Interesting name—Nuvola [1] was a colorful glossy icon pack for Linux desktops, from the days when colorful glossy icons were trendy (see also Crystal [2]).

To be honest, these icons were one of the main reasons I was so interested in running Linux on the desktop—they looked so modern and fresh compared to Windows 2000's relatively dull icons (which I have also come to appreciate).

These days I don't really get a chance to see desktop icons, since I'm on i3wm. But seeing those colorful glossy icons brings me back to the sense of magic I felt every time I'd boot up Knoppix from a live CD.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuvola

[2] https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Crystal_Projec...

I have a similar story. Back when crystal was first released you had to sign up for an account on a forum called linuxcult.com to get access to them. I ended up being super active on it and I’m still in touch with some of the members to this day. The Linux community back then was wonderful.

Interesting to see that software in Vala doing great. Unlike other languages like Zig or Rust there is almost nothing about it here.

I've noticed this too - both the absence and the success. As I understand it Vala gets compiled to C, so maybe that's why HNers don't like it - because it is an incremental improvement over something older and less sexy. I hope I'm wrong about that!

I for one will try picking up some Vala this year. Who is with me?

At the beginning a lot of Vala momentum was "we like C#, but not MS C#", so it was anti-Mono. I'm glad it's there and integrates nicely with glib/gtk.

It's subsumed under the general GTK antipathy.

Nim’s primary target is C and it gets a lot of love on HN.

Nim compiles to C and it's been largely well received by HN (from what I've read anyway).

Compile to C is perfectly fine. I have not seen anyone really bash that architecture.

Me neither, but I also haven't seen anyone very enthused by it either

when i had an n900 phone vala was the perfect language to write quick gui apps for my own use. i think these days D or zig capture a lot of the same feel while being more capable languages, though it's nice to see vala still going strong.

Elementary OS was basically all Vala for their custom desktop apps, back in the day. I’ve not kept up with it, but it was a nice environment back when I used it!

I believe it's still Vala.

I have been curious about the Genie alternative syntax but it is hard to find doc about it.

Another similar project is MellowPlayer [0] which has pretty much the same featureset, but written in Qt/C++ instead of Vala.

[0] https://colinduquesnoy.gitlab.io/MellowPlayer/

I recoiled when I tried to install the Spotify app for Nuvola on Arch and it said it needed Flash player.

Quickly uninstalled after that, but still have a nasty taste after coming this close to having installed that.

Desktop notifications

Multimedia Keys

Are in the premium tier? Are you kidding me!

Bit of a strange target for outrage. Almost all of the streaming services listed are paid for by subscription, purchase or taxes. So the "pay what you wish" model for some improved ergonomics is not unreasonable. The minimum price is $3.99/year, of which the team gets $3.50.

Or if that's too much, get stuck in. How many minutes of your time would you value at $3.50?

> Alternatively, you can participate in the Nuvola Player project to get a free developer license.

https://github.com/tiliado/nuvolaplayer

at this point chrome and firefox both have media keys support, and it works on the major streaming services. so within the past few months it's become not a great choice.

Have my multimedia in browsers, kde recognizes it and media controls work within taskbar preview, notification area and - most important - with the media keys.

Plus: Browsers are more secure and no need for other applications.

Yeah. For a moment I found this interesting but then I remembered that KDE Plasma has perfect integration with all of the streaming services I use through my browser. It seems to just work without any additional software. You can even control media from an Android phone if you have the KDE Connect app installed.

I actually paid for this feature thinking it was ok because I wanted to support them anyway. But the 8tracks client has been broken for a long time and I was paying for a feature that didn't work

The pricing is affordable and follows a pay what you will model from 4 dollars for a yearly license. Thanks for that.

I once planned to get a lightweight media player with a nice retro feel running on my RPi 2. Since it still possible to compile gtk 1.x on a somewhat recent system, I downloaded it source code and compiled it.

Worked beautifully.

Sure, it is not safe to have such outdated software running on your system, but having a lightweight Winamp-classic themed mp3 player pays off. Maybe I should run it on firejail, just for increased safety.

For Spotify, at least, there is already MPRIS support which covers most of the advantages here I think.

indeed - this works well with i3 + spotify (I only use spotify as my media player nowadays):

    bindsym XF86AudioPlay exec "dbus-send --print-reply --dest=org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.spotify /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player.PlayPause"
    bindsym XF86AudioNext exec "dbus-send --print-reply --dest=org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.spotify /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player.Next"
    bindsym XF86AudioPrev exec "dbus-send --print-reply --dest=org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.spotify /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player.Previous"
    bindsym XF86AudioStop exec "dbus-send --print-reply --dest=org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.spotify /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player.Stop"
    bindsym $mod+Shift+comma  exec "dbus-send --print-reply --dest=org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.spotify /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player.Previous"
    bindsym $mod+Shift+period exec "dbus-send --print-reply --dest=org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.spotify /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player.Next"
    bindsym $mod+semicolon exec "dbus-send --print-reply --dest=org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.spotify /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player.PlayPause"

Did you figure out how to send Spotify a like this track message? I'd really like that on a key so I can like stuff while working without breaking the flow.

If you have configured "spt" -- see https://github.com/Rigellute/spotify-tui -- you can "spt playback --like" to like the currently playing song.

That program will work regardless of which device is currently playing things, i.e. I can run "spt playback --like" on my linux machine while the music is playing on my Windows box.

Brilliant, thanks :-)

That is awesome. Using Flatpaks of mostly proprietary clients is not nearly as much fun as using a native client. Really great work.

That’s awesome! Maybe one can ditch the Widevine CDM in Chromium thanks to this.

AFAIK this does seem to extract Widevine from Chromium on first use.

Oh ... well that's an interesting way to tackle it!

Anyone know if it supports scrobbling?