HowtoMatrix

The program MOC was reviewed in recent article called MOC — Console Audio Player for Linux. It was written by Roman Tworkowski. Even though we live in the times of cute graphical interfaces e.g. Compiz, KDE, etc. I consider the MOC player to be a better solution for some users (including myself) than the very popular applications Xmms or Amarok, and the other visually appealing players. Why do I think so? Read on. I am about to describe some of the lesser known options of this excellent player.

My first argument for the MOC player is… the computer itself! I’m not going to deliver a lot of numbers to back up my statement, but some of you know very well what running a GUI based player like Amarok looks like on older or weaker machines. If the KDE environment wasn’t preloaded earlier, the graphical parts of Amarok alone force us to wait a long time before the player, with its libraries providing basic functionality, is loaded into the computer’s memory (so small in so many cases!).

The second argument for the player, perhaps the most salient one, is expressed best by this question: what are all those functions needed for? Let’s assume I’m a common man who wants to listen to music. I don’t need the music visualizations, the hundreds fancy skins, the fabulous image of my music player, the CD covers, or the advanced OSD (On Screen Display) modules. Really, the ability to listen to the music after logout is useful and appealing, you bet! Similarly, running the program from a console session might be beneficial if the X Window System went down “from an unknown cause”, especially after some new Linux tricks have been applied. And wouldn’t you like to play music during your system’s startup? Wouldn’t you like to control a player with a few commands, or make use of multimedia keys on your keyboards?

Are you swayed by these arguments? OK, let’s start then.

Read more at polishlinux.org