Intro
Can't live without music and Spotify is your music streaming service of choice?
Getting the Spotify client to run on Windows, Android and even iProducts is pretty much a walk in the park.
It is for some reason however a different story, unless you run Ubuntu.
The Spotify has been supported on Ubuntu/Debian for quite some time now. See https://www.spotify.com/se/download/linux/ for more information!
I however have chosen to run CentOS on my main computer at home, and this is where the problems start. As CentOS is not per se really a desktop-oriented OS (it can be whatever you want it too, but that's material for another article and not within our current focus), it follows that popular softwares may also not be packaged for install with yum.
In this article I list the possible solutions for using the Spotify client with a RHEL-compatible OS, namely CentOS.
Spotify RPM from negativo17.org
This is my most recent find and it actually features an RPM-install!
Surf over to https://negativo17.org/spotify-client/ for instructions.
This is what I currently use.
RPM notes
A down-side seems to be that this installation is not aware of other Spotify clients you may be running. Eg. if you're playing some tunes on your Windows work-computer, pause it, go to lunch and bring your Android device and resume there where you left on your Windows-computer. Doing the same with this Spotify install doesn't work.
Install Spotify Flatpak
An all-inclusive way of running apps normally not found for your distro of choice.
Go to https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.spotify.Client for more info.
You may want to check out the CentOS Quick Setup guide over at https://flatpak.org/setup/CentOS/.
Install Spotify Docker
This is a fully contained, eh, container with all you need to run Spotify on CentOS.
Get the container from https://hub.docker.com/r/syncomm/spotify/.
I'm kinda' partial to Docker as I like the idea with containers, and this is what I will try next because of the problem mentioned with Negativo's solution.
Learn more about Docker and set up your CentOS 7-computer with help from https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-use-docker-on-centos-7.
This solution is what I currently experiment with.
Docker notes
This solution seems to see my wifi speakers in the kitchen and living room, as well as my Android device and Windows-computer at work. It's able to transfer the music - manually - to the device of choice.
The front page you land on when opening Spotify shows for a few seconds, then disappears. It's no real problem for now.
Update 2018-11-15
This container froze the entire computer last night. I'll try this again later, and not have any important stuff running unsaved...
Update 2023-01-03
Ubuntu can use the native Spotify clilent in deb-format, available at Spotify's web site.
There is no need to go through all the hooplas with flatpaks etc anymore.
Find the deb-package at https://www.spotify.com/sv/download/linux/.
Conclusion
There you have it, Spotify can be run on just about any linux distro, with a little perseverance.
Do you have any other tips regarding running Spotify on linux? Let me know in the comments below!
