Comments to my article on my top 6 applications to install after you install Ubuntu suggested that I should keep KDE applications out of the list,because they come with a huge related load of KDE libraries and use up more RAM.Also,Exaile and Brasero were suggested as alternatives to amaroK and K3B respectively.

So,I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04 a few days ago,Brasero was by default built in,and I installed Exaile to follow up on my promise that I would review them once I had an opportunity to experience them.Well,in the words of Jawaharlal Nehru “…..now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge…..”

Exaile at first glance looks quite minimalist in nature,it does what it’s meant to,play music “….not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially…” Something which I was really glad to note is that it follows the theme of Ubuntu,due to it’s GTK roots.Gone were the days,when I searched high and low to find a theme for amaroK which would match my Ubuntu theme.That’s a minor point though.

The toolbars are functional and only incorporate what they should,unlike amaroK which had a separate Manager for each of Playlists,Album Covers,Queue etc.It also means that there are so many less options to configure Exaile though.

Exaile is a plugin-based player,it has some cool plugins of which I installed the Mini Mode,Resume playback and Tray Buttons.

Some grouses I had with Exaile though are that it doesn’t have the Play option on the right hand context menu,which is actually a grouse only because amaroK had it and Exaile is described as “amaroK for GNOME.”It’s a minor irritant to select the track you want to play and move the mouse to the play button to have it start playing.

Also,the track information doesn’t display the lyrics,and I couldn’t find a plugin for the same.Well,that’s for now,maybe I shall have a better opinion piece to put up later.

m4a tracks can be played by installing the gstreamer-ugly and gstreamer-bad plugins’ multiverse variants from the repos.