amaroK is an audio player application for KDE. It is currently released independently from the kdemultimedia package, though this may change in the near future, with amaroK possibly replacing some of the older applications such as Noatun. It is part of kdeextragear, allowing it to have its own release cycle independent of the rest of KDE.
 A screenshot of amaroK audio player for KDE, showing the player window and playlist manager | |
| Developer(s) | The amaroK Team |
|---|---|
| Stable release | |
| Repository | |
| Operating system | Linux |
| Type | Audio player |
| License | GPL |
| Website | amarok.kde.org |
The word "amarok" means wolf in Inuktitut, and amaroK's name likely comes from Mike Oldfield's album with same name. amaroK uses wolves in art. The 1.2 release originally had a wolf icon, but it was later withdrawn due to similarity with WaRP Graphics Inc. logo.
Features of amaroK
Here are the features of amaroK as of version 1.2:
- Automatic album cover download from Amazon.com and integrated cover manager.
- amaroK also has a role in testing out new audio engines for the upcoming KDE 4.0. It supports the following:
- GStreamer
- xine-lib
- Media Application Server (MAS).
- Network-Integrated Multimedia Middleware (NMM)
- aRts
- akode (an engine from the KDE multimedia package)
- Welcome wizard for easy configuration.
- Crossfading for GStreamer and xine.
- Configurable color schemes. The context browser can be styled with CSS.
- Extended tag dialog with MusicBrainz and mass-tagging support.
- Choice between using SQLite3 or MySQL databases.
- Playlist-browser for managing playlist collections.
- Music rating system.
- Integrated CD-burning support using k3b.
- Animated systray icon (optional).
- KIO support for GStreamer, allows playback via remote protocols.
- Native Audioscrobbler support. Dynamic playlists can be generated from suggestions given by Audioscrobbler. (amaroK users are invited to join the amaroK users Audioscrobbler group.)
- Integrated iPod support.
- A powerful scripting interface, allowing amaroK to be extended through any DCOP-supported language.
- Automatic lyrics retrieval and display.
- 10-band graphic equalizer
There is a friendly rivalry among users who choose amaroK, JuK (which is included in KDE), or the GTK1-based Winamp-clone XMMS as their media player.