Why was Banshee chosen to be the default for 11.04?
What are the reasons for Banshee replacing Rhythmbox in Ubuntu 11.04?
I don't want your opinion on which is best nor why. I want to know what the reasoning was behind the decision.
dv3500a's answer has links to the information. Here is an informative video from Gabriel Burt's talk at GUADEC that might give you some information that gives you an overview of some of the things that are nice in Banshee. Here are the slides.
I was at the session and here are some of the highlights:
- The ability to change UIs from netbook to "normal". (It's handy to have one media player for both form factors)
- A vibrant community of contributors (see the slides for numbers) who is willing to work with us closely.
- An easy way to hack on extensions.
- Follows the GNOME schedule.
- Polished device support, including syncing of playlists to devices.
- Video library support (though this is new and not very polished, maybe we'll hide it for 11.04)
Banshee has a bunch of other great features, but these were the ones we mostly discussed at this session.
This was discussed and decided at UDS-N on Friday 29th October at 10:00 AM. The blueprint for the default application selection is on Launchpad. There hasn't yet been a video posted of the session on the ubuntu developers channel but there may be in the future. You can also look at the IRC log for this session.
Banshee has more features, and more plugins (Amazon MP3 sotre, ebook , videos...) and it seems to be more user friendly, even if, today, it's often too buggy. Some reasons are in this blueprint of maverick: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/desktop-maverick-desktop-application-selection (it has been used for natty discussions too) see in the whiteboard the ==Music Player== part
" [davidnielsen 2010-10-22] Banshee 1.8.0 no longer depends on HAL, it has excellent integration with Ubuntu specific technologies such as the SoundMenu and Application Indicators. The development pace is nothing short of amazing and the community which has grown around Banshee has proven to be welcoming and swift to fix bugs. Banshee has multiple UIs which suits Ubuntu well for deployment on UNE as well as the desktop. "