Re: choice of software
-- Jason Pepas <j.pepas@mail.utexas.edu> wrote
(on Monday, 04 November 2002, 09:07 PM -0600):
> > I've had problems running console-based music programs -- starting new
> > programs and processes tends to interrupt music output, which I find
> > annoying. If you're using a graphical environment, I highly recommend
> > xmms -- it's fairly lightweight, there are a number of different panel
> > applets that can control it (as well as CLI commands!), and can play
> > just about anything.
>
> I wouldn't exactly call it lightweight...
>
> I have both xmms and cplay open right now, and gtop shows xmms at 28MB, and
> mpg123 (via cplay) at less than 3MB...
It's lightweight when compared to other GUI clients, particularly on
Windows. My wife has a 1.8GHz machine with 256MB dual-booting Debian and
Windows 98, and winamp will slow that machine to a crawl, while xmms
hardly registers (I've had OpenOffice, the GIMP, Evolution, and multiple
Mozilla windows all open simultaneous to running XMMS on that machine,
while under windows if I try to open more than one or two programs
beyond winamp, it'll die).
Also, note that I mentioned I've had problems with CLI music programs --
wierd skips that occur when new processes start, etc. This is simply
*my* experience. If I could find a viable CLI alternative, I'd jump on
it! (I use screen a lot, and really have my window manager up primarily
for a web browser and the occasional GIMP session). Don't bother
pointing one out on this thread, however -- I've tried just about all of
the ones available in Debian.
> For me this is not a concern, but for someone with, say, 128MB of RAM, if they
> are running a desktop environment, an email client, and a few mozilla
> windows, 28MB of RAM is suddenly a scarce resource.
Interestinly, my primary machine is a Celeron 366MHz that until recently
had only 96MB -- XMMS hasn't been a problem on this machine. Of course,
I'm running blackbox, gkrellm, ROX-Filer, screen, and Phoenix, so my
resource usage is pretty mimimal :-)
--
Matthew Weier O'Phinney
matthew@weierophinney.net
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