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Yes, looks like a squatter has set up shop and a very impressive web page it is; If you like motorcycles.

http://debian-multimedia.org/

visible DNS info http://dns.robtex.com/debian-multimedia.org.html#records

I'm in this boat, too.

I never stopped using Debian on my PC or at work, but somewhere around 7 or 8, I put Ubuntu on my laptop and later on my netbook. At the time, Ubuntu did a much better job of setting up some laptop specific things than Debian did. I had done a lot of work getting Debian to do some of this as well, but it was just easier to use Ubuntu and the overall experience was very nice.

Now, however, Debian has entirely caught up in this area. My old reason for running Ubuntu no longer exists. So, I've gone back. I now have Debian running on my netbook (I'm typing this on it right now) and soon on my laptop. It helps that I've been using Debian for a very long time, of course.

And, to loufoque, who was wondering below about proprietary drivers with Debian. It's not *usually* a big deal. Debian does pride itself on providing a completely free OS, so out of the box and on the installer ISO you will not find any non-free software. After that, however, you can add those repositories yourself and get access to most of what you might be missing. Specifically, after your install is done edit /etc/apt/sources.list. You will see lines for each repository and they should end with "main contrib" or maybe just "main". To the end of those lines add "non-free" and you will get access to some of the non-free packages that are available. To get the rest, go to Debian-multimedia and follow the directions there to add that repository.

With those two changes you should have access to almost all of the same non-free stuff that you would have with Ubuntu. The big downside to this after-install method of doing things is if you need access to any of that for the install to actually work. Normally this isn't the case since you can always use the text-based installer or let the graphical installer fallback to a more general video access method, but I suppose it's possible that you might not have wifi available without some of the non-free packages. Hopefully you can just use a wired connection in that case. I try to do this anyway if I'm at home simply because it makes the install process a little more smooth.

Ubuntu:
~# aptitude install ubuntu-restricted-extras
~# /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

Debian:
1. Google up this abortion of web design: http://debian-multimedia.org/
2. Add the poorly documented repo maintained by two people to your sources.list.
3a. Fire up an Ubuntu VM and use several iterations of aptitude show to figure out what packages are actually installed by ubuntu-restricted-extras (and thus which ones are necessary to have a usable desktop).
3b. Alternatively, google up the aforementioned list of packages.
4. ~# aptitude install `cat list-of-packages.txt`

After you've done all that, install the moste evile closed-source video card driver. I would include it, but I have never successfully gotten past this step.

Help me out here, where does it do that? I have installed Debian many times but have never seen the option to add non-free and contrib to the sources list. Maybe I just missed it, but I would find that weird. For the codecs it's understandable to me. I add deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ to my sources for that. Good point btw, someone who is not a tech and just wants a pc that works will have great problems with playing vids on debian. That should be fixed asap.

First thing I on a fresh system (and I install a lot of fresh systems due to testing that goes horribly wrong :) Just put this in your sources.list and your fine. deb http://mirrors.nl.kernel.org/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free deb-src http://mirrors.nl.kernel.org/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free deb http://deb.opera.com/opera-beta/ squeeze non-free deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ squeeze main non-free After that I down the catalyst drivers from ati. And only then I start using the system. With all my closed-source goodies :D I love it!

GNU/kFreeBSD was supposed to be released with Squeeze. Nexenta is nice, but the package repository is severely limited.

ZFS, Jails, OpenBSD packet filtering. Oh My!

Even DebianMultimedia project already has kFreeBSD repositories available.

FFMPEG's legality in the those two countries is not clear.

To comply with the GPL, ffmpeg gives you the freedom to distribute the software to anyone without any restricions, besides including the source.

Whereas the H.264 license says:

Which is much more restricted, and it's the reason the non-free build of FFMEPG is not in the main repo of Debian, but in Multimedia, which has no mirror in the US.

So you're basically advocating shaking off the legal trouble to someone else. I find that to be morally reprehensible.

This version (Wild Fox), on the other hand, is specifically made for countries where H.264 isn't patented, so it's completely legal.

w32codecs and win64codecs add realplayer support to mplayer

http://debian-multimedia.org/dists/unstable/main/binary-amd64/package/w64codecs.php

I am sure ubuntu has a similar package

It's called apt. It's already widely deployed in Debian and Ubuntu, and has been for a long time. The problem is solved.

And for completness:

• on openSUSE it's "zypper".
• on some embed Linux distros it's "ipkg" and it's derivate (like opkg).

What proportion of third party vendors distribute their software using apt ?

There is :

• a great dealy of 3rd party opensource producers who provide repositories for their softwares. Not only binaries, not only packages, but full repositories which can be added to apt/zypper/whatever and get automatically updated
• there's also a great deal of additional external repositories - such as for example "PPA" for ubuntu, Debian multimedia, openSUSE's repositories, and Packman (which is multi-platform, but mostly concentrates on multimedia packages which can't be legally distributed with openSUSE)
• whenever possible people try to package 3rd party commercial application in these repositories - you can find closed source drivers, flash, acrobat, microsoft's font. The only limit is whether the author authorise re-packing and re-distribution. Even then, sometime packagers manage to go around such limitation by making packages which are actually updating scripts (ms fonts works that way)

So, in short, a great deal of software in addition to what came on you CD can already get updated today.

Not only that, but to make the whole experience more user friendly, some like openSUSE have developed method where a single link on a web page can be processed by the package manager and, once given the necessary privilege, with 1 webpage clic, you get automatically the correct repository added and the necessary packages selected.

Meanwhile, with microsoft you get 1 central system (windows updates) which is used for the OS and maybe for a couple of other microsoft products (MS-Office, Visual Studio) as long as the user selects the appropriate service (microsoft updates). Then you have a couple of other software which implements their own incompatible updates tracking (Firefox) of which some are really cumbersome (Acrobat). Virtually everything else is left to rot.

It's not Beta 2 of Lenny. Only the installation program is Beta 2. So that's a big mistake.

And the mistakes continue.

The advice to remove iceweasel and replace it with Firefox is crazy. Iceweasel is 99.99% Firefox, and the version that comes with Debian is optimised to use libraries and other software in the distribution (like spell check). If you follow the advice and use the mozilla version of firefox, you lose this integration.

Some sites "sniff" for browser type, and iceweasel is not detected as Firefox (wsj.com, google docs). This is easily fixed by going to about:config, searching for useragent, and changing "iceweasel" to "firefox".
All firefox extensions that I know of work with iceweasel.

To install acrobat reader, just add the http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ repositories, and add the package acroread with Synaptic or apt-get.

Add âoecontrib non-freeâ at the end of each repository line. Also, add the following two repo lines to the file: deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ lenny main deb, http://download.skype.com/linux/repos/debian/ stable non-free

So yeah, the guy has taken a lot of private parts from people who don't have his best interest at heart. This is something Debian Developers don't think you should do, even if you call your laptop the Black Tower.

For all of that, I did not see him add decss, which is actually free software, and his desktop looks like shit when he's finished. He's probably so afraid of a DMCA action that he skips mentioning decss. It is sad that laws can keep US citizens from free software and shove some into the hands of people who say, "suck my dick." The ugliness of his desktop is a matter of personal taste. Free desktops look better than an ugly Win 2000 knock off. I can't stand icons on my desktop.

It's not a secret at all. The problem is this. Distributing a software or hardware implementation requires paying a royalty for using the patents. It's (part of) the reason for off-shore sites like Debian-multimedia.

What I don't know is why the patents would prevent them from releasing their driver code. If the decoder is implemented in hardware there shouldn't be much code for it in the driver. Honestly, I would expect most of the licensed IP would be on the hardware side of things. But then again I don't make graphics cards, so I really don't know.

try Debian + debian-multimedia. That pretty much does the same thing, except you never gonna get into dependency hell. Not even occasionally.

Go to http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ and add the right entry starting with deb to your sources.list file.

Debian is far more about freedom of choice than about purity, that's why non-free / contrib / restricted sections of repositories are available.

You can even get vendor repositories, I download Opera from the Opera Debian repository, for instance. The same for Skype.

Depends on the ebook, .lit's seem to be the 'least' easy to convert using grep and a regex, what with DRM and compression so for that I use 'clit'(Seriously), most of my ebooks were palm pdb's and there are millions of conversion tools around for those although I cant remember what I used, probably something called pdb2txt or similar, I don't tend to buy them in that format any more, but at least the option is there. Anything html I strip the html (mainly because I prefer to keep just plain text files around, I don't read many books with pictures, and diagrams on a 320x240 are hardly worth it. Plus with plain text you can play with the layouts more easily using just the reader) although html is supported on opie-reader anyway.

The main downside I find is simply finding places that sell decent e-books at a decent price without to many hoops to jump through on the DRM side (I'm on Linux so luckily conversion is easy, but not really something I want to have to do) although project gutenburg has kept me entertained for probably hundreds of commute hours.

http://www.debian-multimedia.org/pool/main/r/realplay/realplayer_10.0.9-0.1_i386.deb

Please mod the parent down. If it's not a troll, it sure sounds like one.

First it appeals to "Linux developers" as if "Linux" was developed by one company or group. Then it goes on to complain about compiling stuff from source! Hey, we've had these things called package managers for over a decade now. Debian has APT, there's YUM and a few others for various distros. If you want to compile stuff from source instead of just installing some binary packages, that's your problem. Don't go blaming the mythical "Linux developers" for your own stupid mistakes.

"Also on Debian, to get MP3 and video codecs add http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ [debian-multimedia.org] to your list of repositories, either in the Synaptic GUI, or in /etc/apt/sources.list. It's been a while since I first started using it, and I think you might have to reinstall or upgrade some packages that depends on the codecs, but after it's setup it works just like the official repositories."

Using it on a fresh Sidux install right now. THANK YOU!

I listen to music constantly while on my computer. It took me several hours to figure out how to install MP3 support when I first tried Linux. Even then, I couldn't play my videos either, which annoyed me. I dropped it because i had no reason to switch yet. My sister was forced to use linux when I lost my windows disks. The only reason she gave me for not wanting to keep it? She couldn't use flash on 64bit linux, which prevented her from listening to music on Purevolume. She even told me today that she misses the OS, but wished she could use flash. Music means a lot to some people.

To get Flash working on 64-bit Linux, try searching your distro's software repository for "nspluginwrapper". Technically it's a bit of a hack, but from a user's perspective it's fairly transparent at getting 32-bit browser plugins to work on 64-bit platforms.

Debian, at least, has it.

Also on Debian, to get MP3 and video codecs add http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ to your list of repositories, either in the Synaptic GUI, or in /etc/apt/sources.list. It's been a while since I first started using it, and I think you might have to reinstall or upgrade some packages that depends on the codecs, but after it's setup it works just like the official repositories.

If it's so simple to make the package provide the functionality, why hasn't anyone done it?

They have. There's Debian-Multimedia, which has been around for a few years. I know there's one or two specific to Ubuntu, five minutes Googling will probably find one. I've been using D-M for years now and have not had a problem. Automatix is an ugly hack and should be avoided at all costs.

Oops, forgot w32codecs for Windows Media Audio/Video and Realplayer. Here's a deb for i386:

http://www.debian-multimedia.org/pool/main/w/w32co decs/w32codecs_20061022-0.0_i386.deb

Save to desktop, right-click install. It's built for Debian, but it works for Ubuntu just the same. It's what I use and it works great.

Try using a modern package management system, such as APT (in Debian and Ubuntu). You can find mencoder and related software in unofficial repositories like http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ . Install stuff as quickly as you can download it.

It isn't quite as involved as you think. I believe everything you could want are in the deb multimedia repo, including the W32 codecs and libdvdcss.

Its as easy as adding the line to your sources.list:
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ sarge main
Of course that is for i386, check the bottom of the above link to see the available options

It isn't quite as involved as you think. I believe everything you could want are in the deb multimedia repo, including the W32 codecs and libdvdcss.

Its as easy as adding the line to your sources.list:
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ sarge main
Of course that is for i386, check the bottom of the above link to see the available options

Just to follow up, by "non free repository," you'll need something outside the normal Debian repo system -- probably Penguin Liberation Front, certainly nothing U.S.-based -- in order to get that software. (Although I think the Debian/Ubuntu PLF mirrors are down at the moment.)

In addition to Flash (patent issues) and the Win32 codecs (patents), you'll also need libdvdcss2 (DMCA) if you want to play DVDs, and you might as well get LAME if it's not in there by default (god knows -- probably patents).

Putting
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ stable main
into your sources.list ought to work, but I'm not sure how actively that repo is maintained (it still lists sarge as the stable tree). The VideoLAN people likewise just have instructions for Sarge but hopefully that'll change soon.

Wait a second, I just realied the mistake I made. I guess the problem is that your package encodes video (or depends on another program that encodes video), and so can't go into Debian because of the patents that Debian would then be violating.

Until the patents expire, I guess that you'll be stuck in the debian-multimedia.org repository.

I do think that Debian should link users looking for updated software and multimedia software to http://backports.org/ and http://debian-multimedia.org/ more prominently (or even at all).

I suppose the market is Linux distributors who can't bundle MPlayer for legal reasons. Can't see anyone buying this directly, though.

They'd probably be legally unable to be as good as MPlayer, (a universal video player, home page, debs), as licensing some codecs will require signing up to agreements to play nicely with DRM. MPlayer is good because there's none of that nonsense: it just works, for every video that I've tried.

For debian users (maybe ubuntu too), you probably want to add debian-multimedia to your sources list, so you can get all your dodgy codecs from one place. Seriously, though, MPlayer will play most stuff WMP does AND MORE; it can even encode a lot, too. Even WMV9 is supported in win32codecs, and there is experimental support in FFMpeg already. At this point, the only excuse is ignorance, and illegality. But, most of the time you're getting your multimedia illegally anyway, which kind of makes that a moot point.

Now, admittedly, support for streaming on linux really sucks, with Real (and youtube, if you want to count that) probably being the best thing out there. Personally, I find that konqueror (with the KMplayer Kpart) does a much better job at this than firefox does, but whatever.