Including The next KDE media player: Babe

English Multimedia
#1

Hi all,

I’ve found around the interwebs that a new KDE Music player, Babe, is taking shape. It looks to be rather versatile and elegant, yet also really new, although it looks like it’s had a stable release.

https://babe.kde.org/

I haven’t found in neither the nascent 15.0 repos nor in the software.opensuse.org package search for the package for it in any version of the distro.

I don’t have really the time to pick up maintaining a package, but I think including this in openSUSE would greatly polish the multimedia experience in KDE.

Thoughts?

#2

It is available in KDE:Extra since nearly 3 weeks:
https://software.opensuse.org//download.html?project=KDE%3AExtra&package=babe
Unfortunately, it doesn’t build for Leap 42.x though (from a quick look it seems that gcc 4.8 is too old).

It’s even included in Tumbleweed since about two weeks:
https://build.opensuse.org/request/show/573223

The submit to 15.0 is still pending:
https://build.opensuse.org/request/show/579416
So you can expect it to be in the final release, it actually should show up in the standard repos in a few days probably.

Btw, it is not “The next KDE media player” really.
It is just one new media player that happens to use KDE’s libraries/frameworks.
The openSUSE package summary says “A Qt music player with support for favorites”…
Its description:

Babe is a music collection organizer. Playlists can be created for organizing music, and they can be filtered by artist, title, album, genre, date and location. It can link to, and bookmark YouTube music videos into the local collection by using a Chromium extension.

Haven’t tried it myself yet though.

#3

Just tried to build it with gcc7, but it still fails. Would apparently also need a newer Qt5. (although it does specify 5.5 as minimum, but apparently nobody actually tried to compile it with older versions…)

#4

Good to know. It looked really promising, especially after sitting on the same release of AmaroK for a few years.

Does KDE have a preferred media player?

Thanks for the update - looking forward to 15.0 for that at least that reason alone (I’m not adventurous enough for Tumbleweed right before a paper is due)

#5

Well, 2.9 is finally going to be released in 1 or 2 weeks.

The KF5 port likely will still take some time, but there have been significant steps forward in the last weeks too.

Does KDE have a preferred media player?

No.
(I suppose every member of the KDE community does have a preferred media player though… :wink: )

There is one music player released by KDE itself (as part of “KDE Applications”), and that is juk, and there is one media player, dragon.

The rest are “3rd party products” (even Amarok, since ever), but users are of course free to choose what they prefer.

#6

Elisa looks better but it is just a matter of taste.

#7

Just to clarify: Elisa is another new “KDE music player”.
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=KDE-Elisa-Music-Player
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=KDE-Elisa-Alpha-2

https://community.kde.org/Elisa

(one of the reasons why I wrote that Babe is not “The next KDE media player”… :wink: )

Elisa is meanwhile in KDE:Extra and Tumbleweed as well (since about the same time as Babe), and will also be part of Leap 15.

#8

My memories of what was shaping into a new modern media player may have been mixed up between Elisa and Babe - it’s good to know there’s options.

I also was beginning to think that AmaroK was abandoned - happy to know that development is still continuing.

#9

And Amarok 2.9.0 finally is released! :slight_smile:

https://amarok.kde.org/en/node/888

I’ll submit the update to KDE:Extra shortly, so it should also make it into Leap 15.0…

#10

That is awesome! Thanks for the contribs and updates! Looking forward to the refreshes awaiting me,