apt-get install

So those of you who have read this blog for a while know that I use Amarok exclusively. With a music library as large as mine (17,000+ tracks), one needs to choose one library management system and stick with it. In my opinion, anyway. A library this big requires a good rating system (it is very hard to rely on auto Scoring, since there might be months before any given track is played. Smart playlists can help, but they can be much more precise if they can work off a track’s Rating, as well as other criteria.

Most of my Smart Playlists include one basic rule: Find all tracks with a rating of 3.5 or better. They then add other criteria, such as genre, year, artist, etc. One of my favorite smart playlists finds all Live tracks, and randomizes them. This leads to a pretty awesome all-star concert list. Imagine having a concert where Neko Case follows Jack Johnson who follows KISS who follows Kris Delmhorst who follows the Barenaked Ladies who follow…. well, you get the idea.

Amarok also syncs fairly flawlessly with my iPod nano. Tracks, podcasts, playlists, album art… I think that Amarok is easier to use than iTunes with regards to an iPod. So I love that, too.

So, why do I hate Amarok? One easy reason: it is a resource pig when updating its collection. Seriousy, I have seen it peg the CPU on my machine at 100% and use a god-awful amount of RAM. Amarok does this frequently, sometimes as often as every 5 minutes. I tried everything to fix this problem: tuning MySQL, switching to Postgres, putting the database data files on a separate hard drive. Still, even on the latest version of Amarok, my system becomes almost unusable with Amarok running.

As a work-around, I have turned off auto-scanning and updating of the collection. When I add new tracks, I manually have Amarok update the Collection. Not the best solution; I liked having new tracks instantly in the Collection once I moved them into my music directory (/music). But this work-around has made things much better. During normal operations, Amarok is reasonable with regards to resources. I can still take advantage of all of its power (though populating smart playlists can sometimes spike the CPU and mem usage).

I love Amarok a lot. I hate Amarok a little. But I definitely cannot live without Amarok.

I am a captive audience.