On Tue, 27 May 2003, joe wrote: > Christopher Wong wrote: > >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. > > rpm -i w32 codecs rpm > rpm -i mplayer and mplayer-plugin > enjoy Really? Let's try ... >rpm -i w32codecs.rpm error: open of w32codecs.rpm failed: No such file or directory >rpm -i mplayer.rpm mplayer-plugin.rpm error: open of mplayer.rpm failed: No such file or directory error: open of mplayer-plugin.rpm failed: No such file or directory Oops, did we leave out a few steps here? Here is a more realistic sequence of steps for a less experienced user: 0. Log in as root. 1. Download mplayer rpm. 2. Try to install. Spend a half hour untangling gazillion dependencies. 3. Wise guru tells about apt. Suddenly, all is light. 3. Download apt. 4. Spend a half hour on apt man pages. 5. Decide on repositories, mirrors, sources. Edit /etc/apt/sources.list. 5.1 Optional: identify and install apt front-end. 6. Install mplayer and big pile of dependencies. 7. Marvel at stone age UI. Install suitable frontend. 8. Try to figure out sound, video drivers. Mplayer disparages OSS. RH does not support ALSA. Stock ATI driver does not support XV. Alphabet soup. 9. Look for win32 codecs, mplayer-plugin on Freshrpms. Fail. 10. Found win32 codecs. Can't find RH9 mplayer-plugin RPM on rpmfind. 11. Google for mplayer-plugin source. Eyes glaze over at required libs. 12. Get yelled at by mplayer list for requesting help for unsupported app. 13. Give up. It's not all that easy. I'm not going to try describing a possible experience building from source ... I'm not writing a book here. Xine is better for a beginner, but it's not obvious that gxine is the package you want for the browser plugin. I still can't get Quicktime sound to work. Freshrpm's Gxine is dumping core on me (wizards). And these things like to pop up all sorts of error messages and dialogs. All a Windows user has to do to install a codec is click the mouse a few times. > Now, as an exercise, try enumerating the number of steps needed to > listen to an ogg stream on your beloved win doze pee cee... Steps needed: 1. "Why the heck would I want to listen to an OGG stream?". Do nothing. Think outside the penguin box. Someone who has MP3 capability has little tangible (i.e., non-ideological) benefit from OGG. Someone who already has the multimedia capability that comes out of the box with Windows XP is already better equipped than a Red Hat user after hours of learning and tinkering. The Red Hat world is not so sunny in the multimedia department. Chris
