Of course it comes with new features and enhancements :
- eMusic store
- support for the Nook
- ability to preload default radio stations
- several new Android device supported
- a new "Smiley Face Curve" default equalizer
- Lots more ! And bug fixes !
I'm particularly happy about the ability to preload default radio stations. In the 0.x series, Banshee used to ship with a set of default radio stations, but those were a pain to maintain, so that was dropped during the refactoring that lead to 1.0. This was of course not ideal either, so a bug about that was lingering for quite some time.
Then Martin Pitt came up with an idea, along with a patch : when Banshee first starts, just read any XSPF files from DATADIR/stations/ (usually /usr/share/banshee/stations) and import their content as radio stations.
As Martin mentions, this allows distros or admins to provide the default stations they want just by installing one or more files, and those stations can be locale or region specific. I think this is a nice solution, but maybe it's just because we don't have to do anything... ;)
This release is available in lots of shapes and sizes, all accessible through our download page :
- The usual source code tarball
- Packages for various distributions: openSUSE, Debian, Ubuntu, etc. (just check out our regular update channels)
- A Linux bundle for 32 bit and 64 bit systems. More details about that in my previous posts
- A Windows installer
- A disk image for Mac OS X
This release also marks the first anniversary of our most beloved feature, the Amazon store integration. During that year, over $9000 USD have been contributed directly to the GNOME Foundation. And we have learned that apparently most people don't buy music in August.
With a new Banshee release comes a new version of our Community Extensions. It brings two new extensions (AlbumArtWriter and DuplicateSongDetector), along with several enhancements and bugfixes to existing extensions (more details here). The project on gitorious now brings together 23 extensions, and 28 people are listed as committers.
In fact, this extension business is working so well that there are people who are (kind of) extending extensions : we now have new visualizations for the OpenVP visualizer, combining existing visualizations
The new "Spectrum Rain" visualization
Before you ask, although it looks different than what you might be used to, this is really Banshee. Just go to "Now Playing" and click "Simplify".
I'd like to thank everybody who made all of this possible, and who make Banshee such a fun project to be involved with. If you want to join us, to help out or to get some help, just head over to our website.