On Tue, 27 May 2003, Pavel Rozenboim wrote: > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Christopher Wong [mailto:chris@xxxxxxxxxxx] > > > > The "real world" operates in a separate reality from the > > anything-but-Microsoft world. In that strange world, people are more > > interested in playing video and audio than in the alphabet soup that > > this world babbles in. DivX, OGG, MP3, WMA, MP4 ... who cares? All a > > Windows user cares is that he can play video and audio -- streaming or > > file -- out of the box. He does not care that he is using WMA, WMF or > > MP3 as opposed to DivX and OGG. It just works most of the time, in a > > way that is only a dream in Red Hat. And that's what matters. > > Actually, doing all this on RedHat linux is much easier (thanks to > Mattias and fedora maintainers) then on windows. On windows you have to > download and install quicktime, divx, real player and lots of other > software and also buy a DVD player to be able to watch all the common > audio and video content. On RHL it's all available from a single > repository and takes just a few minutes to install. It happened to me > many times that I had to parse strange MS media player errors and search > the internet to find out what other codec I miss, while mplayer and xine > never failed for me. You are looking at this from the anything-but-Microsoft world. The "real world" is far easier than you think. The Windows user gets the Windows Media Player out of the box. MP3? Streaming audio? Streaming video? DVD player? CD ripping? CD burning? It's all there. The Windows user needs to do exactly NOTHING to get all these features. The Red Hat user starts off with zilch. You assume that a Windows user would want to install an alphabet soup of stuff that the ABM world would want: OGG, DivX, Real, QT. But Microsoft provides its own counterparts to all of these out of the box. And Microsoft's "standards" are widely supported on many web sites. In many cases, it already works, and that's what counts. I also think you are overstating the ease of installing from Freshrpms and friends, and I am saying this as an apt-get fan. The Red Hat user needs to learn about apt, decide on a front-end, download/install the stuff, select apt repository mirrors, edit the sources.list file, and then try to mix and match the eccentric codec, format and app names. "Xine? What's that?" Plus there is the need to log in as root. How many steps do you need to be able to play an embedded WMA video using a plugin on a typical web page? A Windows user needs to do exactly nothing, and nothing is easier than nothing :-). Where an extra codec is needed, like Quicktime, all the user has to do is to follow the link on the web page, make a few clicks and watch the pretty installation wizard. As an exercise, try enumerating the number of steps needed to watch the trailers in http://www.apple.com/trailers in your browser with Red Hat. Ugh. Chris
