Banshee is going to be the default music player for Ubuntu which makes me worry. Banshee is based on the controversial Mono technologies developed by Novell employees. Richard M Stallman has warned against Mono and C# which applies to Banshee as well.

Banshee is a free media player for GNU / Linux, written in Mono and Gtk . It uses GStreamer multimedia library for encoding and decoding of different file types, such as Ogg Vorbis, MP3 and FLAC.

Banshee is a popular music management tool for Linux. The default version of Banshee in Ubuntu Karmic is Banshee 1.5.1. Banshee has already reached version Banshee 1.5.2. This is what you need to do to get the latest version of banshee in Ubuntu.

Insertion of Mono-based software like Banshee endangers Ubuntu as it makes the parent company more reliant on Microsoft and more sensitive to Microsoft extortion

Refutation of Mono disinformation about Banshee being a GNOME project without associated issues

Canonical's Gerry Carr said that Ubuntu was not deliberately looking for Mono-based applications nor is it excluding them. The Canonical Board has yet to make a policy decision on Mono. He said that there will be one more piece of Mono based software called Banshee in 9.10. Banshee is an audio player and might replace Rhythmbox.

Tracking attempts to push Banshee into Ubuntu by default

So. Banshee as a default media player for Karmic, replacing Rhythmbox. You’ve read the analysis on the Internest, you’ve read ill-informed tripe from pretend-journalists, and you’re running in fear of a switch to a “worse” player. Well, it’s time to lay down a little dose of reality for all you naysayers.

After many years of being an Amarok fan, I was introduced to Banshee. Banshee fast became my media player of choice, due to its ability to handle video and audio files, as well as stream internet radio and podcasts.