in ♥️ with linux

The largest part of my life, I’ve bought and listened to music locally—first on vinyl, then on cassette, later on CD, and as purchases on iTunes. My music collection is accordingly large, and a small fortune has been invested in building it. Accordingly, I can’t just switch to streaming, and I also want to own my music. So, important albums are on vinyl, but I also like to buy them as MP3s, for example from Bandcamp.

Hardware

At 14, owning a stereo system was the biggest thing – even at almost 50, it still is. I run two 1980s Magnat speakers through a Rotel A12MKII amplifier.

The amplifier supports Bluetooth, but somehow it’s just easier to run 15 meters of audio cable across the room.

Software

You’ve tried music players on Linux, and so much of it is either very ugly or too bloated.

But there’s one highly praised option: Amberol.

Amberol is simple and looks good. You just open a folder with files, and they play—no database or other unnecessary bells and whistles.

Now there’s still the issue that changing the audio output in GNOME is cumbersome and has to be done through Settings. But the Audio Switch Shortcuts extension solves this problem—with keyboard shortcuts, you can easily switch between devices.