Hello everyone. Been using J River since Media Jukebox and I've never been to the forums before. I have 5 days left on my MC 20 trial (Linux) and I just have a couple issues I'd like to iron out before (I am purchasing a license).
My computer is running 32 bit Debian Wheezy for starters. Been putting MC 20.0.7 through a a good testing for nearly a month now and I can't get streaming radio stations to play, for one. When I try to paste the address in "Paste" is greyed out. When I type it in nothing happens, or when I load a M3u file from the radio station, nothing. So I see there are some improvements to streaming in the most recent release.
Which brings me to issue #2. I downloaded the new package and tried to install it using gdebi package manager, with no luck. That's how I installed MC 20 on my Wheezy machine, and another laptop running Lubuntu, worked like a charm on both. Gdebi failed to work on machines running Ubuntu 14.x though. Next I right clicked on the package and chose "Install with package Mgr". This ran the installer, after a prompt for root, and it looked for sure like it worked, but going to "About MC 20" still shows version 20.0.7. So on the forum here there is a lot of info about installing MC 20 on this flavor or that of Linux, which is great, but I'm having trouble finding out about updating an existing install on Debian at the moment. I am a bit concerned about losing those licence keys if I need to UN-install first to up date. I generally use about 3 a year on my Windows computers, but one year I used up eight.
As far as testing goes I am pretty happy with the program as it stands. The media renderer worked perfectly. I was able to send a playlist from Bubble UPNP on a android device to MC on Linux no problem. I thought the sound quality was pretty good. Smartlists work as they should. I did not load the library through DLNA yet, I have my "Music" folder mapped through fstab, and I imported the old fashioned way. I don't care about video at this point, but in the future I will, when I build that media PC that's been on the back burner for awhile.
I would also like to take this opportunity to say what a great thing this Linux version of MC is. I've purchased nearly every version of J River since like Media Jukebox 2 and I love it, but I am using it a lot less in recent years because my stereo is a PC running Linux, and I really just use MC to rip, tag & rate anymore. I also have a Debian 64 bit machine set up as a server, including DLNA, where the music actually resides. Out of 5 computers, only one is strictly Windows, but I have too much graphics software to get rid of Windows entirely.