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What Now for the CD Collections...
This year I purchased many CDs, even a CD player. It was a pile of crap that didn't even last a year [1, 2, 3]. The problem wasn't the CDs. The problem was modern appliances being a pile cheaply-made crap, not made to last or even to look good.
"Modern" laptops lack optical drives, but I tend to choose old laptops that still have them (we have 3 such laptops). So, as of this morning, I use Dragon Player in KDE to play my CD collections.
Good riddance, "modern" appliances. The writings are on the wall; pile of crap repackaged as "retro" will never work as reliably as the original those are meant to replace. █