Banshee 1.0 Alpha 2 (0.98.2)

  • Release Date: March 26, 2008
  • Source Tarball: banshee-1-0.98.2.tar.bz2 (http://banshee-project.org/files/banshee/banshee-1-0.98.2.tar.bz2)
  • Release Information: NEWS (http://banshee-project.org/files/banshee/banshee-1-0.98.2.news), sha1sum (http://banshee-project.org/files/banshee/banshee-1-0.98.2.sha1sum), ChangeLog (http://banshee-project.org/files/banshee/banshee-1-0.98.2.changes)

  • If you are running openSUSE 10.3 there is a 1-Click Install available:

    1click-install-button.png (http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Banshee:/Preview/openSUSE_10.3/banshee.ymp)

  • If you are running Foresight 2.0 , install banshee-1 from PackageKit, or in a terminal type, sudo conary update banshee-1

New Features

Video Management

Video Library
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Video Library

This release brings a much sought after feature for Banshee - Video management and integrated playback! Your Video Library supports searching, playlists, smart playlists, queuing, and even bookmarks, just like your Music Library.

The Music and Video libraries are separated in the interface to provide a clean separation of content, so video will never be mixed in with music - when browsing or searching.

Now Playing

Playing video
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Playing video

The Now Playing source can be found above the Play Queue, and is where your videos play. When you start playing a video, the Now Playing source will automatically be selected.

By the final Banshee 1.0 release, the Now Playing source will also be a portal of information relative to your currently playing music, such as Last.fm recommendations and visualizations.


Features from the previous release

Don't miss out on the feature overviews from previous releases! See what else Banshee 1.0 Alpha 2 has to offer!

Other Features, Bug Fixes, Errata

  • Play Count, Skip Count, Last Played, and Last Skipped all now kept up to date
  • Allow editing of artist and album names
  • Start playing when artist or album browser is double clicked
  • Bookmarks extension is now available
  • Date-based searches and smart playlists should be working much better
  • Initialize the translation Catalog so translations can actually be used
  • Improved support for dark themes
  • Use XDG_CACHE_HOME directory for cache files
  • Disabled the equalizer temporarily until gstreamer pipeline issues are resolved

Dependencies

  • Mono 1.2.2 (.NET 2.0 Profile / gmcs)
  • SQlite 3.4
  • Gtk# 2.8
  • GStreamer 0.10.3
  • NDesk DBus (ndesk-dbus) 0.5
  • NDesk DBus GLib (ndesk-dbus-glib) 0.3
  • Mono.Addins (mono-addins) 0.3.1
  • TagLib# (taglib-sharp) 2.0

Please note that for openSUSE, all of the dependencies above can be found in the openSUSE Build Service, and are linked into the Banshee:Preview project. Even if you build from source, if you wish to avoid building the entire dependency chain above, add the Banshee:Preview repository (http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Banshee:/Preview/) to your repository list.

Historically, Banshee has fostered development of a number of projects and bundled their source code instead of depending on external builds. Many of these dependencies have matured and grown into well maintained projects on their own, and we are now depending on them externally. We waited to remove the bundles long enough to allow for distributions to ship packages to reduce the pain of building Banshee

Alpha Release Disclaimer

This is the second release in the Banshee 1.0 series. This Alpha 2 release does not have feature parity with previous Banshee releases (the last being Banshee 0.13.2). This means there are a number of features in this release that users may have come to know and love in Banshee that are missing for the time being.

However, although this is an Alpha release, it is quite stable and has many great new features and performance improvements which will be detailed later. It has also been designed to be both installed and run in parallel with previous Banshee releases, so you can test the release out without breaking your stable Banshee setup.

Currently Missing Features

  • This release does not contain any hardware support
    • No audio CD support
    • No CD burning
    • No iPod support
    • No USB Mass Storage support
    • No MTP device support
  • Additionally, a number of plugins have not yet been ported to the 1.0 architecture
    • Podcasting
    • DAAP/iTunes Music Sharing
    • Internet Radio
    • Recommendations
    • Mini Mode
    • Batch Cover Art Fetching

Do not despair, these features will be added back before the final 1.0 release. Many hardware related features are projected to land in the Alpha 3 release of Banshee 1.0. We expect releases in quick succession leading up to the final 1.0 release.

No Conflicts

This new release is not backwards compatible with previous Banshee releases, however, it will not conflict or cause any problems with any previous release you may have installed. If a Banshee library is located from a previous release, it will be copied and migrated to work with the new version.

Previously, all paths and packaging used the banshee project name. We are now using the banshee-1 project name to avoid any packaging, installation, or user-data conflicts with previous releases of Banshee. For instance, the following file/data related things have changed:

  • Packaging/Installation
    • Installation path changed from $(prefix)/lib/banshee to $(prefix)/lib/banshee-1
    • Application launcher changed from $(prefix)/bin/banshee to $(prefix)/bin/banshee-1
    • Application icon name changed from music-player-banshee to media-player-banshee
    • DBus service changed from org.gnome.Banshee to org.bansheeproject.Banshee
  • User Data Access
    • GConf Root Key changed from /apps/banshee to /apps/banshee-1
    • Application data directory changed from ~/.config/banshee to ~/.config/banshee-1 (note, the ~/.config base directory depends on XDG settings for the user)

These changes mean you can have installed and use both older Banshee releases (0.13.2 and older) and new Banshee releases (0.98.1 and newer) without worrying about packaging or installation problems or user data conflicts. Keep in mind however, that this release is not backwards compatible with older releases. If library changes are made in this new release, they will not be reflected if you run an older release.

Community

Contributors For This Release

The following people directly contributed to the release of this version of Banshee. Without their help, there would be no release!

Aaron Bockover, Alexander Hixon, Gabriel Burt, Scott Peterson, Sebastian Dröge, Wouter Bolsterlee

The release notes and screenshots for this release were crafted by:

Aaron Bockover, Gabriel Burt, Jorge Castro, Paul Cutler

Contributors In Past Releases

Alan McGovern, Alexander Hixon, Alexandros Frantzis, Alp Toker, Aydemir Ulaş Şahin, Ben Maurer, Bertrand Lorentz, Bill Dawson, Bob Copeland, Bojan Rajkovic, Brian Nickel, Chris Lahey, Chris Toshok, Chris Turchin, Christian Krause, Christopher James Halse Rogers, Dan Wilson, Dan Winship, Daniel Munkton, Eric Butler, Fredrik Hedberg, Hans Petter Jansson, Igor Guerrero Fonseca, Ilya Konstantinov, Ivan N. Zlatev, James Willcox, Jan Arne Petersen, Jason Conti, Jeff Tickle, Jorge Castro, Juri Pakaste, Ken Vandine, Larry Ewing, Lauri Kotilainen, Michael Monreal, Miguel de Icaza, Mike Urbanski, Nathan Palmer, Oscar Forero, Patrick van Staveren, Pepijn van de Geer, Ruben Vermeersch, Sebastian Dröge, Tim Yamin, Trey Ethridge, Will Farrington, Wouter Bolsterlee

Reporting Bugs, Joining the Community

If you encounter any bad behavior with this release, please do not hesitate to file bugs (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=banshee&version=0.98.2)!

We welcome new contributors - developers, translators, artists, writers, support gurus - to join our community. Join us!

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