
Save the .deb file to your home folder or desktop, and once the download has completed, double-click it. You’ll be presented with the Package Installer. Review the details and when you’re ready to install, click the Install Package button.
- When you’re prompted, enter your password and click OK. A Details window may appear explaining that additional packages also have to be installed – click Close if this happens.
- Once the installation has completed, click Close.
- Launch Exaile by selecting Applications -> Sound & Video -> Exaile Music Player.
- The first time Exaile runs, it will prompt you to select the folder(s) where you store your music files. Click Yes.
- Click the Add button.
- Navigate to the (first?) folder that you store music in. Select it and click Add.
- That folder will be added to the Library Manager. Repeat the above two steps until you’ve added all the folders that you store music in, and then click the Apply button.
- Exaile will import all of your music and sort it according to Artist by default.
- Give Exaile a spin – play a few files etc.
- To edit the Exaile settings, select Edit from the top menu, and then Preferences from the drop down list.
- From here you can edit some of the general settings, alter the Notification settings, enter your Last.fm settings etc. When you’re done – if you’ve made any changes – click Apply and then OK.
- To view and install some of the available plugins for Exaile, select Edit then Plugins and click the Available Plugins tab.
- To get an overview of any plugin, select it and the description will appear in the right window. To install a plugin (or several) simply place a check in the box next to its name. Click Install/Upgrade.
- If a plugin requires something to be installed on your system that isn’t already installed, you’ll be notified. As an example, the iPod Device Driver plugin requires that python-gpod be installed – which on my system it wasn’t (see error below). To install any of the required software, just use the Synaptic Package manager.
- After the required software is installed exit and re-open Exaile. If you re-visit the plugins page, they should all be successfully installed.
- If you installed the Shoutcast plugin, select Radio -> Radio Streams -> Shoutcast Radio and browse to your hearts delight.
