I just recently converted my entire system to the linux environment and im very unhappy with the performance of XMMS. While its cool that this player supports winamp 2.x skins, its not the most efficient or stable mp3 player that ive ever come across. I am curious what other people think is the best winamp alternative on the linux platform.

Winamp and WINE

Actually try FreeAMP: http://www.freeamp.org/

XTunes might be an alternative for you.
I would not use FreeAMP. It might look nice, but it uses the Xing MPEG Decoding Library, so MP3 decoding is 'not-as-good-as-it-should-be'...
Why don't you stick with mpg123 or madplay? commandline rocks!
dev0