[gentoo-user] Last-rites: media-sound/clementine : questions

[gentoo-user] Last-rites: media-sound/clementine : questions

[Philip Webb]

250804 Andreas Sturmlechner wrote:
> # Alexey Sokolov <alexey+gentoo@asokolov.org> (2025-08-03)
> # Inactive upstream, stuck on Qt5. Suggested alternatives:
> # media-sound/strawberry, media-sound/amarok.
> # Removal on 2025-09-03. Bug #960012.
> media-sound/clementine

I was somewhat shocked by this announcement, which came out of the blue.
I've been happily using Clementine with Qt 6 for a few months
& haven't encountered any problems ; also Amarok is itself masked ;
apparently, there are limitations to Strawberry.
I looked up the bug & see that there are challenges for developers,
but they don't seem to be insuperable to a user at least.
I've waited a while for others to jump in, but no-one has commented.

What do I have to do to go over to Strawberry ?
-- do I simply unmerge the old one & emerge the new one ?
Is that enough or do I have to do anything else to make it all work ?

-- 
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT     ___________//___,   Philip Webb
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Re: [gentoo-user] Last-rites: media-sound/clementine : questions

[Michael]

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On Saturday, 16 August 2025 21:10:39 British Summer Time Philip Webb wrote:
> 250804 Andreas Sturmlechner wrote:
> > # Alexey Sokolov <alexey+gentoo@asokolov.org> (2025-08-03)
> > # Inactive upstream, stuck on Qt5. Suggested alternatives:
> > # media-sound/strawberry, media-sound/amarok.
> > # Removal on 2025-09-03. Bug #960012.
> > media-sound/clementine
> 
> I was somewhat shocked by this announcement, which came out of the blue.
> I've been happily using Clementine with Qt 6 for a few months
> & haven't encountered any problems ;

Probably you also have Qt5 packages still on your system if Clementine depends 
on them?


> also Amarok is itself masked ;

Your could keyword it if you want to try it and if it works with no problems 
post a request in BGO to stabilise it.


> apparently, there are limitations to Strawberry.

I understand Strawberry is seeking to be a slimlined fork to remain 
maintainable due to lack of devs.  They welcome contributions from fellow 
travellers to enhance their code.


> I looked up the bug & see that there are challenges for developers,
> but they don't seem to be insuperable to a user at least.
> I've waited a while for others to jump in, but no-one has commented.

Many people consume their media via streaming these days, perhaps there is no 
longer a large enough user base on desktop based local media players to 
attract attention.


> What do I have to do to go over to Strawberry ?
> -- do I simply unmerge the old one & emerge the new one ?
> Is that enough or do I have to do anything else to make it all work ?

I have not used clementine for many years ago.  From what I recall it was 
rather unstable in its early days.  I would assume you just emerge Strawberry, 
if only to try it out.

Finally, if you use the Plasma desktop, there are a couple of KDE media 
applications you could try out (Elisa and Juk), on top of all the various 
player applications under media-sound/ in portage.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Last-rites: media-sound/clementine : questions

[Dale]

Philip Webb wrote:
> 250804 Andreas Sturmlechner wrote:
>> # Alexey Sokolov <alexey+gentoo@asokolov.org> (2025-08-03)
>> # Inactive upstream, stuck on Qt5. Suggested alternatives:
>> # media-sound/strawberry, media-sound/amarok.
>> # Removal on 2025-09-03. Bug #960012.
>> media-sound/clementine
> I was somewhat shocked by this announcement, which came out of the blue.
> I've been happily using Clementine with Qt 6 for a few months
> & haven't encountered any problems ; also Amarok is itself masked ;
> apparently, there are limitations to Strawberry.
> I looked up the bug & see that there are challenges for developers,
> but they don't seem to be insuperable to a user at least.
> I've waited a while for others to jump in, but no-one has commented.
>
> What do I have to do to go over to Strawberry ?
> -- do I simply unmerge the old one & emerge the new one ?
> Is that enough or do I have to do anything else to make it all work ?
>


May want to give it a little time to see if someone picks it up and
maintains it.  I've seen these announcements in the past on packages and
while the person who used to maintain it can't anymore, someone else
picks it up. 

In the meantime, if you want to try other replacement packages, that
might be a good idea too.  Just in case no one picks it up.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Last-rites: media-sound/clementine : questions

[Michael]

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On Sunday, 17 August 2025 01:58:13 British Summer Time Dale wrote:
> Philip Webb wrote:
> > 250804 Andreas Sturmlechner wrote:
> >> # Alexey Sokolov <alexey+gentoo@asokolov.org> (2025-08-03)
> >> # Inactive upstream, stuck on Qt5. Suggested alternatives:
> >> # media-sound/strawberry, media-sound/amarok.
> >> # Removal on 2025-09-03. Bug #960012.
> >> media-sound/clementine
> > 
> > I was somewhat shocked by this announcement, which came out of the blue.
> > I've been happily using Clementine with Qt 6 for a few months
> > & haven't encountered any problems ; also Amarok is itself masked ;
> > apparently, there are limitations to Strawberry.
> > I looked up the bug & see that there are challenges for developers,
> > but they don't seem to be insuperable to a user at least.
> > I've waited a while for others to jump in, but no-one has commented.
> > 
> > What do I have to do to go over to Strawberry ?
> > -- do I simply unmerge the old one & emerge the new one ?
> > Is that enough or do I have to do anything else to make it all work ?
> 
> May want to give it a little time to see if someone picks it up and
> maintains it.  I've seen these announcements in the past on packages and
> while the person who used to maintain it can't anymore, someone else
> picks it up. 
> 
> In the meantime, if you want to try other replacement packages, that
> might be a good idea too.  Just in case no one picks it up.
> 
> Dale
> 
> :-)  :-) 

Although there was a hiatus in the Clementine development since 2016, there 
were a couple of contributions in the last 7 and 4 months, with a new release 
1.4.1_p28-r1 three weeks ago.  This release is hard masked in portage, because 
it is still on the deprecated Qt5.

Given Strawberry is a fork of Clementine, but with fewer functions/features 
and Clementine was inspired from Amarok, it may be worth trying out Amarok 
first, which uses Qt6 and is in constant development.

https://invent.kde.org/multimedia/amarok/-/blob/master/README

media-sound/deadbeef is another audio player with some plugins available to 
extend its functionality - I've read good comments about it, but have not used 
it.

https://deadbeef.sourceforge.io/

Besides basic functionality, they all play audio and can structure/manage 
playlists after all, it is of course a matter of personal taste and matching 
your personal use pattern.  Trying more than one application could help you 
discover a better audio player than Clementine.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Last-rites: media-sound/clementine : answer

[Philip Webb]

250816 Philip Webb wrote:
> 250804 Andreas Sturmlechner wrote:
>> # Alexey Sokolov <alexey+gentoo@asokolov.org> (2025-08-03)
>> # Inactive upstream, stuck on Qt5. Suggested alternatives:
>> # media-sound/strawberry, media-sound/amarok.
>> # Removal on 2025-09-03. Bug #960012.
>> media-sound/clementine
> What do I have to do to go over to Strawberry ?
> -- do I simply unmerge the old one & emerge the new one ?

I unmerged Clementine & merged Strawberry, rebooted & sound still works.
Thanks for the suggestions.

-- 
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT     ___________//___,   Philip Webb
ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|   Cities Centre, University of Toronto
TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'   purslowatcadotinterdotnet