Exaile! media player

A few weeks ago I stumbled over Exaile!, an excellent media player for Linux which aims to be the GTK pendant to KDE’s Amarok and it fit’s great into Ubuntu’s default Gnome desktop. If you have Edgy 32bit installed just grab the deb package. Compiling for Edgy 64bit is very easy and quick, so don’t hesitate to download the sources. Either way you need to make sure to have some packages pre-installed:

• Python 2.4
• python-pyvorbis
• python-pysqlite2
• python-mutagen
• python-pyogg
• python-elementtree
• python-gtk2 (2.8.6)
• gstreamer0.10, gstreamer0.10-plugins-good
• python-gst0.10 or python-gstreamer0.10
• python-dbus
• python-gpod (for iPod support)
• gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly (for MP3 support)
• python-id3lib
• gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs (for SHOUTcast support)
• python-gamin (for directory watching)
• sexy-python (to add a clear button to filters)
• python-gnome2-extras or some similarly-named package (for lyrics, better tray icon, etc.)

I was missing “python-elementtree” at the beginning so Exaile! wouldn’t start, but then I came across this page which helped me out. If you’re compiling from source install these also:

• python-dev
• python-gtk2-dev

For 32bit Edgy install by typing:

$ sudo dpkg -i /path/to/exaile_XXX_i386.deb

Edgy 64bit:

1. Unpack exaile_XXX.tar.gz to a temporary folder
2. Open a terminal and change to the directory with the Exaile! source
3. Type make
4. If you run into any errors make sure you have all dependencies installed
5. If everything goes well type: sudo make install (if you wan’t to uninstall type sudo make uninstall)
6. Ready! To make sure everything’s OK type in a terminal exaile and watch out for errors. If there are some: make sure all dependencies are installed…
7. If Exaile! starts up - well done! You may further on start it via Gnome menu (“Applications -> Sound & Video -> Exaile!”)

I like Exaile! a lot. It collects album covers, connects to last.fm, has all my music at hand and even draws the album-cover to the desktop!