- MusicMatch Jukebox (he likes the playlists so it shows bands down the side, not just a long list of songs)
Egads. One of the first free GUI MP3 players (which I believe was available for both *NIX and Windows) used this interface, and it was so hated that the product changed hands and names a couple times... I have no idea what it was, and it may in fact have become the foundation for MusicMatch. [Okay, looked it up before finishing this post -- it was FreeAMP, and I have no idea of the history, but at least one reincarnation is
Zinf. Probably feels a lot snappier now than it did on a 486; I'd expect it's a little more 'mature' than the Lindowsware below.]
iTunes has brought the nondeterministic, never-know-where-your-files-actually-are interface back to the fore, though, and Lindows... er, sorry, Linspire... just announced
Lsongs, which may or may not be an adaptation of some other open-source project.
There's probably a
xmms plugin that does it, too.
(This is actually a "UNIX mindset" sort of thing; your friend can probably get similar convenience by using a ripper that automatically generates playlists, and then keeping his directories sorted, rather than relying on a unified interface and secret metadata files to make sense of one big mess of a "Library." But if he prefers that, well, see below.)
- MSN Messenger. He has tried aMSN which is ok, but is wondering if there is anything better out there.
Whuh-oh. I mean, I know, many people do use it, but if you can't bear to give it up (and in fact, it effects your ability to feel comfortable on a system), maybe it's time to sign up to Licensing 2.0. I'm not even being crass; if he really derives benefits from Microsoft
services, obviously he's going to get the best, uh, service, from them on a Microsoft OS.
Still,
this list of FreeBSD ports is a start if you're looking for alternatives. (I think I've heard of people being happy with Kopete.)
- Good P2P client, like Kazaa Lite.
One thing the open-source scene doesn't lack for, though Kazaa's FastTrack network is something of a proprietary Win32 thing. (They even muscled out Morpheus, remember?)
eMule seems to be popular and supports a bunch of eDonkey-based networks and derivatives (never used it myself); Gnutella has, believe it or not, matured into something you can actually sort of use, and there are many clients available (gtk-gnutella, for one), but you have to remember to upgrade your client fairly often, given the amoebic nature of the beast; BitTorrent was born over here (though you might have to use it from the command line)... and of course, there's at least one Soulseek client, and who-knows-what-else available.
(Yes, there *is* more Free or BSDware available than just piracy apps, I'm just answering the question...)
