Finding a decent music player for Linux is surprisingly difficult. I have a large-ish collection of MP3 files, and I prefer to have them all as local files and play them directly. There’s a player called Amarok that worked well on Linux in it’s 1.x days, but since the 2.0 update, hasn’t worked for me. Other players for Linux seem to fall short in some way.

My setup at home is relatively simple: I have a music folder (either on a local hard drive or on my NAS) that I want my player to access. I generally like to shuffle the entire library and skip over tracks that I’m not on the mood to hear.

Great Features

Clementine is based on Amarok 1.4, and has a straightforward user interface. It connects nicely to my library no matter how it’s attached, and even has a “Dynamic Mode” smart playlist feature that works in a way that makes me happy to use it. There are also a lot of online service integrations, but I haven’t really dived into those since I’ve got enough local files.

Clementine also offers an Android remote control app so I can control my music from my phone or tablet. This is nice when all my desktop is doing is playing music. I can change things without waking it and firing up 3 monitors.

There are prettier and fancier music players out there for all operating systems, but if you’re looking for simplicity along with a variety of features Clementine is hard to beat.

• Official Web Site: https://www.clementine-player.org/
• Downloads (Linux, Windows, OS X, source code and even Raspberry Pi): https://www.clementine-player.org/downloads