Hello Linux Geeksters. As you may know, Cantata is a music player, working with KDE, or as a Qt4 application. Cantata has the most important features of a modern music player. The latest version available is Cantata 1.5, coming with the below changes and fixes:
- Remove cover size setting, set automatically.
- Artist images only shown in grid view.
- No images, or icons, shown in basic tree view.
- Remove GUI option to control saving of scaled covers. This is enabled by default, and can be toggled via the config file.
- Don’t re-load view when sort changes.
- Simplify view config pages.
- Use QUrl with server details to build HTTP address used to compare MPD http file paths against.
- Store song ratings in MPD’s sticker DB. Ratings stored using ‘rating’ key and values 0 to 10. In the UI, ratings are show as 5 stars.
- If we fail to download a cover, don’t keep trying next time song is played.
- Simplify toolbar cover widget, no border.
- Support MPDs “find modified-since” with MPD 0.19 and newer. If a number is entered it is taken to be ‘modified since X days in past’, otherwise a date should be entered (e.g. 01/12/2001 to find all tracks since 1st Dec 2001) Cantata will first try to convert from your locale date format, default date format, and then ISO date format.
- Show covers in search results.
- Show performer in cover tooltip if this is set and different to album artist.
- Always large action icons for grid view.
- Increase gap between add and play icons in grid view.
- Disable volume fade on stop by default – this is really something MPD itself should implement.
- Remove ‘Add albums in random order’ from view context menus.
- Reorganize playqueue context menu.
- Use ‘Metadata’ and not ‘Tags’ as metadata/tags view in context song pane.
- Minor changes to song progress slider.
- Show covers in playlist tree and list views.
- Use read-only editable combo for filename in tag editor, so that text can be selected.
- Also read /com/canonical/desktop/interface/scrollbar-mode to determine if overlay scrollbars have been disabled.
- Add note about ‘AlbumArtist’ tag to initial settings wizard.
- Allow all bar title and artist columns to be hidden in playqueue.
- Add option to disable song info tooltips.
- Only show icons in message widget buttons if style uses icons for dialog buttons.
- Add option to have separate play queue search action – enabled by default.
- Revert back to storing scaled covers as JPG. PNG is taking too much space, especially with retina displays.
- Read ArtistSort, AlbumArtistSort, and AlbumSort from MPD. If found, use these to sort items.
- Add ‘Full Refresh’ action – cuases caches to be removed, and models to be completely refreshed.
In this article I will show you how to install Cantata 1.5 on Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn, Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr, Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca, Linux Mint 17 Qiana, Pinguy OS 14.04, Elementary OS 0.3 Freya, Peppermint Five, Deepin 2014, LXLE 14.04, Linux Lite 2.0 and other Ubuntu derivative systems.
Because it is available via PPA, installing Cantata 1.5 MPD on Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 and derivative systems is easy. All you have to do is add the ppa to your system, update the local repository index and install the cantata package. Like this:
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/cantata
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install cantata
Optional, to remove cantata, do:
$ sudo apt-get remove cantata