The recent history of the Amarok music player is like a scaled-down version of KDE's recent past. Like KDE 4, the Amarok 2 series was greeted with a user revolt that has only gradually quieted. And just like KDE 4 inspired Trinity KDE for those who preferred KDE 3, so Amarok 2 inspired Clementine, a fork of Amarok 1.4.

The supporters of both Trinity KDE and Clementine make similar claims for their preferences: in both cases, the retro-apps are described as faster, easier to use, and outfitted with a better feature set than the most recent versions. But is that so?

An examination of basic features suggests that reality -- as usual -- is more complex than the claims. For one thing, Clementine is only at version 0.4 -- hardly, really, out of alpha release. Its feature set is incomplete, so it is handicapped in a comparison from the start.

For another, despite Clementine's unfinished state, both music players fulfill their functions extremely well. In fact, although each has details that the other lacks, their feature sets have yet to diverge in many areas. What a feature by feature comparison shows is not radical differences so much as differences in emphasis, and in what users are assumed to want.

Amarok vs. Clementine: Interface and Usability

Read the rest of this tale of forking Amarok at Datamation.com