Zinf

Last updated
Zinf
Developer(s) Robert Hart, Tim Lesher, David Hough [1]
Initial releaseJuly 2, 2002;20 years ago (2002-07-02)
Stable release 2.2.5 (February 17, 2004;19 years ago (2004-02-17)) [±]
Preview release none [±]
Repository sourceforge.net/projects/zinf/
Written in C++, GTK+
Type Audio player
License GPL
Website zinf.sourceforge.net

Zinf is a free audio player for Unix-like and Windows operating systems. [2] Zinf is released under the GNU General Public License.

Contents

Zinf is a continuation of the FreeAmp project and uses the same source code. [3] [4]

Technical features

Zinf can play sound files in MP3, Vorbis, and WAV formats, among others. [5] It supports skins and is part of the MusicBrainz network. The player features an optimized version of the Xing MPEG decoder, a powerful music browser and playlist editor, and a built in download manager which supports downloading files from sites using the RMP (RealJukebox) download process. Zinf was also notable for handling all audio files based on their metadata (Author, Album, Song Title), and hiding more-technical details like actual locations and file names [6] (but these features are now standard in many players).

Naming

Zinf is a recursive acronym that stands for "Zinf Is Not FreeAmp!" [6] Use of the name FreeAmp had to be discontinued due to trademark issues, as "AMP" is a trademark of PlayMedia Systems, Inc. [7] [8]

History/Funding

The FreeAmp project was originally funded by EMusic, who paid the salaries of 3 developers working on the player. Later, Relatable joined EMusic to help support continued development. [9]

In January 2001, after 2 years of funding the project EMusic pulled their support, and subsequently fired the developers. [10] The Zinf project was unable to find another sponsor, and development slowed greatly. The most recent release was made in early 2004. As of 2008, nearly all development of Zinf has ceased.[ citation needed ]

Adoption

Once a popular open-source Linux audio player, it has now been largely surpassed by newcomers such as Audacious, Amarok, Exaile, Banshee and (more recently) Songbird. This is largely because Zinf has not seen an official new release since early 2004, and many new features that are now standard in rival players have not been implemented; such as cover art and lyric support.[ citation needed ]

In 2010 the zinf.com website was bought by a domain squatter for the purpose of capitalizing on the site's traffic for monetary gains. A new link called "QnA" and "Ads" are now visible on the zinf.com website that is a redirect to the squatter's site.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adobe Flash</span> Deprecated multimedia platform used to add animation and interactivity to websites

Adobe Flash is a multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich web applications, desktop applications, mobile apps, mobile games, and embedded web browser video players. Flash displays text, vector graphics, and raster graphics to provide animations, video games, and applications. It allows streaming of audio and video, and can capture mouse, keyboard, microphone, and camera input.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Winamp</span> Media player for Microsoft Windows

Winamp is a media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Radionomy in 2014. Since version 2 it has been sold as freemium and supports extensibility with plug-ins and skins, and features music visualization, playlist and a media library, supported by a large online community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">VideoLAN</span> Non-profit organization developing software

VideoLAN is a non-profit organization which develops software for playing video and other media formats. It originally developed two programs for media streaming, VideoLAN Client (VLC) and VideoLAN Server (VLS), but most of the features of VLS have been incorporated into VLC, with the result renamed VLC media player.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GPE Palmtop Environment</span> Graphical user interface for mobile devices

GPE is a graphical user interface environment for handheld computers, such as palmtops and personal digital assistants (PDAs), running some Linux kernel-based operating system. GPE is a complete environment of software components and applications which makes it possible to use a Linux handheld for tasks such as personal information management (PIM), audio playback, email, and web browsing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Audacity (audio editor)</span> Open-source digital audio editor and recording application

Audacity is a free and open-source digital audio editor and recording application software, available for Windows, macOS, Linux, and other Unix-like operating systems. The project was started in the fall of 1999 by Dominic Mazzoni and Roger Dannenberg at Carnegie Mellon University, and released on May 28, 2000, as version 0.8.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">VLC media player</span> Free and open-source media-player and streaming-media-server

VLC media player is a free and open-source, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media server developed by the VideoLAN project. VLC is available for desktop operating systems and mobile platforms, such as Android, iOS and iPadOS. VLC is also available on digital distribution platforms such as Apple's App Store, Google Play, and Microsoft Store.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microsoft XNA</span> Freeware set of tools by Microsoft

Microsoft XNA is a freeware set of tools with a managed runtime environment that Microsoft developed to facilitate video game development. XNA is based on .NET Framework, with versions that run on Windows and Xbox 360. XNA Game Studio can help develop XNA games. The XNA toolset was announced on March 24, 2004, at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California. A first Community Technology Preview of XNA Build was released on March 14, 2006.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Psi (instant messaging client)</span>

Psi is a free instant messaging client for the XMPP protocol which uses the Qt toolkit. It runs on Linux, Windows, macOS and OS/2.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kodi (software)</span> Free software media player

Kodi is a free and open-source media player software application developed by the XBMC Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium. Kodi is available for multiple operating systems and hardware platforms, with a software 10-foot user interface for use with televisions and remote controls. It allows users to play and view most streaming media, such as videos, music, podcasts, and videos from the Internet, as well as all common digital media files from local and network storage media.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Canonical (company)</span> UK-based software company that maintains the Ubuntu OS

Canonical Ltd. is a UK-based privately held computer software company founded and funded by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth to market commercial support and related services for Ubuntu and related projects. Canonical employs staff in more than 30 countries and maintains offices in London, Austin, Boston, Shanghai, Beijing, Taipei, Tokyo and the Isle of Man.

iPodLinux Linux distribution

iPodLinux is a µClinux-based Linux distribution designed specifically to run on Apple Inc.'s iPod. When the iPodLinux kernel is booted it takes the place of Apple's iPod operating system and automatically loads Podzilla, an alternative GUI and launcher for a number of additional included programs such as a video player, an image viewer, a command line shell, games, emulators for video game consoles, programming demos, and other experimental or occasionally unfinished software.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LiVES</span>

LiVES (LiVES Editing System) is a free and open-source video editing software and VJ tool, released under the GNU General Public License version 3 or later. There are binary versions available for most popular Linux distributions (including Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse, Gentoo, Slackware, Arch Linux, Mandriva and Mageia). There are also ports for BSD, and it will run under Solaris and IRIX. It has been compiled under OS X Leopard, but not thoroughly tested on that platform. In early 2019, a version for Microsoft Windows was announced, with a release slated for in the second half of 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FrostWire</span> Free and open-source BitTorrent client

FrostWire is a free and open-source BitTorrent client first released in September 2004, as a fork of LimeWire. It was initially very similar to LimeWire in appearance and functionality, but over time developers added more features, including support for the BitTorrent protocol. In version 5, support for the Gnutella network was dropped entirely, and FrostWire became a BitTorrent-only client.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PulseAudio</span> Sound server for Unix-like operating systems

PulseAudio is a network-capable sound server program distributed via the freedesktop.org project. It runs mainly on Linux, various BSD distributions such as FreeBSD and OpenBSD, macOS, as well as Illumos distributions and the Solaris operating system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Linux</span> Family of Unix-like operating systems

Linux is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which includes the kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name "GNU/Linux" to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LMMS</span> Free software digital audio workstation

LMMS is a digital audio workstation application program. It allows music to be produced by arranging samples, synthesizing sounds, entering notes via mouse or by playing on a MIDI keyboard, and combining the features of trackers and sequencers. It is free and open source software, written in Qt and released under GPL-2.0-or-later.

FreePBX is a web-based open-source graphical user interface (GUI) that manages Asterisk, a voice over IP and telephony server.

Linux began in 1991 as a personal project by Finnish student Linus Torvalds: to create a new free operating system kernel. The resulting Linux kernel has been marked by constant growth throughout its history. Since the initial release of its source code in 1991, it has grown from a small number of C files under a license prohibiting commercial distribution to the 4.15 version in 2018 with more than 23.3 million lines of source code, not counting comments, under the GNU General Public License v2.

aMSN

aMSN was a free Windows Live Messenger clone. aMSN attempted to emulate the look and feel of Windows Live Messenger, and supported many of its features. It had been downloaded approximately 40 million times as of January 2011, making it the 21st most downloaded project on SourceForge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Desura</span> Digital distribution platform

Desura was a digital distribution platform for the Microsoft Windows, Linux and OS X platforms. The service distributed games and related media online, with a primary focus on small independent game developers rather than larger companies. Desura contained automated game updates, community features, and developer resources. The client allowed users to create and distribute game mods as well.

References

  1. "Members".
  2. "FreeAmp Zinf Audio Player for Linux & Windows" . Retrieved 19 June 2019.
  3. Paul Rowlingson (January 19, 2004). "Zinf 2.2.1: A free audio player with streaming audio support". v3.co.uk. Retrieved November 24, 2009.
  4. Lasse Penttinen (July 1, 2002). "No more FreeAmp - Meet the Zinf". Afterdawn. Retrieved November 24, 2009.
  5. "Zinf Audio Player 2.2.1". Zebulon.fr. July 29, 2004. Retrieved November 24, 2009.
  6. 1 2 "Winamp-Alternativen: Zinf". Tonspion . October 16, 2003. Archived from the original on February 29, 2012. Retrieved November 24, 2009.
  7. FreeAmp becomes Zinf!
  8. Sergei Yaremchuk (February 27, 2003). "Аудиопроигрыватель ZINF". Computerra . Archived from the original on December 1, 2008. Retrieved November 24, 2009.
  9. "EMusic and Relatable Team to Offer Open Source Audio". Archived from the original on 2010-01-13. Retrieved 2008-02-25.
  10. Important project update Archived July 21, 2011, at the Wayback Machine