> -----Original Message----- > From: Christopher Wong [mailto:chris@xxxxxxxxxxx] > Sent: Tue, May 27, 2003 8:32 PM > To: shrike-list@xxxxxxxxxx > Subject: RE: Extra programs for Red Hat > > > 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. I know that XP has support for some of these features out of the box, but all other MS OSes don't. > > 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. > > Unfortuantely, there are a lot of sites that offer content in all these formats (except OGG), so probably most of MS users who want an ability to watch digital video/audio will have to download all these players/codecs anyway.
