Personally, I think xmms looks better. It's plain, but displays what it should and doesn't take a lot of screen estate. Rhythmbox is huge, looks really ugly (not exactly itunes in that respect... it manages to be huge and cluttered while not displaying much) and sloooooooow. When trying to add my music collection (5000 songs or so... got way too many CDs), xmms is finished in an instant. Rhythmbox just stays unresponsive for 30 mins using all CPU, not displaying any progress or letting you do anything. Then I just want my system back and puts it out of its misery.
Rhythmbox shouldn't displace better working alternatives until it has gotten useful.
I think we can all agree that no one is against replacing xmms as long as there's a suitable alternative.
Rhythmbox, it sounds, is clearly not that alternative.
Rhythmbox is a media organization program with a built-in player. Xmms is a media player with some organization capability. The focus of the programs are different, so the interface is different. Clearly, neither one is a direct replacement of the other.
Arguments over which one *looks* better are obviously moot--there are enough people on either side of the fence to show that it's simply a matter of taste. If you grew up on Xmms and winamp back in the early days, you'll probably find the Xmms interface perfectly intuitive. If you have a fairly large media collection, you may find Rhythmbox's library-based interface more useful.
So, would there be any serious negative consequences of keeping xmms around until a more suitable replacement could be found? What sort of cost/benefit are we talking about in relation to this change?
