back to amarok

By basd on Jan 4, 2009 | In kde4, linux, opensuse, icewm

I mentioned previously that for reasons unknown, songbird had increased its cpu usage in my icekdeome install.

...

So, I compared cpu usage with amarok.

Now, as mentioned in previous posts, when I set up my music server, songbird was giving me the lowest cpu usage -- virtually no load when idle, around 30% when playing. Very good.

Then suddenly for no apparent reason (and despite no change that I know of in my songbird install), it jumped to 10% at idle and about 70% when playing. Very odd. When I first did my test, these were roughly the numbers I was getting from Amarok, which is why I switched to Songbird.

So, now I tried Amarok again. The downside is that it is very cpu intensive when it scans my collection. And, since my collection is on a remote drive, if I inadvertently break the connection (ie., reboot the other computer) Amarok will spend 20 minutes or so rescanning my collection. Whereas Songbird is a lot more forgiving of the lost connection.

But the upside (at present) in Amarok is that it is now using virtually no cpu at idle and about 40-50% while playing. Not as low as Songbird WAS, but better than it is at present.

A mystery ... but anyway, back to Amarok.

BTW -- I'm still using 1.4, because as far as I know 2.0 still does not have smart playlists (and I create my playlists via entries in the comments tag).

BTW2 -- FWIW, I tried Banshee. Occasionally I have been able to get Banshee to run, but at this test, nothing happened when I attempted to launch Banshee from the menu icon. (Since this is an icewm desktop, I may try it from a command prompt and see what happens. Some of the kde3 launchers don't necessarily work, such as the shutdown button and command prompt button.