How not to improve your CD player application

March 24, 2009

This is one of the rare entries that I have to present in pictorial form.

Here is a 65% size view of what kscd, the KDE CD playing program, looks like in Fedora 8 (where it is version 1.6, from KDE 3.5.10):

Fedora 8 KsCD

Here is what it looks like in Fedora 10, again 65% size:

Fedora 10 KsCD

(Links to full sized versions are here and here. Note that the Fedora 10 version is a shaped window; the black areas are normally transparent.)

One of these two applications is useful. The other one has been 'improved', presumably because people thought that the first one looked kind of boring (also, apparently, people wanted to be able to give the CD player 'skins'; there are several supplied with Fedora 10's kscd, all of them equally bad). In the process it has been made less useful and even less functional (they are playing the same CD, but only the older one displays the artist correctly).

Apparently I now need a new CD player program, just like last time. Which is a real shame, because kscd was a nice CD player once it started working reliably in Fedora 8.

(Alternately I need to figure out how to build the Fedora 8 version of kscd on Fedora 10. Hopefully the KDE libraries are compatible enough.)


Comments on this page:

From 203.59.102.239 at 2009-03-25 00:10:59:

There isn't just a skin that looks like the old one?

By cks at 2009-03-25 00:41:38:

None of the kscd skins supplied with Fedora 10 look like the old one, and my vague stabs at web searches haven't turned anything up.

From 202.40.139.170 at 2009-03-25 07:48:32:

I actually just had the same thoughts today. Thanks for the post!

From 88.162.132.133 at 2009-03-25 08:01:01:

People still play CDs? I'm genuinely surprised. I've never played a CD in the last 5 years, not once. I've bought a few, but immediately proceded to rip them, drop them in my "old things" box, and listen to them through Rhythmbox and lately Banshee.

From 198.74.13.100 at 2009-03-25 11:35:48:

I started kscd after I read your post.

The app looked perfectly fine earlier. It now looks like the crappy apps bundled by motherboard manufacturers.

From 38.104.154.98 at 2009-03-25 14:01:02:

I vaguely remember CD's. Can't imagine why you'd still be using one, though. :)

Written on 24 March 2009.
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Last modified: Tue Mar 24 21:31:40 2009
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