Spotify 0.9.17 for GNU/Linux (and the upcoming 1.x beta!)

[nikreiman]

On 24 March 2015, we rolled out an update to the desktop client for GNU/Linux. For installation instructions, see:

https://www.spotify.com/download/previews/

The version of the client is 0.9.17, and it will be the final 0.9.x client released for this platform. It has been a long time since the previous release (with the prior version being 0.9.11), and for those interested in the release notes, they will be identical to those for other desktop platforms for the versions 0.9.12-17, with the addition of the following platform-specific fixes:

- The machine's hostname is shown to other devices from Spotify Connect

- A 512px icon is used for the taskbar and menubar (unity integration)

We have decided to make a final release of 0.9.x desktop so that our users can pin this package if desired. Also we will make a separate package for the 0.9.17 release so that it is easier to find in the apt repository in case users need to revert to the prior version.

*EDIT*: The 0.9.17 package is now available, it is called spotify-client-0.9.17. If you don't want to receive the 1.x version, you can install this package instead (note that it both provides and conflicts with the spotify-client package).

Going forward, the official Linux beta will be released very soon! There are already some unofficial beta links floating around the forum, but so far we have not published a deb package to our official apt servers yet. We have been very busy getting 1.x out the door and sadly have not had as much time to devote to the GNU/Linux releases as we would like. Also, it has been unfortunate that we have not been better at keeping up with releases for this platform in general, but we have taken some steps to improve this for future releases.

Specifically, this means:

- We will be releasing a regular tarball file alongside our debian package for the benefit of non-debian users

- Spotify client releases will be made available for GNU/Linux users at the same time as users on other platforms

- We will also make a public `testing` apt repository to house unstable beta builds for testing

- However, we do not have a 32-bit version of the client available now. This is difficult for us to do for a number of reasons, but we will consider doing this if there is enough demand from the userbase.

[novembernebel]

Yes, sorry I wrote it quickly 😉

[xetea]

I'm not sure if this is still an issue, but as the latest version of Spotify beta doesn't automatically scale I guess it is.

From what I know the scaling factor on a Ubuntu system is the product of two different settings. 

SCALING_FACTOR=`gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor | cut -c7-`

TEXT_SCALING_FACTOR=`gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.interface text-scaling-factor`

By multiplying these two values you get the scaling factor as the user set it in System settings -> Displays. I wrote a script to calculate this once: https://github.com/larsnystrom/scaling-factor/blob/master/scaling-factor.sh

So, if you set scaling to 2.12 scaling-factor will be 2 and the text-scaling-factor will be 1.0625.