![](https://michaelzfreeman.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/winamp-qmmp-alien-assault-skin-desktop-1024x576.jpg)
Winamp used to be the go to player for a sense of personality and identity.
But its coming back ! Also see www.mywinamp.com. I’ve not tried the latest Windows version as all my primary machines run Linux. So I was amazed to find a project I had not noticed … Qmmp, active since 2007 with recent updates. Qmmp is a true Winamp clone for Linux ! It has similar plugins and amazingly can load “.wsz” Winamp skins, although not the new “modern” Winamp skins but there’s plenty of the rest of them to be getting on with.
![](https://michaelzfreeman.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Screenshot_20200611_163302-1024x819.jpg)
There are many skins in this archive or archive.org has the original Winamp skins download page with thumbnails.
I didn’t find the archive.org page until recently so wanted to show all the skins in the archive as thumbnails. I wrote this script to extract them.
#!/bin/bash
# --- Mass Winamp skin thumbnail extractor, Michael Z Freeman 2020
# Each ".wsz" skin file has a "main.bmp" in it that can act as a thumbnail/preview.
# Zipinfo sometimes reports bad zip file but bmp extracts anyway.
for file in *.wsz
do
# Must have "./" before archive file name because some filenames start with "-" that zipinfo interprets as an option.
# Some zip files sometimes have multiple "main.bmp" hence "head -n 1" to select first entry.
main=`zipinfo -1 "./$file" | grep -iw main.bmp | head -n 1`
base=`basename "$main"`
# "o" - overwrite files wihthout prompting !
# Must have "./" before archive file name because some filenames start with "-" that unzip interprets as an option.
unzip -Cjo "./$file" "$main" -d /tmp
# Must have "--" beforefile name because some filenames start with "-" that mv interprets as an option.
mv -f -- /tmp/$base $file.bmp
done
Copy all the “.wsz” files to a separate directory and run the script in there.