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Do you happen to know of a HOWTO or anything for doing this and integrating it with Opera? If you don't have one handy don't bother looking or anything, I just thought you might have run across one. A very quick and cursory Google search didn't turn up anything that looks immediately promising to me.

I don't know of anyone who has done it so far. I've wasted several hours trying to get DirectShow GStreamer wrapper working (it's in gst-plugins-bad), but that didn't lead me anywhere. Now that I've found out that it's ffmpeg, I might want to try again.

The problem there is that they use their own GStreamer build, which seems to be built with library names (e.g. gstreamer.dll rather than libgstreamer.dll), compiler switches etc not compatible with stock Win32 builds from http://gstreamer.net/ - so you can't just download ffmpeg binaries from the latter and drop them in. You need to get Opera's version and makefiles first, and then compile ffmpeg within that.

If/when I get that working, I'll share it (I'm residing in Canada, so there should be no need to worry about software patents for me).

Windows solves that codec problem by having media codec plugins (VFW and DirectShow). Cannot understand why Linux does not have such infrastructure.

http://www.gstreamer.net/

1. Work will begin after Pidgin 2.0.0 is released
2. It will probably use gstreamer or farsight
3. Pidgin will eventually have both video and voice support but it will take a lot of time

Not sure about Darwin Steaming Server but I'm pretty sure you could do the same thing with the Flumotion Streaming server that uses Gstreamer

It's not that easy. iTunes on both Windows and OS X depends on Quicktime. Porting Quicktime would be a lot of extra work on top of the special UI things they already do when they port programs. They could use a media framework that is already present on Linux, but I doubt they would want to do that. In addition, to not have a half-assed port, they would have to support iPods and other MP3 players like they do on Windows. I think this part is the least of their worries, since most MP3 players use the USB Mass Storage driver (does iTunes on Windows even support those which don't?), and all iPods are supported in Linux. The main barriers are Quicktime and the iTunes interface.

The largest barrier is that they probably just don't want to do it. It doesn't seem economically sound to me to do so either.

Just grab a computer and stick 3 video cards in it. Configure X to run multihead and then use mplayer or xine or totem to send the videos to your 3 monitors. If you want to be really cool, you could use gstreamer to build a custom app pretty quickly that sent 3 separate video streams to 3 different monitors and kept everything synchronized with a single point of control.

The GNOME people have always been bold in trying out new strategies. After the gnome2 drive to simplify the UI and move away from featuritis it has come a long way. There are some exciting developments like dashboard, gstreamer and desktop integration bounty hunt. Watch out for 2.6!

Actually, this screenshot shows it's much more then that. Also, here's one project, MozStreamer is another good example of the flexibility offered.

The "pipeline" he describes is somewhat similar to what you can do with VST plugins in Windows. E.G., you could hook up a microphone, then attach some distortion filters and eventually terminate the pipeline at some output device. All in all, this is a great article in my opinion. For the technically inclined, there are much more in-depth docs here, including all the gory API details.

Audio won't "put linux over the top", but if it stops sucking so bad then one more barrier to widespread linux usage will be removed :)

What about GStreamer? It's GNOME's multimedia framework, and there are plenty of programs that use it like Nautilus (for previews), Rhythmbox , and Totem. There's no sound daemon, but that's a job for ALSA and dmix (or a good sound card).

And then we can start hoping for something similar to the venerable pipe, but allowing easy use for graphical / media components!

Does GStreamer qualify?

gstreamer is basically a media pipe-based framework.

If you guys are so up in your panties about this move, go elsewhere for support. You can get updates elsewhere. I've successfully been maintaining servers in the 30 or 40 just using apt-get and kickstart -- for free.

Get started here:

Freshrpms.net
DAG RPMS
ATrpms
newrpms
KDE For Redhat/Fedora
JPackage
CCRMA (Karma)
Gstreamer
Kernel 2.6.0-test

And if you want up2date style GUI, get synaptic from ATrpms.

Interesting you should mention GStreamer... It's just a multimedia framework, but there are already some interesting apps using it.

Funny thing is, one of them seems to be JuK... But it looks like Rythmbox is more for me (as I'm kind of into Gnome).

What refresh rate is your monitor running at? Some monitors can achieve 100hz, but very few of them. If you run at an FPS higher than the monitor's refresh rate, it doesn't display the extra frames, it just displays tearing artifacts.

I prefer the idea of gstreamer ...
you define a graph to play your content. You can even describe the graph on the command line ;-).
mplayer uses Windows DLLs - yuck.
Just one problem ... when I tried gstreamer and mplayer last month (on RedHat 9) mplayer worked much better. For example, gstreamer claimed to play Quicktime but didn't. I know I was in trouble when gst-launch-ext (sp?) -- the script that plays files based on their extensions -- said .mov was invalid!

Unlike KDE, gnome is free
Translation : GPL is freerer than LGPL. LGPL allows corporations like Ximian and Sun to have propeitry forks and lock away their changes from the user. Now that novell has taken over ximan you can expect gnome to get put under corpirate lock.

Ximian has been working mostly on mono, evolution and ximian desktop, that is based on gnome but not gnome. Novell taking over ximian doesn't mean it's taken over gnome. By a far shot. And even in the almost impossible case it did, the source is here with a free license. Anyone is free to fork.

Nautilus is much better than konqueror.
Wrong, if your using nautilus for anything more than a simple finder clone you can forget it. No split screen, no ioslaves and forget about being able to have a decent file dialog.

I agree that konqueror is better. But the file dialog is in gtk, not nautilus itself. It's being reworked for gtk 2.4, btw.

Gnome has eye candy
Yes, my pirated Win32 fonts with the patent infringing font renderer. Bit stream vera sans looks like Tahoma put through a shreadder!

Huh? You mean that situation isn't the same in other linux desktops? Last time I tried to get an usable free font, the only choice was Vera. Also, what's wrong about the font renderer? It's used by many projects and I still haven't heard about patent enforcement on it. Hell, if we are gonna talk about patents, Adobe patented tabs.

Not to mention that its got a religiously offensive name

Epiphany? Why should it be offensive? Even if you take the religious meaning (it's a word with two meanings), it doesn't sound offensive to any religion. Except if you consider that religious people go always medieval when they hear there are other religions around, of course.

Gnome is themeable
Yep, choose from High, low and medium contrast, default, and clean ice.

http://art.gnome.org

Wan't to change the colour scheme? USE GCONF NOOB.

Actually, it's in ~/.gtkrc

Gnome has multimedia framework
Its a kludge of esd combined with broken xine libraries. No wonder it crashes all the time and dosen't work on 95% of video files

http://www.gstreamer.net . It's very different when compared with xine libraries, btw. Versions 0.6.x have been very stable. As for video files, the integration of latest ffmpeg will fix that.

Overall, it's a funny post. But just in case someone seriously considered the flawed points...

• Linux Desktop Basics
• Human Interface Consistency (including default Gnome Desktop)
• Gnome uses SVG plus web browser and file manager
• Desktop accessabiity and developer GConf stuff & streaming ability
• Pango Text Rendering
• Final Thoughts

You know the simultaneous best and worst thing about GNU/Linux/OSS etc is there is always another option...

There was a new beta of Totem released yesterday too - it's a GNOME 2 media player based on Xine (it doesn't attempt to reinvent the wheel). The author is also working on a Gstreamer back end for it.

Why do I like it? A quote on their webpage sums it up: "Totem is the only media player I've seen that doesn't attempt to have skins or look like a reject from a 1971 Kenwood catalog." For those of us who like Windows Media Player (pre 8) for its clean and consistent interface and were annoying that Linux doesn't have anything like it, Totem's your project.

Mplayer does some files better than Totem, but if you want to do more than "mplayer This.divx", check it out.

(standard "I have nothing to do with this project other than thinking it's really cool" disclaimer)

Throwaway Question that will Undoubtedly Get Dozens of Answers while the Rest of the Post Goes Unread: Why doesn't Mplayer disable XScreensaver while playing?)

• The new file dialog
• The Galeon web browser. We chose January6 [mozdev.org] instead, because who wants tabbed browsing except you jerks. Look at mozilla, and you will see why we choose this lovley netscape 2 clone.
• We will make file extration harder, because we don't want to waste space on the context menu. We have removed "Extract here" and you will now have to go though 5 menus to avoid going into the console and typing tar xjvzfcaq file.tar.gz.
• We have made panel configuaration harder. Instead of an intuitve size dropdown with small large ect we have repaced it with a harder to use spinbox. This is beaucse the sizes upset stallman because we didn't have his trouser size in it so we replaced it. Have fun taking 20 clicks instead of 2. PS we removed the cute goat logo in the about box, now you have to look at the foot!
• We will STILL not be including a media player, sure you can reboot into windows or play with mplayer from the command line. Why because our media libray [gstreamer.net] sucks and we don't want to use a superior [xine.org] implemnetation.

• We added fake cmyk support in the gimp. Sure it LOOKs like it, but when you try to prepress or print it will look like monkey shit
• We added a better weather applet, but it won't work on rainy days
• Wanda the fish actually looks like a fish now
• We added a menu editor, but when you use it you have to reboot for the changes to take effect
• We made the gnome-terminal compatible with emacs, but you will need a czech keyboard to be compatible with the obscure keybindings.
• As usual, we took more options away from the prefrences dialog and hid them in gconf where they belong

• The new file dialog
• The Galeon web browser. We chose January6 [mozdev.org] instead, because who wants tabbed browsing except you jerks. Look at mozilla, and you will see why we choose this lovley netscape 2 clone.
• We will make file extration harder, because we don't want to waste space on the context menu. We have removed "Extract here" and you will now have to go though 5 menus to avoid going into the console and typing tar xjvzfcaq file.tar.gz.
• We have made panel configuaration harder. Instead of an intuitve size dropdown with small large ect we have repaced it with a harder to use spinbox. This is beaucse the sizes upset stallman because we didn't have his trouser size in it so we replaced it. Have fun taking 20 clicks instead of 2. PS we removed the cute goat logo in the about box, now you have to look at the foot!
• We will STILL not be including a media player, sure you can reboot into windows or play with mplayer from the command line. Why because our media libray [gstreamer.net] sucks and we don't want to use a superior [xine.org] implemnetation.

• We added fake cmyk support in the gimp. Sure it LOOKs like it, but when you try to prepress or print it will look like monkey shit
• We added a better weather applet, but it won't work on rainy days
• Wanda the fish actually looks like a fish now
• We added a menu editor, but when you use it you have to reboot for the changes to take effect
• We made the gnome-terminal compatible with emacs, but you will need a czech keyboard to be compatible with the obscure keybindings.
• As usual, we took more options away from the prefrences dialog and hid them in gconf where they belong

• The new file dialog
• The Galeon web browser. We chose January6 [mozdev.org] instead, because who wants tabbed browsing except you jerks. Look at mozilla, and you will see why we choose this lovley netscape 2 clone.
• We will make file extration harder, because we don't want to waste space on the context menu. We have removed "Extract here" and you will now have to go though 5 menus to avoid going into the console and typing tar xjvzfcaq file.tar.gz.
• We have made panel configuaration harder. Instead of an intuitve size dropdown with small large ect we have repaced it with a harder to use spinbox. This is beaucse the sizes upset stallman because we didn't have his trouser size in it so we replaced it. Have fun taking 20 clicks instead of 2. PS we removed the cute goat logo in the about box, now you have to look at the foot!
• We will STILL not be including a media player, sure you can reboot into windows or play with mplayer from the command line. Why because our media libray [gstreamer.net] sucks and we don't want to use a superior [xine.org] implemnetation.

• We added fake cmyk support in the gimp. Sure it LOOKs like it, but when you try to prepress or print it will look like monkey shit
• We added a better weather applet, but it won't work on rainy days
• Wanda the fish actually looks like a fish now
• We added a menu editor, but when you use it you have to reboot for the changes to take effect
• We made the gnome-terminal compatible with emacs, but you will need a czech keyboard to be compatible with the obscure keybindings.
• As usual, we took more options away from the prefrences dialog and hid them in gconf where they belong

• The new file dialog
• The Galeon web browser. We chose January6 [mozdev.org] instead, because who wants tabbed browsing except you jerks. Look at mozilla, and you will see why we choose this lovley netscape 2 clone.
• We will make file extration harder, because we don't want to waste space on the context menu. We have removed "Extract here" and you will now have to go though 5 menus to avoid going into the console and typing tar xjvzfcaq file.tar.gz.
• We have made panel configuaration harder. Instead of an intuitve size dropdown with small large ect we have repaced it with a harder to use spinbox. This is beaucse the sizes upset stallman because we didn't have his trouser size in it so we replaced it. Have fun taking 20 clicks instead of 2. PS we removed the cute goat logo in the about box, now you have to look at the foot!
• We will STILL not be including a media player, sure you can reboot into windows or play with mplayer from the command line. Why because our media libray [gstreamer.net] sucks and we don't want to use a superior [xine.org] implemnetation.

• We added fake cmyk support in the gimp. Sure it LOOKs like it, but when you try to prepress or print it will look like monkey shit
• We added a better weather applet, but it won't work on rainy days
• Wanda the fish actually looks like a fish now
• We added a menu editor, but when you use it you have to reboot for the changes to take effect
• We made the gnome-terminal compatible with emacs, but you will need a czech keyboard to be compatible with the obscure keybindings.
• As usual, we took more options away from the prefrences dialog and hid them in gconf where they belong

• The new file dialog
• The Galeon web browser. We chose January6 instead, because who wants tabbed browsing except you jerks. Look at mozilla, and you will see why we choose this lovley netscape 2 clone.
• We will make file extration harder, because we don't want to waste space on the context menu. We have removed "Extract here" and you will now have to go though 5 menus to avoid going into the console and typing tar xjvzfcaq file.tar.gz.
• We have made panel configuaration harder. Instead of an intuitve size dropdown with small large ect we have repaced it with a harder to use spinbox. This is beaucse the sizes upset stallman because we didn't have his trouser size in it so we replaced it. Have fun taking 20 clicks instead of 2. PS we removed the cute goat logo in the about box, now you have to look at the foot!
• We will STILL not be including a media player, sure you can reboot into windows or play with mplayer from the command line. Why because our media libray sucks and we don't want to use a superior implemnetation.

• We added fake cmyk support in the gimp. Sure it LOOKs like it, but when you try to prepress or print it will look like monkey shit
• We added a better weather applet, but it won't work on rainy days
• Wanda the fish actually looks like a fish now
• We added a menu editor, but when you use it you have to reboot for the changes to take effect
• We made the gnome-terminal compatible with emacs, but you will need a czech keyboard to be compatible with the obscure keybindings.
• As usual, we took more options away from the prefrences dialog and hid them in gconf where they belong

• The new file dialog
• The Galeon web browser. We chose January6 [mozdev.org] instead, because who wants tabbed browsing except you jerks. Look at mozilla, and you will see why we choose this lovley netscape 2 clone.
• We will make file extration harder, because we don't want to waste space on the context menu. We have removed "Extract here" and you will now have to go though 5 menus to avoid going into the console and typing tar xjvzfcaq file.tar.gz.
• We have made panel configuaration harder. Instead of an intuitve size dropdown with small large ect we have repaced it with a harder to use spinbox. This is beaucse the sizes upset stallman because we didn't have his trouser size in it so we replaced it. Have fun taking 20 clicks instead of 2. PS we removed the cute goat logo in the about box, now you have to look at the foot!
• We will STILL not be including a media player, sure you can reboot into windows or play with mplayer from the command line. Why because our media libray [gstreamer.net] sucks and we don't want to use a superior [xine.org] implemnetation.

• We added fake cmyk support in the gimp. Sure it LOOKs like it, but when you try to prepress or print it will look like monkey shit
• We added a better weather applet, but it won't work on rainy days
• Wanda the fish actually looks like a fish now
• We added a menu editor, but when you use it you have to reboot for the changes to take effect
• We made the gnome-terminal compatible with emacs, but you will need a czech keyboard to be compatible with the obscure keybindings.
• As usual, we took more options away from the prefrences dialog and hid them in gconf where they belong

• The new file dialog
• The Galeon web browser. They chose January6 instead. Not that its a bad browser, it just feels ike netscape 2 and that the name is a bad choice
• They made file extration harder, because thay don't want to waste space on the context menu. They have removed "Extract here" and you will now have to go though 5 menus to avoid going into the console and typing tar xjvzfcaq file.tar.gz.
• They have made panel configuaration harder. Instead of an intuitve size dropdown with sizes like small medium large ect they have have replaced it with a harder to use spinbox. Have fun taking 20 clicks instead of 2. They also removed the cute goat logo in the about box, now you have to look at the foot!
• They STILL will not be including a media player, sure you can reboot into windows or play with mplayer from the command line. Why because their media libray sucks and they don't want to use a superior implemnetation.

• We added fake cmyk support in the gimp. Sure it LOOKs like it, but when you try to prepress or print it will look bad
• They have added a better weather applet, but it won't work on my town anymore while the 2.2 one works perfectly
• Wanda the fish actually looks like a fish now
• They have added a menu editor, but when you use it you have to restart the panel by using their xkill applet.
• They have made the gnome-terminal compatible with emacs, but they rearranged the key bidnings
• As usual, they took more options away from the prefrences dialog and hid them in gconf where I can't find them

• The new file dialog
• The Galeon web browser. We chose January6 instead, because who wants tabbed browsing except you jerks. Look at mozilla, and you will see why we choose this lovley netscape 2 clone.
• We will make file extration harder, because we don't want to waste space on the context menu. We have removed "Extract here" and you will now have to go though 5 menus to avoid going into the console and typing tar xjvzfcaq file.tar.gz.
• We have made panel configuaration harder. Instead of an intuitve size dropdown with small large ect we have repaced it with a harder to use spinbox. This is beaucse the sizes upset stallman because we didn't have his trouser size in it so we replaced it. Have fun taking 20 clicks instead of 2. PS we removed the cute goat logo in the about box, now you have to look at the foot!
• We will STILL not be including a media player, sure you can reboot into windows or play with mplayer from the command line. Why because our media libray sucks and we don't want to use a superior implemnetation.

• We added fake cmyk support in the gimp. Sure it LOOKs like it, but when you try to prepress or print it will look like monkey shit
• We added a better weather applet, but it won't work on rainy days
• Wanda the fish actually looks like a fish now
• We added a menu editor, but when you use it you have to reboot for the changes to take effect
• We made the gnome-terminal compatible with emacs, but you will need a czech keyboard to be compatible with the obscure keybindings.
• As usual, we took more options away from the prefrences dialog and hid them in gconf where they belong

• The new file dialog
• The Galeon web browser. We chose January6 instead, because who wants tabbed browsing except you jerks. Look at mozilla, and you will see why we choose this lovley netscape 2 clone.
• We will make file extration harder, because we don't want to waste space on the context menu. We have removed "Extract here" and you will now have to go though 5 menus to avoid going into the console and typing tar xjvzfcaq file.tar.gz.
• We have made panel configuaration harder. Instead of an intuitve size dropdown with small large ect we have repaced it with a harder to use spinbox. This is beaucse the sizes upset stallman because we didn't have his trouser size in it so we replaced it. Have fun taking 20 clicks instead of 2. PS we removed the cute goat logo in the about box, now you have to look at the foot!
• We will STILL not be including a media player, sure you can reboot into windows or play with mplayer from the command line. Why because our media libray sucks and we don't want to use a superior implemnetation.

• We added fake cmyk support in the gimp. Sure it LOOKs like it, but when you try to prepress or print it will look like monkey shit
• We added a better weather applet, but it won't work on rainy days
• Wanda the fish actually looks like a fish now
• We added a menu editor, but when you use it you have to reboot for the changes to take effect
• We made the gnome-terminal compatible with emacs, but you will need a czech keyboard to be compatible with the obscure keybindings.
• As usual, we took more options away from the prefrences dialog and hid them in gconf where they belong

1. Write software that people need.
   This is the most important step. You have to have a piece of software that has value for people (and therefore for a distribution). It may be software that is missing, it may be that it does something better than others.
2. Wait for those people to show up.
   Release your software, work on it. Since it's good people that need it will show up and use it. Open source software gains speed by word of mouth. Eventually someone will package it for Debian and someone will do Redhat packages for your local website or maybe even for freshrpms.
3. Work with the people that showed up.
   This is a rather important step where some projects fail miserably: Everybody that shows up and says something about your project is a contributor. Take him serious. Even if he only bitches about missing or non-working things. There are probably quite a few valuable feature suggestions and bugs you didn't know about inside his hate mails.
   As an added bonus, listening to your users gives you more publicity and word of mouth for free.
4. Wait until people want your software included.
   The day will come when someone - it's probably better if it's someone else - suggests you for inclusion in a package. There will probably be quite some other suggestions. There'll definitely be one other suggestion: Don't include anything. You'll have to prove you're worth the work for the distributor. Maybe they won't even inform you about the inclusion of your package.

From the GStreamer point of view the big breakthrough was the inclusion into GNOME as the "official" media framework. For the first releases (2.0 and 2.2 I think) GStreamer was only used by the sound recorder. They wanted to see if we are good enough. Since we lived up to their expectations they'll now include a media player based on GStreamer in their next release.

This inclusion into GNOME made other distributions aware of us and GStreamer is now included in Redhat 9 and I think Mandrake 9.1, too.
I have to say though that I had to find out about that myself since I'm not a Redhat user and they didn't come to tell me. They didn't even ask questions which I would have expected distros to do when they want to include a package.

Inclusion into a distribution for me is just "Hey, I didn't know I was in!"

Yes, its nearest competitor on a RedHat based system is apt, which works just fine with debs and rpms

It's a great attempt, but it still has problems.

50% of the time when I try to install Gstreamer (Per their instructions at http://gstreamer.net/releases/redhat/), apt-rpm freezes (after installing the last package?) and locks the RPM database.

Same thing happens when I download RPMs from freshrpms.net, so I assume the problem is with apt for rpm, not with some wierd package from gstreamer or freshrpms.

Still trying to track down info to enter a bug...

This has not happened yet with up2date or red-carpet so far.

The GStreamer project aimed to do this and xine already has support for demuxer, codec, output, etc plugins (indeed all the DVD features used by xine used to exist as a totally separate project at dvd.sf.net).

I agree with that bandwidth is a cornerstone in succesfully deploying IPv6. I'm hacking on an IPv6 video-streaming plugin for the Gstreamer media framework on my spare time, it will be used to stream/broadcast realtime one-to-many video like Movies/Television/Music/Radio using IPv6 multicast in a codec independent fasion thanks to the flexible Gstreamer architecture. I'm alot into homecinema and satelite/cable stuff and it would be nice to be able to stream TV channels and movies (MPEG2/MPEG4) in good quality over the net.

I enjoy doing low-level network programming, like designing protocols, ponder upon network routing issues, etc. I got bored about doing IPv4 stuff for some years ago, so I moved into the IPv6 area in 98-99, after a while I got bored of doing IPv6 unicast stuff becouse that area are much covered today, not much design and research to be done there. IPv6 multicast is fairly new and un-expoited and are evolving quick, so its a fun area to be involved in, I'm part of a global IPv6 multicast research network called M6bone, most things revolve about research of new protocols like MLD and SSM and effecient multicast routing.

In a future world I would be able to stream video from my server at home to my Cellphone/PDA anytime via Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) connectivity. Most new phones today have a IPv4 stack and color-screen but no IPv6 support in the phones yet. With Linux on the Ipaq I can get fully Mobile IPv6 in my pocket thru WiFi networks or wireless GSM/GPRS today if I wish.

I would like to see IPv6 being deployed in broadband networks to the homes, I think that would fuel IPv6 into mainstream usage in conjunction with P2P filesharing and true high-quality video streaming.

Enough ranting from my side. :-)

"Unfortunately, most people seem more interested in demanding obscure playback modules in MPlayer, rather then looking at the problem from an abstracted view."

Apparently KDE decided to do with xine what Gnome wants to do with GStreamer: a multimedia player infrastructure. Want your foo-bar KDE/Gnome application to play DivX? Just make the appropriate calls to the xine/GStreamer API on your system.
GStreamer seems to be more ambitious towards video broadcast and stream video. But it's not quite ready yet for prime time (still feeling kinda alpha version).
OTOH, xine is already production quality, has a working player and started to develop a video editing infrastructure.

It will be interesting to watch how these projects evolve in the future. Both have interesting features, and have a promising look.

here.
DirectShow on Win32 has quietly evolved into a multimedia scene graph similar to Quicktime, and GStreamer is the rather smarter effort on Linux.
(see here for an example of the clever tricks you can do in DirectShow just by accessing the scene graph with GraphEdit)

Unfortunately, most people seem more interested in demanding obscure playback modules in MPlayer, rather then looking at the problem from an abstracted view.

(OGRE takes the same approach for 3D engines, but people would still rather look at Crystal Space. le sigh.)

That is the vision of GStreamer. Progress seems fairly slow, but steady so far. I think GStreamer is even distributed with Gnome now. Hopefully GStreamer will soon mature to the point where gst-player can replace mplayer/xine as a general media player.

I would be using GStreamer myself, but they don't have anything available for Mandrake. They point users to Mandrake cooker! ... sometimes I cry for OSS usability.

Dang, it's .NET and not .org.

But I'm flying with GStreamer atm and couldnt be happier. Also Xine and MPlayer are top quality too. Especially when used on conjunction with interfaces like Totem, I really couldnt ask for much more! DVD playback is also coming on strong!

Off the top of my head I cant think of anything (apart from DRM) that WMPlayer can do that any of the above can't do anyway? [conspiracy]Maybe that's the point.. this is a cunning plan to get DRM onto Linux :)[/conspiracy] Anyway, by the time it's available the other Linux media players will have either caught up or be better I expect.

2003 will be the year for linux \o/

Does anyone know if anyone is working on harmonizing Mplayer with gstreamer, and for that matter xine and xmms?

Gstreamer?

(Gstreamer is an open-source project that has produced a development framework for creating applications like media players, video editors, streaming media broadcasters and so on.)

It would, of course, be really nice to have harmony in the free software world by integrating the Mplayer codecs into this framework.

But that leads to an old question: Will there ever be VirtualDub for Linux? It was planned at least but I haven't heard of any concrete actions in a long time.

VirtualDub is, as I understood the comments, pretty heavily tied to Video4Windows and MFC... The nice thing about Windows is that V4W and Directshow are pretty damn good video APIs compared to anything currently available on Linux. GStreamer isn't Here yet. =)

But yeah, a good video editor, or preferrably a good NLE, would rule. (No, BC2K and Cinelerra don't count. In this case, the definition of "good" includes "fine-tuned usability" =)

I know very well what I'm talking about, since I package GStreamer, a project that is able to use more than thirty outside libraries. I have built packages for a lot of those libraries that play nicely with Red Hat. It is possible.

Cinelerra doesn't live in a vacuum, and the libs they incorporate are very common in thesse kinds of apps. If every application were to include it's own version of all of these libraries, the economic advantage is quickly wasted. The least that could be done is to at least allow for outside libraries to override the included ones.

Saying that the code is GPL is very true but shows precisely the problem with open source - just because you CAN copy and rework other people's code doesn't mean that's a good idea ! In this case, it isn't - reuse other people's code and improve the library you're using instead of forcing people to lock into your own version of it.

If the cinelerra developers were really worried about their users' installation experience, they wouldn't be suggesting that people run rpm --nodeps --force to install software. That's just silly and shows you don't know enough about packaging and software reuse.

but downloading and manually building a package and its dependencies, sometimes rebuilding the kernel. It's just not the same as an installshield-type GUI installer, and I won't apologize for it.

Notice my comment about Ximian -- utilities such as Red Carpet and up2date negate the need to do things by hand. True, there is less of an application base for these, but they are coming along quite nicely considering they're both relatively new.

And as far as installation and distrib., I should have been more explicit: Red Hat. Even the custom install is hardly difficult for someone who knows computing basics, especially given the help in the sidebar.

Take, f'rinstance, video formats. Yes, there is a package now for viewing AVIs under Linux. But to get it working is another matter.
Like I said, there are plenty of issues with file formats. While doc, xls, ppt, mpg, mp3, etc. etc. etc. are all supported, there are a few important ones missing -- I concur with you, my most sought after file formats are movie formats. Here is something I'm looking forward to become standard.

In order for Linux to "rule" the desktop (as many hope it will), there needs to be the same simplicity in setup, maintenance and use as its competition
Repeating myself:
Setup - RH Linux is just as simple as Windows on a "Workstation" install, not much more difficult on custom.
Maintenance - This is a problem in some areas. Groups like Ximian are working on it -- their new configuration panel (forgot the name -- similar to MS Control Panel) is nice, IMO, and getting better.
Use - Again, this area needs work in the area of common applications, but things such as Evolution, AbiWord, OpenOffice, GnuCash, etc. are making a lot of headway here.

So do you think http://gstreamer.net/ is working in the right direction to do the equivalent of QuickTime?

• Myth: KDE is more integrated than GNOME
  
  Reality: The oft-heard cry of the noisiest KDE advocates. No explanation is given - the reader is expected to simply grok the wholesomeness of KDE, and the lack of this mystical quality in GNOME. It's nonsense of course. Neither desktop is particularly "integrated" compared to Windows XP, and certainly not compared any version of the Apple Mac.

• Myth: KDE is easier to use
  
  Reality: Again, such nebulous arguments are never explained, and the reader is expected to simply understand the truth. Both KDE and GNOME have user-interface irritations (indeed, all systems do) - but "ease of use" is not a simple thing to measure. What about application (see GNOME apps later) installation and removal: GNOME has the excellent RedCarpet by Ximian , which makes the installation, removal and updating of applications trivial. KDE users are expected to fend for themselves with brutal command line driven systems. GNOME also has the excellent Ximian setup tools to handle various very tricky cross-platform and potentially risky system configuration operations - KDE offers a few small half-assed Linux-only tools, which make no attempt at check-pointing to return to known working configurations.

• Myth: KDE is more popular
  
  Reality: In what sense? Arguably more people use KDE - but it is a close run thing. Most KDE zealots claim the results of online polls as proof of their superior userbase... which is, quite frankly, complete and utter nonsense. Online polls are the joke of the century; it doesn't even require a motivated script kiddie to render then worthless. A single post on a zealot-ridden site can reduce the result to a running joke. Popularity is also difficult to measure when both GNOME and KDE are frequently installed on the same system - and indeed, can co-exist except for certain applications such as panels. Many KDE users actually run GNOME applications for their superior features and stability.

  One of the few solid measures of popularity is the adoption in commercial use - and here, GNOME is far ahead. Both Hewlett- Packard and Sun Microsystems have committed to using GNOME as the desktop for their Unix systems. This ties in with the previously mentioned ease of use - Sun's major contribution to the GNOME effort is in the areas of user/developer documentation, testing, accessiblity and user-testing. Three of the less glamourous parts of desktop development. The arrival of the GNOME 2.x series will see these contributions reach fruitition and allow GNOME to make a quantum leap ahead of KDE in most of the basic computer/user issues.

• Myth: Konqueror is the best Linux browser
  
  Reality: Oh for a penny every time this lie is told in any KDE story! Konqueror is a fine piece of software - it's authors deserve plently of praise - it is, however, quite unreliable and lax in its support of basic web standards compared to either Mozilla or Opera . It is also extremely slow - slower than the latest incarnations of the GNOME Nautilus filemanager/browser.

• Myth: KDE applications are better/more advanced than GNOME ones due to the ease of developing in C++ using the Qt toolkit
  
  Reality: See also: Qt/TrollTech. Easily the most common wail heard by KDE developers - and yet it is easily disproved by looking at the actual applications for GNOME/GTK and KDE/Qt . KDE applications often have larger version numbers than GNOME ones... an old trick played by commerical software developers. Most KDE apps seem to jump for 1.x releases long before they are ready - KOffice being the best example. None of the components in Koffice are worthy of a 1.0 release, let alone 1.1 or 1.2. GNOME applications wait longer and get more testing in their 0.x stages and despite shorter development phases mature more quickly and reach stable featureful release states more quickly: the superb Evolution (groupware/email), Gnumeric (spreadsheet), Pan (newsreader), The GIMP (image manipulation), Abiword (word processing), RedCarpet ,X-Chat (IRC client), XMMS (media player), Galeon (web browser), and for developers: Glade , Anjuta . All of these packages ooze quality, far outclass and are, at least, 18 months ahead of their KDE/Qt counterparts. It's not only in the area of user applications that GNOME is lightyears ahead, with the forthcoming 2.x a number of impressive behind the scenes technology will finally mature: component technology (bonobo ), media (Gstreamer ), internationalisation (pango ). As a developement platform, GNOME 2.x is, frankly, years ahead of KDE. And what's more, it is not tied to a lowest common denominator cross-platform bloat-fest like Qt. Yet despite all this, we are still fed the lie that Qt and C++ makes development easier. Judge for yourself.

• Myth: KDE is faster and/or takes less memory than GNOME
  
  Reality: KDE is written in C++. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, it is when the programmers do not know enough to avoid certain pitfalls that can plague software projects. Stupid use of ++/-- with C++ objects; masses of unnecessary allocations and deallocations of memory, and the most cretinous of all, blaming the extremely slow startup times of KDE apps on GCC. The GNOME 1.x releases were hardly svelt (2.x fixes many of these issues), but GNOME is a fashion cat-walk superwaif when compared to KDE's 500lb fat-momma cheese-burger scoffing trailer trash. One need only look at the recent fuss over ugly KDE hacks (such as prelinking) to see the problem inherent in the KDE architecture and basic design.

• Myth: GNOME development is slower. KDE releases faster.
  
  Reality: Fundamental misunderstanding. KDE releases as one big lump of code due to its use of C++ and the consequent problems with libraries. It bumps the version number of the entire KDE system for the smallest modifications. GNOME, on the other hand is componentized and each component releases on a (almost) separate schedule, bumping it's own version number but not the main GNOME version. Occasional releases of the entire GNOME system are done, and that's when the GNOME version number is bumped (currently it is 1.4). To see this in action, use RedCarpet and you will regular updates to GNOME components. GNOME development is not slower, it is in fact faster and more advanced. Lamers and newbies, however, fail to understand the advantages and just see KDE 1.1.1 followed a few weeks later by KDE 1.1.2. Wow! KDE roolz.

• Myth: TrollTech is a friend of Free software.
  
  Reality: Qt started out as non-Free. KDE developers knew this violated the GPL and are therefore untrustworthy. KDE core developers work for TrollTech. Expensive per developer licensing for writing closed-source with Qt. Labyrinthine licensing nightmare.

• Myth: Most good GNOME apps are actually GTK applications.
  
  Reality: Most KDE apps, such as those from The Kompany are actually Qt apps because they want to port to the more lucrative Windows/Qt market.

• Myth: KDE is attractive/GNOME/GTK is ugly
  
  Reality: Mosfet liquid theme is an ugly and unstable hack. GNOME GTk icons are of a far higher quality than the cartoonish and confusing KDE ones. Qt is basically a Windows-look on a Unix platform.

• Myth: KDE is more integrated than GNOME
  Reality: The oft-heard cry of the noisiest KDE advocates. No explanation is given - the reader is expected to simply grok the wholesomeness of KDE, and the lack of this mystical quality in GNOME. It's nonsense of course. Neither desktop is particularly "integrated" compared to Windows XP, and certainly not compared to any version of the Apple Mac. Whatever "integrated" really means.

• Myth: KDE is easier to use
  Reality: Again, such nebulous arguments are never explained, and the reader is expected to simply understand the truth of the zealots statement. Both KDE and GNOME have user-interface irritations (indeed, all systems do) - but "ease of use" is not a simple thing to measure. KDE has never been subjected to detailed user testing, unlike GNOME [gnome.org], and the claims of user-friendliness are from crazed supporters and not average users. Furthermore, the KDE faithful rarely look beyond simple-minded copying of Windows, and forget that administering a desktop system is just as important as having widgets in the correct place on the toolbar. For example: What about application installation and removal? GNOME has the excellent RedCarpet [ximian.com] by Ximian [ximian.com], which makes the installation, removal and updating of applications trivial. KDE users are expected to fend for themselves with brutal command line driven systems. GNOME also has the excellent Ximian setup tools to handle various very tricky cross-platform and potentially risky system configuration operations - KDE offers none of this, only a few small half-assed Linux-only tools, which make no attempt at check-pointing to return to known working configurations.

• Myth: KDE is more popular
  Reality: In what sense? Arguably more people use KDE - but it is a close run thing. Most KDE zealots claim the results of online polls as proof of their superior userbase - which is, quite frankly, complete and utter nonsense. Online polls are the joke of the century; it doesn't even require a motivated script kiddie to render then worthless. A single post alerting the faithful on a zealot-ridden site can skew the result so much it makes American presidential elections look fair and well organised. Popularity is also difficult to measure when both GNOME and KDE are frequently installed on the same system. Indeed, the systems can co-exist and even run at the same time, except for certain applications such as panels. Many KDE users actually run GNOME applications for their superior features and stability, not realising that by doing so they are barely running KDE at all.

  One of the few solid measures of popularity is the adoption in commercial use - and here, GNOME is far ahead, with both Hewlett-Packard [hp.com] and Sun Microsystems [sun.com] committing to using GNOME as the desktop for their Unix systems. This also ties in with the previously mentioned ease of use - Sun's major contribution to the GNOME project is in the areas of user/developer documentation, testing, accessiblity and user-testing. Three of the less glamourous parts of desktop development. The arrival of the GNOME 2.x series will see these contributions reach fruitition and allow GNOME to make a quantum leap ahead of KDE in most of the basic computer/user issues.

• Myth: Konqueror is the best Linux browser
  Reality: Oh for a penny every time this lie is told in any KDE story! Konqueror [konqueror.org] is not a bad piece of software - its authors deserve praise for the work done in it. However, the sheer amount of orgasmic praise lavished by the KDE faithful is completely out of proportion to its actual quality. It is quite unreliable and even simple standards compliant pages can crash it quite comprehensively. It is also lax in its support of basic web standards compared to either Mozilla [mozilla.org] or Opera [opera.com]. It is also extremely slow - much slower than the latest incarnations of the GNOME Nautilus [eazel.com] filemanager/browser (a target of much KDE FUD during its development).
  .

• Myth: KDE applications are better/more advanced than GNOME ones due to the ease of developing in C++ using the Qt toolkit
  Reality: Easily the most common wail heard by KDE developers, and yet it is easily disproved by looking at the actual applications for GNOME/GTK [gtk.org] and KDE/Qt [trolltech.com]. KDE applications often have larger version numbers than GNOME ones... an old trick played by commerical software developers. Most KDE apps seem to jump for 1.x releases long before they are ready - KOffice [koffice.org] being the best example. None of the components in Koffice are worthy of a 1.0 release, let alone 1.1 or 1.2.

  GNOME applications [gnome.org] wait longer and get more testing in their 0.x stages and despite shorter development phases mature more quickly and reach stable featureful release states more quickly. Some examples of this are the superb Evolution [ximian.com] (groupware/email), Gnumeric [gnome.org] (spreadsheet), Pan [rebelbase.com] (newsreader), The GIMP [gimp.org] (image manipulation), Abiword [abisource.com] (word processing), RedCarpet [ximian.com], X-Chat [xchat.org] (IRC client), XMMS [xmms.org] (media player), Galeon [sourceforge.net] (web browser), and for developers: Glade [gnome.org] and Anjuta [sourceforge.net]. All of these packages ooze quality, and far outclass the KDE counterparts. It is no understatement to say that GNOME is at least 18 months ahead of KDE in applications, and pulling still further ahead.

  It's not only in the area of user applications that GNOME is lightyears ahead. With the forthcoming 2.x a number of impressive behind the scenes technology will finally mature: component technology (bonobo [gnome.org]), media (Gstreamer [gstreamer.net]), internationalisation (pango [pango.org]). As a developement platform, GNOME 2.x is, conservatively, 2-3 years ahead of KDE. And what's more, because it is not tied to a lowest common denominator cross-platform bloat-fest like the Qt toolkit, the lead (as with applications) can only increase further.

  Yet despite all this, we are still regularly fed the lie that Qt and C++ makes application and desktop development easier. Judge for yourself.

• Myth: KDE is faster and takes less memory than GNOME
  Reality: KDE is written in C++. While this is not necessarily a problem, it can be when Visual Basic reject programmers (which the KDE project is overrun with) do not know enough to avoid important pitfalls that plague C++ software projects. Stupid use of autoincrementing operators and iteration with C++ objects, and masses of unnecessary allocations and deallocations of memory, are two of the most common. KDE suffers badly from both problems.

  Perhaps the most cretinous of all problems is blaming the extremely slow startup times of KDE apps on GCC. The GNOME 1.x releases were hardly svelt (2.x fixes many of these issues), but GNOME is a fashion cat-walk superwaif when compared to KDE's 500lb fat-momma cheese-burger scoffing trailer trash. One need only look at the recent fuss over ugly KDE hacks (such as prelinking) to see the problem inherent in the poor KDE architecture and basic design flaws.

• Myth: GNOME development is slower. KDE releases faster.
  Reality: Fundamental misunderstanding. KDE releases as one big lump of code due to its use of C++ and the many problems this causes with libraries. The project bumps the version number of the entire KDE system for the smallest modifications. GNOME, on the other hand is componentized and each component releases on a (almost) separate schedule, bumping it's own version number but not the main GNOME version (1.4, for example). Occasional releases of the entire GNOME system happen, and that's when the GNOME version number is bumped (currently it is at 1.4). To see this in action, use RedCarpet and you will see regular updates to GNOME components. GNOME development is not slower, it is in fact faster and more advanced. Lamers and newbies, however, fail to understand the advantages of this method and just see KDE 1.1.1 followed a few weeks later by KDE 1.1.2. Wow! KDE roolz.

• Myth: TrollTech is a friend of Free software.
  Reality: TO BE WROTE -- IDEAS Qt started out as non-Free. KDE developers knew this violated the GPL, didn't care, stole others' GPL code by porting it to link (in violation of the license) with Qt and are therefore untrustworthy. KDE core developers work for TrollTech. Expensive per developer licensing for writing closed-source with Qt. Trolltech only moved towards the GPL because of the success of GNOME. Labyrinthine licensing nightmare. Gradual migration of features into Qt (and so into TrollTech's IP portfolio), allowing easy porting of apps to the revenue generating Windows world (see TheKompany for a perfect example), thereby making KDE irrelevant.

• Myth: Most good GNOME apps are actually GTK applications.
  Reality: TO BE WROTE -- IDEAS Most KDE apps, such as those from The Kompany [thekompany.com] are actually Qt apps because they want to port to the more lucrative Windows/Qt market.

  Myth: KDE is more than attractive - GNOME/GTK is ugly
  Reality: Mosfet liquid theme is an ugly and unstable hack. GNOME GTk icons are of a far higher quality than the cartoonish and confusing KDE ones. Qt is basically a Windows-look on a Unix platform.

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So they're reinvented QuickTime, but only for audio used for telephony applications.

Actually GStreamer supports any media type but these guys are writing a telephony application, hence they are only using a subset of its features.

There are tons of open multimedia projects such as Gstreamer which could benefit from such a codec, assuming it's entirely patent free and unencumbered by copyright liabilities... Depending on how good it is, this could be great for OS...

GStreamer and Gnumeric.