It seems the Kubuntu developers aren't big fans of Kaffeine 1.0 and want a new default media player for Kubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat.
The first obvious choice would have been Smplayer, but:
smplayer almost certainly not, mplayer has licencing isues which prevent it being on the CD.
And since Smplayer is a Mplayer front-end, that completely rules it out.
The second choice seems to be VLC for which Kubuntu already ships all the libraries. VLC has a few advantages: it can be compiled without MPEG and alike codecs so the license is not an issue and of course there's also the Phonon back-end, however, there's something the Kubuntu developers don't like: its UI (user interface) which they label as "pretty ugly" (although I believe they are referring to the playlist here, and not the entre UI).
Many say VLC is the best Linux media player but will it make it onto the Kubuntu 10.10 CD? We'll see...
Please note: there is nothing official about this yet. We'll keep you updated once we find out more.
[via Kubuntu devel mailing list; image credits: Marcosbox]
