The Linux Music Player Battle Thread

Linux distros, software, tweaks, etc. If it's Linux, post it here.
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acalora
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Re: The Linux Music Player Battle Thread

Post by acalora »

skullmeat wrote: Mar 7th, '26, 13:46 I want something like that, but for linux. Any suggestions would be great.
I can't give any first-hand experience, but I have heard of Audacious for Linux. It was based off of XMMS for Unix-like systems as an alternative to Winamp. Audacious apparently has a Winamp-like theme and also supports Winamp skins.
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Grafo
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Re: The Linux Music Player Battle Thread

Post by Grafo »

Casey wrote: Mar 2nd, '26, 14:20 I've hopped music players several times. I've used everything mentioned in this thread aside from fooyin...these days I just run everything through jellyfin, even from my main machine that hosts the server. It works on all of my devices and I like to use the same software across every device.
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uh this looks nice, I've been wanting to try out Jellyfin for movies and such but knowing it also can do albums make it even more appealing
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ward
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Re: The Linux Music Player Battle Thread

Post by ward »

Grafo wrote: Mar 7th, '26, 18:28 uh this looks nice, I've been wanting to try out Jellyfin for movies and such but knowing it also can do albums make it even more appealing
There's actually a really nice music only app for android and ios so you can stream music from your home jellyfin server. It's probably one of the easiest solutions for streaming your own music to your devices. I don't use it that much because it lacks support for all the video game music I like to listen to, but it's perfect for regular music.
https://github.com/UnicornsOnLSD/finamp

Oh, it's also on flathub not too apparently?
https://flathub.org/en/apps/com.unicornsonlsd.finamp
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Zhirr
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Re: The Linux Music Player Battle Thread

Post by Zhirr »

This thread might be interesting, I've tried mpd at times but never managed to keep anything set up permanently. I mostly just run mplayer directly.

Although I do have jellyfin set up...I had forgotten about that. It works for many kinds of media.
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bumbervevo
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Re: The Linux Music Player Battle Thread

Post by bumbervevo »

2nd'ing DeaDBeeF as one of the best Linux-based music players. Super customizable and it already does most of the things you would want it to do right out the gate.

MPD is neat because it offers a lot of different ways to listen to your music. Want to play music in multiple rooms at the same time from the same source? MPD can do it. Wanna host your media library and music server on one device and stream it from another? It can do that too. It's like FB2k without rails.

It's definitely a bit of a beast to tame though, and for most people, it's not worth the time and effort. +1 for MPD frontends like Cantata as they usually have a built-in MPD server that's sensibly configured so you can immediately reap the benefits of MPD.

And one more +1 for Jellyfin + Finamp. As of now, this is my primary method for listening to music since I have my phone with me all the time.
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aestheticjmack
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Re: The Linux Music Player Battle Thread

Post by aestheticjmack »

I finally switched over to Navidrome for my music library.

I used foobar2000 for the longest time, but I never really found any Linux music apps I actually liked. After getting Navidrome set up though, man, I love this shit.

Having my whole library available everywhere rules. I’m not stuck only listening at home on my local network anymore since I can just forward my Navidrome server and connect to it from outside the house. It’s such a huge upgrade over being tied to one machine or constantly juggling configs.

For desktop I’ve been using Feishin, and on iOS I use Nautiline. That combo has honestly been perfect for me so far.

Feishin also has the ability to self host as a webui, so on every machine I just open up that page and I have the same music player config on every device.

It really feels like the best of both worlds: all the convenience of streaming, but with your actual own library instead of Spotify trying to shove AI slop down your throat.

Definitely one of those things where, right after I got it set up, I immediately thought: yeah, I should’ve done this way sooner.

Also a great replacement for mp3tag is puddletag, pretty much the same interface and tools, the only issue I've ran into is running out of memory when trying to bulk edit my entire library.
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RaZZlom
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Re: The Linux Music Player Battle Thread

Post by RaZZlom »

I'm that boring guy, who uses Strawberry as main music player. Mostly because it's easy to use, has music library support and scrobbling to ListenBrainz. And from music player I want one thing - play music.

I'm converting flacs to mp3 with Flacon and tagging mp3's with MusicBrainz Picard.

Tried Jellyfin and Navidrome, but this is not comfortable to use for me. And why I need third-party web service on my homelab machine, when I can play files from HDD with Samba?
Can't Speak English :confused:
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ward
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Re: The Linux Music Player Battle Thread

Post by ward »

aestheticjmack wrote: Mar 25th, '26, 20:30 I finally switched over to Navidrome for my music library.

Having my whole library available everywhere rules. I’m not stuck only listening at home on my local network anymore since I can just forward my Navidrome server and connect to it from outside the house. It’s such a huge upgrade over being tied to one machine or constantly juggling configs.
So, this one is so close to perfect for me. I really want a better way to access my music from basically anywhere. I currently run a media server through foobar, which means it's on an always-on VM... then I use the foobar android app which is ugly at best. It's kinda annoying. I have one remaining issue:
lack of support for all my video game files. This comes up so much that I'm considering converting all the native files to opus. Anyway, for anyone listening to regular music files, I think this is a very solid way to go.

@skullmeat I think I forgot to reply about AIMP. There's a Linux version: https://aimp.ru/?do=download&os=linux

I haven't tested it... but it exists.

For everyone using Strawberry and Deadbeef, I issue a challenge. I find both of those payers to be about 60-80% good for me... Fooyin is 90%. So, check out fooyin and you can use my theme to get you started. It might not be best for you, but if you're curious, this should make things easier.
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skullmeat
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Re: The Linux Music Player Battle Thread

Post by skullmeat »

ward wrote: Apr 2nd, '26, 12:11
aestheticjmack wrote: Mar 25th, '26, 20:30 I finally switched over to Navidrome for my music library.

Having my whole library available everywhere rules. I’m not stuck only listening at home on my local network anymore since I can just forward my Navidrome server and connect to it from outside the house. It’s such a huge upgrade over being tied to one machine or constantly juggling configs.
So, this one is so close to perfect for me. I really want a better way to access my music from basically anywhere. I currently run a media server through foobar, which means it's on an always-on VM... then I use the foobar android app which is ugly at best. It's kinda annoying. I have one remaining issue:
lack of support for all my video game files. This comes up so much that I'm considering converting all the native files to opus. Anyway, for anyone listening to regular music files, I think this is a very solid way to go.

@skullmeat I think I forgot to reply about AIMP. There's a Linux version: https://aimp.ru/?do=download&os=linux

I haven't tested it... but it exists.

For everyone using Strawberry and Deadbeef, I issue a challenge. I find both of those payers to be about 60-80% good for me... Fooyin is 90%. So, check out fooyin and you can use my theme to get you started. It might not be best for you, but if you're curious, this should make things easier.
wardsfooyincachy.fyl
I saw that. Want to avoid wine for stuff like that. Might try it on a vm tho.
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ward
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Re: The Linux Music Player Battle Thread

Post by ward »

@skullmeat scroll down. It seems there is a new Linux version:
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