Disinformation Disinfected, pt. 3: Banshee in Ubuntu

Here, let’s take a look at one of the main things that get’s me going about mono-supporters.There is a strong push to get Banshee in as the default media player in Ubuntu. Here’s my take on that.

Earlier in the series:
Disinformation Disinfected, Pt. 2: The False Dilemma
Disinformation Disinfected, Pt. 1

The first lie: Banshee saves space.

As near as I can tell, the whole thing really got going from an apebox.org “rant” back around April. In this [cough]fact-filled[/cough] post, the assertion is made that 6.1 MiB will be saved on the LiveCD by replacing “bloated C-based” Rhythmbox with Banshee.

This, like most pro-mono propaganda is about 25% truth/ 75% lie. You see, it doesn’t count the accompanying documentation of Rhythmbox. The apebox.org ranter casually cedes the point on page 4 or so of this thread, pretending all the while like space was “never really my main argument.”

I challenge anyone to read this first rant and come away thinking that the so-called space saving was “not really the main argument.” It’s damn near the whole argument.

It can’t be the RAM savings because even in the what I am sure is totally fair comparison in the rant, Rhythmbox still uses 10MB less than Banshee.

(Sidebar: Reviewing the links I saw for the first time another apebox.org rant where he admits:

When I made my post, citing 6 meg saved, it was facetious of me. The numbers are true, don’t get me wrong – but it would be wrong to characterise Rhythmbox of being bloated.

How noble. The numbers are true in the same sense that I have just as much money as Bill Gates so long as you only count what is both in our wallets and they are both empty at the same time. And it’s not “would be wrong” it’s “was wrong” – because you did characterise Rhythmbox as being bloated. I mean, for god’s sake, man, you used the word “bloated”. Jesus, the bullshit.

Sidebar over.)

The second lie: Rhythmbox is dead.

In this intial rant, the insinuations begin that Rhythmbox development is dead/maintenance only. This lie caught on big in Ubuntu Brainstorm, where people began tripping over themselves to get the word out:“Rhythmbox is dead.”

Except of course Rhythmbox is not dead, as the maintainer takes great care to diplomatically point out:

I think people have read too much into my earlier statement about my plans regarding rhythmbox development, or perhaps I overstated things a little. Earlier I listed several limitations inherent in rhythmbox. I’m mostly going to stop working on those and let rhythmbox be what it currently is. There’s still a lot of room for improvement, and there are still many useful features that can be added.

That doesn’t stop some people from saying things like “Banshee is at least still being actively developed.”

The third lie: Rhythmbox doesn’t scale.

So, now that we know there are no disk size, RAM usage, or developement reasons to replace Rhythmbox, we are flatly told that “Rhythmbox doesn’t scale.”

I refute it thus:

23,000+ songs. 133+ GB

It takes Rhythmbox about 3 seconds to open on my machine.There is absolutely no delay in scrolling or filtering.

But we’ve got people with 2-3,000 song libraries talking about something “not scaling”. Puh-leeze.

The first false argument: Rhythmbox isn’t a good media player.

There’s a lot of people insinuating that Rhythmbox is a poor media player. But it just got 2nd in Linux Journal’s Readers’ Choice Awards 2009.

First place was Amarok – but no one is seriously going to suggest a KDE app on a GNOME desktop by default. Of course, Banshee made a decent showing…oh wait, no it didn’t:

1. Amarok (36%)
2. Rhythmbox (18%)
3. XMMS (12%)

So, why are we throwing out the 2nd most popular media player again?

The second false argument: Banshee has more features.

Related to the first false argument is the argument that Bansee is more “featureful”. This is questionable on its face, because even the most driven mono promoters couldn’t get it past a few blockers, but it’s also a poor argument for several other reasons:

1. Most of the time when you compare two similar applications, they will have some set of shared features, and some unique features. Unless one has every single feature the other has and more, then anyone can point to either application and say it has features the other doesn’t.
2. You can add features to Rhythmbox, just like they can be added to Banshee. So it’s not like saying “we can add these things to Banshee” is some sort of argument for Banshee.
3. Creeping featurism is a bug and a problem; not a feature and selling point.

The third false argument: All pro-Rhythmbox messages are FUD.

Banshee supporters continually state or imply that Rhythmbox is dead, un-featured, bloated, etc., even though in some cases even the FUD-originators have backed off the initial lie. I think this is clearly FUD and dishonest; but sadly, about par for the course for mono peeps.

In Summary

It’s my opinion that despite protestations of “oh, I’m just looking out for the best application”, it is clear the initial thrust of getting Banshee into Ubuntu as the default media player was based on the pro-mono agenda of simply pushing mono apps.

Let me be clear on my position: if people want to use mono apps, well then, drop it in the repos and drive on Power Ranger. It is the constant “shove it down their throats” of the pro-mono brigade which offends me the most.

Mindshare is very important; it is why all that shovelware pays to have their crappy applications on the WinXP OEM desktop. It is a major “win” for mono to be included by default, because then mono-supporters can simply point to some existing application and say “well, that mono app is already in, so why not this one?”

This is especially insidious in GNOME, because GNOME (to their eternal shame) includes mono applications by default, the pro-mono brigade can now run around saying that new mono apps don’t require additional disk space (because mono libraries come with GNOME). Thus, they can pretend like the supporting libraries under a new mono app do not “count against it”.

There is no clear and compelling reason to replace Rhythmbox as the default player. It works, it is stable, and is under active development. Keep Banshee in the repositories and let people install it if they feel the need.