Happy long-term user here. I'm probably one of the few people who have an extended mp3 collection in "physical files" (is that a thing nowadays?) stored on a physical hard drive, some of which I actually grabbed myself from CD, casettes, even vinyl. I've never used iTunes or any online streaming service. If I need something I don't have on my disk, I just go to Youtube.
In the late 90s I was a happy Winamp user, because back then it was just a player and not much else. Deadbeef is exactly that, it works perfectly under linux (KDE), it is very unobtrusive, can be controlled by the media keyboard buttons if needed, in general, it just gets out of the way and does one thing and one thing well (play music, that is, preferably in the background).
In the late 90s I was a happy Winamp user, because back then it was just a player and not much else. Deadbeef is exactly that, it works perfectly under linux (KDE), it is very unobtrusive, can be controlled by the media keyboard buttons if needed, in general, it just gets out of the way and does one thing and one thing well (play music, that is, preferably in the background).