About

DeaDBeeF (as in 0xDEADBEEF) is an audio player for GNU/Linux systems with X11 (though now it also runs in plain console without X, in FreeBSD, and in OpenSolaris).

I don't feel bad that I didn't know about deadbeef until just now, since it started its life in 2009. It's already an amazing player. Note that it's a player, and not a library/database app like some other media players have become. This is fine for me, since I manually structure my data in directories. I'm old fashioned like that.

It is a GTK app, with very few dependencies. I didn't need to install any libraries/etc to get it. It's already packaged for Unity Linux.

It has an excellent plugin system, and it has global hotkeys for multimedia keyboard control.

Its design is straightforward and it seems as though the author intends to keep it that way:

: Q: I have 50 ideas about what features must be added to the player!!!111oneone. Can i become idea-generator of the project, so that I tell, and developers do what I ask for?

: A: No

The meaning of the name

[1]

Hexspeak, like leetspeak, is a novelty form of variant English spelling.

Hexspeak was created by programmers who wanted a magic number, a clear and unique identifier with which to mark memory or data. Using hexadecimal notation, which includes the digits 0123456789ABCDEF, it is possible to create small words with the digit "0" representing the letter "O", "1" representing the letters "I" or "L", "5" representing "S", and "6" or "9" representing "G" or "g" respectively.

0xDEADBEEF ("dead beef")

• On IBM RS/6000 systems, Mac OS on 32-bit PowerPC processors and the Commodore Amiga as a magic debug value.
• On Sun Microsystems' Solaris, it marks freed kernel memory.
• On OpenVMS running on Alpha processors, DEAD_BEEF can be seen by pressing CTRL-T.[3]

Review

Advantages over Audacious version 1 or 2:

• Uses less memory
• Cleaner interface, even better than the skins or the GTK UI.
  • On audacious2, the GTK UI doesn't have the equalizer functionality.
• Much much nicer to use overall. Has every feature I want.
• The equalizer has a better range of values to work with
• Great plugin system, has everything wrapped in.
  • It can play the .hsc I haven't been able to play in a long while. (2-op FM music)
  • It can also play the .nsf (NES Sound File) I've been keeping around.
• The playlist is great, it can let me view the raw filenames.
  • I'd prefer to not see the trailing extension like ".mp3" but I can deal with the way it is right now.
  • I don't really understand why there needs to be a column for the currently-playing item. It should just colour the row. But I think the way it was done was for minimalism. I think this because there's a switch to change between ways of colouring the rows, and one method is "lighter". This leads me to believe that custom colouring like colouring the currently-playing item would be more CPU intensive.

• The SID plugin has an HVSC feature, but it's busted and won't let me select a directory. I had to select anything, and then hand-edit the configuration file to correct it. I guess I'm the first user to actually try using this. =/

Lubuntu 10.10

Tested 2010-11-15

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alexey-smirnov/deadbeef
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install deadbeef