i should be working (but i'm fixing my computer).

You would think the linux world would have really good music players.  Meaning, exactly how I want it without writing the program myself.  After all, every college student has a huge music collection.  But nooo....

...

In fact the zen of things just working becomes ever more elusive.  Programs show the Possible, but do not combine the Possible together.  So, I can't have what I want.  In fact, I spend a lot of time discovering this.

Banshee won't run on one computer, it runs the cpu to 100% when not even playing a song, for no apparent reason.  On another computer it runs fine and EVEN sees my iPod, but can't read the files.  GtkPod reads the files on the iPod, but won't play them because it uses the now obsolete xmms -- and GtkPod itself has been apparently abandoned since 2007 (or in computer years, since before time).

I'm trying to play some video podcasts on my computer.  Totem will play the video, but mysterious has no sound.  Vlc will play the sound but mysteriously has no picture.  The same videos can be found on YouTube and work just fine.

GtkPod on one computer loaded my iPod fine.  After many hours spent fixing my iTunes libary (on windows) after the disaster of both iTunes and Amarok re-writing the file name -- resulting in duplicates of everything; and an iTunes upgrade unregistering my entire library, I reloaded the iPod.  The synchronization deleted the files I had loaded via GtkPod.

The next time I ran GtkPod (which only works on one of my computers, BTW), it would read, but not write to the iPod.  What?  After more research, I concluded that it was not mounting with user write privileges.  Why not?  It did before... I remounted it manually WITH user write privileges and then it worked again.  Banshee, however, still could not read the iPod.  Banshee on my other computer will not recognize the iPod at all.

Amarok 1+ is obsolete (and used a lot of cpu).  Amarok 2+ now just barely has smart playlists, but they are dumb smart playlists.  I set up my library so that I could make smart playlists based on entries in the comment field.  Used to work just fine in Amarok 1+.  Works in Banshee, assuming Banshee works, which it doesn't now on my music player computer.  Ditto for Songbird, which has abandoned Linux.  Amarok 2+, otoh, does not have -- as far as I can tell -- the ability to match "any" criteria, so that one could play, for instance, any file commented to "bob" or "sue" (or both) ...  The only option I can come up with is to comment files with a no-play criteria.  Or, make a zero percent probability for each other criteria that I don't want to play.  Re-tag all 5,000+ entries?  Oh, that will be fun.

Then there is the thing that GtkPod and iTunes recognize the "grouping" tag.  Amarok, Banshee and Songbird don't recognize the "grouping" tag.  They recognize the "comment" tag -- but it is a DIFFERENT comment tag than the one iTunes allows to edit (though it is a tag iTunes uses for something I don't recognize).  GtkPod doesn't recognize comments, but has category.

One computer will run Compiz but not Kwin.  One computer will run Kwin but not Compiz.  One Compiz install has no default hot keys.  On my Jolicloud/Ubuntu install, when I use xkill to kill lxpanel, I can restart it via <alt><F2> run program.  On my OpenSuse 11.3 install, if I kill lxpanel, I also lose any other way to run a program, so I can't restart it (or properly shutdown).

I have three or four different PIM programs that basically don't talk to each other, but for which I need each for something.  (BTW, the Thunderbird Lightning plugin synchronizes nicely with Google calendar.)

Which reminds me, on some of my computers Thunderbird 3.1 runs, others require 3.0 and 3.1 crashes.

Can this get any crazier?