There will be some exciting changes coming to Ampache in Natty.
Ampache has a new front-end called Viridian. Viridian is a light weight player written in python that uses gstreamer for playback, making it capable of playing a wide variety of audio formats. What I like most is that Viridian is simple, and it’s integration into Gnome and Unity.
This first screenshot shows Viridain on Unity, connected to my ampache server, with a playlist loaded, and changing songs.
Viridian will get out of your way and allows you to be doing other things while enjoying your music.
Note the album art in the notification area close to the clock. If you right click on the album art, controls will drop down in a nice menu.
To use Viridian you will need to have Ampache setup with a user account configured. To setup Viridian you will need to know the server address, username and password, which Vridian will prompt you for the first time you launch it.
Viridian was written by Dave Eddy and will be available in Natty. The source code can be found on launchpad
I’m also pleased to announce that in the next release of banshee there will be a new banshee-ampache-extension, This extension will allow you to access your Ampache server directly through banshee. John Moore has been the driving force behind this extension and we thank him for his efforts.
I have also just recently been made aware of the rb-ampache plugin project, which is developing a Rhythmbox plugin for ampache. This plugin will also allow you to access your ampache server directly through Rhythmbox. I have just made contact with Graham Grindlay the upstream author and will start working on getting this into Natty as soon as it is ready.
With the Natty release Ampache will play nice with Amarok, Banshee, Rhythmbox, VLC, Viridian, Android, Palm Pre, iPhone, Blackberry, Icecast, MPD, Coherence, and more. Now that’s what I call flexible.
To all my fellow veterans I would like to say thank you for your service.
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