Out the Window (WSJ)
Out the Window (WSJ)
Posted May 16, 2006 19:03 UTC (Tue) by zgoda (guest, #36215)Parent article: Out the Window (WSJ)
It took me a whole evening (about 4 hours) to get Ubuntu 5.10 to nearby state to what I can call work-ready machine, with all multimedia functionality. I don't count time spent on building my own packages with J2SDK 1.4.2 and 1.5.0 (I need both versions) -- thanks God, I knew how to do it. This was only a matter of downloading and installing numerous multimedia-support packages. And it took ages.
By default, having only a fresh installation of Ubuntu 5.10, you cann't listen to mp3, you cann't watch movies on DVD, it takes hours to burn a CD and, by the way, installing bare system in a language other than English requires downloading many megabytes from an interweb. Which takes out your precious time.
Linux sucks, but everything sucks even more (although elsewhere).
Posted May 16, 2006 19:14 UTC (Tue)
by ayeomans (guest, #1848)
[Link]
Posted May 16, 2006 20:41 UTC (Tue)
by zotz (guest, #26117)
[Link] (3 responses)
Well gee, on all of the fresh installs of windows I have tried, you could not listen to an ogg vorbis file. And to my knowledge, there are no legal reasons stopping it. (They may be contractually obligated to not do so, but that is another issue.)
We are just in a chicken and and egg situation. I am trying to push the situation some by not doing as much free support for non-Free OSes and apps while doing more free support for the Free stuff. (Using free in both senses there.) It is part of the free market at work. (Is that another sense, or one of the first two?)
all the best,
drew
Posted May 16, 2006 21:08 UTC (Tue)
by tjc (guest, #137)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted May 17, 2006 21:55 UTC (Wed)
by petegn (guest, #847)
[Link] (1 responses)
i Would like to see you prove that comment if you can that is ..
#
Posted May 18, 2006 6:50 UTC (Thu)
by lysse (guest, #3190)
[Link]
Posted May 16, 2006 23:19 UTC (Tue)
by rqosa (subscriber, #24136)
[Link]
Oh really? According to the package
description for xmms in Breezy, Also, the list
of files includes a file called "usr/lib/xmms/Input/libmpg123.so",
which would seem to be the plugin mentioned in the description. This
package is in main.
Posted May 17, 2006 4:39 UTC (Wed)
by dirtyepic (guest, #30178)
[Link]
This is just to get to a point where i can use the computer without wanting to throw it out the window. I'm not counting the hours I'll spend tweaking settings, playing in the registry, and just generally getting things to work "right".
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that you don't have to put in a similar effort to get things working in Linux. I know for a fact you do (and in the case of my Gentoo systems add another a month or so ;P). But you can't say that Windows is so much better.
EasyUbuntu takes care of most of this. Spread the word.
Out the Window (WSJ)
"By default, having only a fresh installation of Ubuntu 5.10, you cann't listen to mp3"Out the Window (WSJ)
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http://www.ourmedia.org/node/187924
Bahamian Nonsense
Out the Window (WSJ)
Well gee, on all of the fresh installs of windows I have tried, you could not listen to an ogg vorbis file. And to my knowledge, there are no legal reasons stopping it.
Maybe not, but there certainly are market forces in effect, since hardly anyone actually uses ogg vorbis. I'm pretty sure from the context of the article that the author is interested in playing files that he already has.
> since hardly anyone actually uses ogg vorbisOut the Window (WSJ)
*hunts in vain for the "ignore user" option*Out the Window (WSJ)
Out the Window (WSJ)
By default, having only a fresh installation of
Ubuntu 5.10,
you cann't listen to mp3
It's able to read and play:
* Audio MPEG layer 1, 2, and 3 (with mpg123 plug-in),
...
Well, it also takes me more than 4 hours to install Windows XP SP2 on my desktop and get it to a point where it's actually usable for me. This includes the install, booting, configuring the network options to the bare minimum needed to "safely" connect to the internet with IE, downloading Firefox and Sygate, installing Sygate, rebooting, configuring Sygate, configuring Firefox, downloading the many many Microsoft Updates available (rebooting multiple times at points in between), downloading and installing drivers for all my hardware (probably a reboot in here too), going through the control panel modules to change the defaults to sane / preferential settings (rebooting to change to a static swap size), downloading and installing various applications and utilities that aren't available out of the box (AV, ad-ware manager, a decent video player (+ codecs), a decent music player, a utility suite to clean up after Windows' crap, a pdf reader, a cd burning app, etc.) and so on and so on.Out the Window (WSJ)