Foobar2000 fans? Here’s a similar music player designed for Linux with KDE Plasma, LxQt, etc Qt based desktop environments.
As you may know, Foobar2000 does not support Linux, but it can be installed through Wine. And, Ubuntu users can search & install the wine based version of the music player (unofficial) in App Center (or Ubuntu Software) through Snap package which runs in sandbox environment.
Fooyin Music Player
However, for those who prefer native Linux packages, there are free open-source alternatives, such as DeaDBeef and Audacious. While, in this tutorial I’m going to introduce Fooyin music player.
Fooyin is a free open-source application written mostly in C++ and uses Qt6 for its user interface that’s well integrated with KDE Plamsa, though it also works in all other Linux desktops.
It features a customizable user interface with layout editing mode, allowing to adjust the UI layout as user prefer. While, there are some built-in presets under “Layout” menu, allowing to one click change the app appearance.
Besides UI layout, it also supports custom keyboard shortcuts, plugins with extensible features, and a scripting language for advanced configuration of widgets.
The player uses FFmpeg library for the popular audio files support, including FLAC, MP3, MP4, Vorbis, Opus, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, Musepack, Monkey’s Audio. And, it supports VGM and tracker module formats playback.
Other changes include gapless playback, M3U/M3U8 playlists import/export, as well as:
- CUE sheet support.
- Tag editing.
- MPRIS support.
- ReplayGain support.
- Scrobbling, and more.
Fooyin is still moving with new features. According to the road-map, it will probably add audio conversation, internet radio, DSP plugins, as well as musical spectrum widget support in future.
How to Install Fooyin in your Linux
The application is available to install by either .deb/.rpm packages for Fedora/Debian based systems, or Flatpak package in most Linux that runs in sandbox.
Option 1: Native .deb/.rpm packages
Fooyin offers pre-build packages for Fedora, Debian, and Ubuntu, which are available to download in Github releases page via the link below:
So far the latest is version supports only Intel/AMD (x86_64 amd64) platform. You may select download .rpm package for Fedora, .deb package for Debian, Ubuntu, and Linux Mint. If you don’t even know your Linux Distribution name / version, open terminal and run cat /etc/os-release command to tell.
After downloaded the package, either click open with your system package manager (e.g., Gnome Software, App Center, or Ubuntu Software) then install. Or, open terminal and run command below to install:
- For Debian, Ubuntu:
sudo apt install /path/to/deb
- For Fedora:
sudo dnf install /path/to/rpm
Instead of manually typing /path/to/deb-or-rpm, you may drag’n’drop it from file manager into terminal to auto insert the path.
Option 2: Flatpak package
For most Linux, the music player is also available to install as Flatpak package that runs in sandbox environment. And both amd64 (modern Intel/AMD) and arm64 (RasPi etc) platforms are supported.
Linux Mint 21/22 and Fedora Workstation (with 3rd party repository enabled) may search & install the package from either Software Manager or GNOME Software.
While Debian/Ubuntu and other Linux may follow the steps below one by one to install it:
- First, open terminal by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T shortcut in keyboard, and run command to install Flatpak daemon package:
sudo apt install flatpak
Other Linux may follow this setup guide to enable Flatpak support.
- After that, run the single command below to install the app as Flatpak package:
flatpak install https://dl.flathub.org/repo/appstream/org.fooyin.fooyin.flatpakref
NOTE: Flatpak package will take more disk space, as it needs to install run-time libraries, also in sandbox.
After install the package, either search and start it from system application launcher. If this is the first time you install the flatpak package, then you may need a log out and back in to apply variable change.
Or run flatpak run org.fooyin.fooyin to start the app from terminal, and replace run with update in command to check updates.
Uninstall:
To uninstall the .deb package, open terminal and run command:
sudo apt remove --purge fooyin
Or run sudo dnf remove fooyin to remove the .rpm package for Fedora.
For the Flatpak package, use the command to remove:
flatpak uninstall --delete-data org.fooyin.fooyin
Also run flatpak uninstall --unused to remove useless flatpak run-times from your system.
In the commands above --purge and --delete-data told to also remove local app data (e.g., personal app configurations). You can skip to keep them.