It is that time again! The time where the world seems just a little brighter and happier, the sun shines just a little warmer and even though (at least in the northern hemisphere) winter is approaching fast, people are just that little bit more friendly towards each other. Yes, this can only mean one thing: it is time for another beta of Amarok 2.



The Amarok team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Beta 3, codename Ataksak, of the upcoming Amarok 2.0. This release is yet another significant step towards the final version. Beta 3 fixes a number of serious bugs and enhances many parts of the application. Some parts underwent significant rewrites in order to fix some deeply rooted problems. All in all, Amarok 2 is now a much more polished application.

Some of the most significant changes are:

• playlist and statusbar recieved major attention
• database/statistics import from Amarok 1.4
• major overhaul of the Last.fm integration
• sorting by year and album in the Collection Browser is possible again (small, but often requested)
• shortcut to jump to current track in the playlist
• many, many bugs squashed and stability fixes

Now is the time for script authors to start porting scripts. The first scripts are appearing on kde-apps.org.

Thank you to everyone who helped us with bugreports and patches. Keep them coming :)

As we're getting close to a final release of Amarok 2.0, more and more distributions offer packages in their repositories. Windows binaries are available through the KDE-on-Windows installer. So try it and tell us what you think and please consider contributing to our yearly fundraiser Roktober. Or if you are not so lucky, grab the tarball and compile it yourself:
The full list of changes:

The Amarok team, in a brief pause from the frantic coding marathon towards the final release, is very pleased to bring you Nujalik, Beta 2 of Amarok 2.0. This release comes with a substantial changelog since Beta 1 and almost all parts of Amarok have received attention. Many bugs and crashes have been fixed and a few new features have snuck in as well. As Amarok 2.0 gets closer to release, we have seen a significant increase in number of contributors providing patches and filing bug reports. This has catapulted the development pace into never before seen rates! Help us make Amarok 2.0 even better by testing, reporting bugs or contributing patches.

Also, please don't forget to support Amarok during Roktober 2008.