The state of Linux music players in 2026

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Desktop vs phone / dedicated devices

  • One camp is surprised people still play music on PCs, assuming phones or dedicated players (DAPs, vinyl, DJ decks) dominate.
  • Others prefer desktop playback while working: headphones and conferencing are already on the computer, it saves phone battery, and integrates better with work setups.
  • Some use small servers (often Raspberry Pis) with web or MPD frontends, controlled from phones as remotes.

Foobar2000 nostalgia and clones

  • Foobar2000 is repeatedly cited as “peak” music-player UI: customizable layout, waveform, fast folder/library views, rich metadata and playlists.
  • On Linux, people either:
    • Run Foobar2000 under Wine (works, but with quirks),
    • Use DeadBeeF as a native approximation,
    • Or adopt Fooyin, a Qt-based Foobar-style player that many see as the closest clone.
  • Mac and Linux users complain that nothing fully replicates Foobar’s feature/UX combo; some feel “stuck” on it.

Terminal / MPD-based solutions

  • MPD plus TUI clients (ncmpcpp, rmpc, cmus, mocp) gets strong praise: fast, scriptable, client/server, easy to control remotely.
  • Web or GUI frontends like MyMPD and Cantata (including its community fork) provide “home Spotify” or more traditional UIs on top of MPD.

Other notable players and omissions

  • Quod Libet is highlighted as a powerful, plugin-heavy, cross‑platform option; several are surprised it wasn’t in the article.
  • Audacious, DeadBeeF, Sayonara, Elisa, VLC, Amarok, Lollypop, JRiver, Plexamp, SwingMusic and others are all mentioned as viable for different tastes.
  • Some like Amberol’s filesystem-based simplicity but are frustrated by limitations (e.g., ignoring symlinks).

UX, toolkit, and integration complaints

  • Many find Linux players visually clumsy or missing “one crucial feature” (waveform seekbar, global search, collection-wide shuffle, proper album sorting, gapless playback).
  • GTK4/libadwaita apps are said to look out of place on non-GNOME desktops; Qt apps often look bad outside KDE. Client-side decorations and theming are contentious.
  • Several conclude that between streaming clients, imperfect desktops apps, and niche needs (collectors, exotic formats, DJ mixes, gapless albums), the only satisfying path is building a custom player or self‑hosted ecosystem (Navidrome, Jellyfin/Plex, ListenBrainz, custom web apps).