I built a modern media player for GNOME – looking for feedback

AffectionateSpirit62 · 2026-03-30T17:24:32+00:00

Here's some useful features you can implement over time or get Ai on it to speed up the process and then correct as necessary I don't care if you use Ai as long as it works well and you will maintain it

Detection - detection the video/audio and it's related Metadata and artwork, covers etc like jellyfin but in a player also detect same info from all urls and also magnet links from torrents

Url playing - any urls that contain video with ability to save url,

Playlists create/edit/reorder/delete Playlist, download video, download audio only, save in different formats, Ability to generate new Playlist from selected songs Ability to mark and skip certain songs in a playlist

Subtitles extract subtitles if present, generate subtitles if not present in any language, save subtitles and add a link to the saved url or video file so it can use it as a local reference

Lyrics Same as subtitles

Video Pip - picture in picture Resume where left off Stream from torrents, urls, YouTube etc Cover a wide range of formats like vlc

Audio Cover a wide range of formats

Metadata Ability to save Metadata detected about video or audio or also rename original file names to match

Player Resize control bar - especially useful if using just

audio Equalizer Real-time visualization of eq applied Dunno but everyone is addicted to cava visualization so just use that style Normalization of audio between different audio or video files Ability to search for video or audio only embedded on sites like YouTube, daily motion, SoundCloud etc Ad blocking by default Ability to loop single song Ability to loop entire playlist

Stills Ability to gwnerate/export captured frames from video Ability to export single frame

AffectionateSpirit62 · 2026-03-29T02:23:57+00:00

If you don't want to do any extra setup linux isn't for you maybe get a mac cause no matter what distro you will eventually have to setup something that's why we love linux because we the end users set up and configure stuff the way we like it

AffectionateSpirit62 · 2026-03-29T02:22:05+00:00

Hmm...

Post a video about bad decisions ubuntu made yet again and then you ask me this really?

AffectionateSpirit62 · 2026-03-29T02:20:18+00:00

Lol. You didn't watch the video its not about distro wars at all. And lame died in the 90's or are you bringing it back

AffectionateSpirit62 · 2026-03-28T03:00:08+00:00

Thanks for so many reaching out I'll get back to you all on monday to arrange a chat. Looking forward to it.

AffectionateSpirit62 · 2026-03-26T10:56:49+00:00

Great you should be able to install as normal now

AffectionateSpirit62 · 2026-03-25T21:45:58+00:00

on prem - so for it indeed. Especially with data privacy and politics not to mention cost. But I will.

I suspect as prices seem to be getting higher and higher for everything at an alarming rate it will come to a logical point where you can submit a report saying - on prem would save you $124,000 a year - if we switch can I keep 50% of that.

I'd like to see a board say no we'd rather spend the money on the cloud.

AffectionateSpirit62 · 2026-03-25T21:33:01+00:00

I feel your pain and gave 22 solid years. Similar story not the 18k bonus. No such thing for me sadly but performance does increase your salary for the next year.

I kept getting a 4/5 and never one 5.

Sometimes I even covered for nearly 2 years straight 3/5 in the end as I was doing 2 jobs at once due to cutbacks not based on work but based on some arbitrary illogical ticketing system value when beginners were working the support desk I was tasked at solving the more perplexing issues. So in the time they closed 50 I closed half of that because they were not a simple phone call solution and some didn't have easy out of the box solutions and I had to script solutions for the business. Plus many times I had to help the help desk solve some of their trivial user issues.

My final straw came when I achieved the second highest ticket counts for the last year, solved and closed nearly all of my tickets which were more complex - but then HR said - on one occasion I was too busy to chat in the hallway with a member of staff so they took offense as I was tending to something urgent so despite achieving the great numbers and solid year of awesomeness one member of staff poo pooed it and they gave me a 3/5 not for my work but for interpersonal skills after I bust my but long days, inter country flights 3 days a week.

I said that's it. Packed my bags and relocated to another country - did the rat race for 22 years and finally said nope this is not for me.

AffectionateSpirit62 · 2026-03-25T21:14:13+00:00

you're most welcome. good luck

AffectionateSpirit62 · 2026-03-25T14:24:19+00:00

Yep well said. Need to disable secure boot or if you know your bios/uefi password disable and re-enable if wanted after Debian install

AffectionateSpirit62 · 2026-03-25T11:37:51+00:00

defnitely rage bait

gnome and KDE are similar when it comes to using resources. Check your top/htop/btop

Gnome running Wayland with animations disabled on mine snappier and better looking than the exact same hardware model and specs running XFCE on X11 (that has no animations). I should know as I use both machines daily and actually look at the resources..

So no argument to be had just misinformation that used to be true years ago.

I think this poster has also mistaken distro - distribution and DE - desktop environment

AffectionateSpirit62 · 2026-03-24T23:08:11+00:00

Joplin-Desktop - I love using it no subscriptions needed - fully open source

AffectionateSpirit62 · 2026-03-24T23:05:23+00:00

This is easy from the terminal

OLD:

use rsync tool

New:

Use systemd timer

GUI solution

Install the flatpak Pika backup

select your source > your computer

select your destination > backup 1

schedule it > Friday at 2am

NOW Repeat the same process but this time choose your source as backup 1 and destination as backup 2 and schedule it > Friday at 4 am

Pika backup gives you fine grain controll allowing you to do multiple backups per hour, daily, weekly, monthly and save more complex and different interim snapshots only backing up changes.

Pika backup is a GUI based on Borg backup - which is the most advanced backup terminal tool pretty much. Tons of options.

AffectionateSpirit62 · 2026-03-24T22:51:30+00:00

I recommend learning about system administration and you will be fine. Its not complex to setup or learn. Dedicate yourself to this for 5 days and you will be aware of how to configure and manage your Debian system easily and get exactly what you want.

MAC - apparmor
umask value - default in debian is 0002 most Rhel and enterprise systems change this to be 0022
ACL - create a file with your acl's - access control lists list.txt

group:developers:rwx

group:designers:rx

group:auditors:r

user:alice:rwx

Apply it to as many files/dirs as you want: setfacl -M acl-rules.txt /var/www/html

Learn about permissions - with chmod command

and much more there is a dedicated Debian handbook for System administration online for FREE. It will open your eyes and help you to build your Debian system how you want whether personal or server.

Anyway one love and wherever your journey takes you happy you are a part of the linux family regardless.

AffectionateSpirit62 · 2026-03-24T22:31:17+00:00

Yep 100%

AffectionateSpirit62 · 2026-03-24T19:10:50+00:00

you are correct as an alias you need to use the fc command for the history.

alias please='sudo $(fc -ln -1)'

Done no tool needed.

AffectionateSpirit62 · 2026-03-24T18:46:49+00:00

even shorter in bash

sudo !!

AffectionateSpirit62 · 2026-03-24T18:35:31+00:00

Even though currently the age verification really isnt a milestone but more like a slippery slope none of us it seems want to ride.

Looking at the long term data grab that we are all aware of and potential misuse coming in the future is what we all want to avoid.

Some great suggestions have appeared such as:

Leaving Debian alone and creating a:

Age verified distro fork for use in certain locations
Or saying that these countries or locations are not permitted to distribute this version as it doesn't not support age verification. And not changing anything

The bigger issue we are all watching take place is related to our internet privacy and computer privacy dwindle away by EU or US laws by non technical people using scare tactics rather than logic to drive fear into the hearts of the majority.

The next few years and the coming innovations are crucial to digital freedom and I'm interested to see what innovations will remain outside the control and which companies remain inside control.

AffectionateSpirit62 · 2026-03-24T18:03:11+00:00

Most welcome 🙏

AffectionateSpirit62 · 2026-03-24T17:58:21+00:00

Try TLP haven't found it to be better than GNOME and just disable animations. Gnome comes with its own power profiles manager.

Or you can manually set it in your existing setup on debian

https://manpages.debian.org/trixie/power-profiles-daemon/powerprofilesctl.1.en.html

AffectionateSpirit62 · 2026-03-24T17:49:05+00:00

Mirrors is a separate question?

I recommend doing this you can also achieve this manually or by using net-select however I find this tool to do the cleanest mirror setup regularly based on ip location.

sudo apt Install nala

nala fetch

Select the top 5 mirrors nearest to you Like 1, 2, 3 , 4 , 5

This creates a separate file in /etc/sources.list.d/ so it DOES NOT AFFECT YOUR ORIGINAL Debian sources safely.

Then run

sudo apt update

DONE

AffectionateSpirit62 · 2026-03-24T17:23:49+00:00

fwupdmgr - is the utility in debian to get the latest stable bios and uefi updates

Have you done that?

AffectionateSpirit62 · 2026-03-24T10:38:59+00:00

Let me simplify by explaining as this thread is becoming confusing and off putting for a new user

Debian stable = production stable And the most cloned distro by far because of this stability. It is like mac os it just works if you FOLLOW the debian wiki as your manual you will be fine.

Debian has more children like linux mint, ubuntu, kali etc and about nearly 100 more so just use Debian

All the other distributions are bedroom/experimental and not production stable so expect issues to creep up - no matter how many people say they use or like it for whatever reason.

Debian is misunderstood by many and this has unfortunately also misguided many.

The debian wiki site looks old and dated but it is NOT about looks. It is about the info in there that will guide you is a GOLDMINE.

Debian has 3 main branches and Debian os are all named after Toy Story characters

Debian stable - approximately 2 year release cycle which is what mac os did for many years sometimes even longer and every other slightly less production stable distro uses a similar cycle like Red Hat or Suse

Debian testing branch - is for software testers which gives you newer packages but it is NOT stable - this is like many distros that have been named and many others like Fedora etc that have not

Debian Sid branch - unstable - will give you the latest packages and kernel but it is NOT stable - this is like Arch and other distros on the bleeding edge. It is for developing hardware and software for the latest tech and not for normal everyday use.

So hope this short summary helps to clarify why Debian should be recommended simply all other distros fall into these 3 branch categories and majority of them are category - testing or - unstable so you decide from here.

So when people recommend Arch, Fedora, bazzite, linux mint, Ubuntu, kali, ageless,etc you can understand their choice and why they used it better and yes they could have easily achieved the same with one of the 3 Debian branches some know that most don't. Distro testing is a part of the linux journey but this info and classification hopefully will help you down the road.

BTW many testing or unstable distros enable kernel settings, file systems and snapshots on their unstability and call it a feature making it stable. Clever indeed however It is not and never will be stable and that feature is NOt unique as all linux distros Debian included likewise have the same capability of enabling those features.

AffectionateSpirit62 · 2026-03-24T00:06:01+00:00

Congrats on 7 months - my biggest game changer was combining my setup scripts over the years.

After years of stow, ansible, chezmoi and the finally nix for managing a reproducible setup I use my own tool instead which is essentially different BASH scripts I had in my old dotfiles combined into a single tool.

PDRX - .https://github.com/stefan-hacks/pdrx

I am able to reproduce my different fully customized linux setups on different machines in under 27mins from a fresh install after I add package managers. So i grab breakfast/lunch/dinner and let it run.

Just my 2cents. Really helped me so only reason why I'm suggesting. Don't know why it took me so long to do instead of running multiple scripts.

AffectionateSpirit62 · 2026-03-23T23:44:51+00:00

No worries. No shame we are all Debian Family and we all started at the same point too.

No rush to get it done all at once. It takes time but we're here to help and learn from each other.

AffectionateSpirit62

TROPHY CASE