Today is November 22nd 2023. It happens to be Benjamin Britten's 110th birthday; the feast day of St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music and musicians... and, at last, the release day of Giocoso Version 3, this website's homebrew classical music listening software. It all seems so spookily appropriate!
The user manual for it is now therefore available in the usual place. I encourage you to read all of it, of course: but if not that, then at least Sections 2, 3 and 4.
Section 2 just lets you know what specific new features are available in the newer software. Section 3 then explains how there is no way to upgrade from Version 2 to Version 3: you have to do a fresh install of Version 3, and then any Version 2 databases you already have will be copied over and converted for you, entirely automatically (and safely: the Version 2 originals remain unaltered and in-place should anything go wrong with the conversion process).
Section 4 of the new manual in its turn details how you go about the Version 3 installation process, along with any distro-specific issues that might crop up or you might need to be aware of. The really short version of that part of the manual, however, is to first fully update your operating system (for example, do a sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade if you're running on something like Debian or Ubuntu). Once your system is fully up-to-date, open a terminal and type:
wget doco.absolutelybaching.com/gioinst
bash gioinst
Follow the prompts, supply the sudo (or root) password whenever prompted... and then run Giocoso by clicking on the program launcher placed either on the Desktop, or in the Start Menu's Multimedia (or Sound & Video equivalent) menu.
There are some major points to note about the new release: it won't run on MacOS and all support for doing so has been withdrawn. It also won't run on Solus Linux. And it no longer 'scrobbles' plays to the Last.fm service (for reasons previously explained). But rather than harp on the negatives, I draw your attention to the program's new menuing interface and its consequent much-improved ease-of-use, along with its streamlined ability to display album art 'in terminal', resulting in significantly less desktop 'clutter'. I recommend it to you, therefore!
Version 2 remains downloadable (and the instructions for doing so are contained in Version 2's documentation, which remains accessible). Version 2 will, however, be receiving no further bug-fixes or development of any kind, so you are strongly advised to migrate to the all-new, all-dancing, all-singing Version 3 instead.
And finally, and not incidentally, a happy 110th birthday to Benjamin Britten (pictured right), whose music I'll be listening to exclusively for as much of the day as I can! Sadly, I couldn't find artwork of Britten to act as Giocoso's new 'identity' without it looking like a completely anonymous, curly-haired 'somebody or other'. I therefore (a little reluctantly!) opted for the 'Beethoven-with-Headphones' theme whose exemplar opens this blog piece. Similar art on the same theme adorns the whole of the Giocoso Version 3 documentation, I'm afraid. Some people might prefer the Version 2 cats, but you get what you're given 🙂
Enjoy Giocoso Version 3 ...and find a little time to listen to some Benjamin Britten today, please!