JWZ Reviews Video on Linux

Expect No Mercy by Samus · 2003-01-24 05:01 · Score: 3, Funny

For his server?

--
In Republican America phones tap you.

Re:Expect No Mercy by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:15 · Score: 2, Insightful

WTF is Slashdot thinking? This isn't a 'Review' nor was it ever intended to be. It is some guy's personal ranting on his personal website. This isn't news and I am sure JWZ didn't intend for it to be either.

And before I have to read another comment like "This guy should learn to program and write his own", why don't you people actually figure out who this guy is, because posts like that just make you sound like the idiot.
Re:Expect No Mercy by Jeremiah+Cornelius · 2003-01-24 07:03 · Score: 1

Ahhhh....
Flashback to the '90's - a jwz link on Slashdot! I have resisted visiting Jamie's page for some time - as he is a good linker, and I compulsively begin navigating all over hell-and-back. Tabbed browsing only aggravates this: (middle-click, middle-click...) Now I'm nested three iterations deep on four browser panes!
"you are trapped in a twisty little maze of gruntle, all alike".

--
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Re:Expect No Mercy by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 07:37 · Score: 0

This guy should stop whining and learn to program and write his own.
Re:Expect No Mercy by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 07:50 · Score: 0

Was that a joke? Do you really have no idea of who JWZ is?
Re:Expect No Mercy by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 08:08 · Score: 0

Wow.. are you really that blind to humor? Read it's parent then look at it again.

What a grumpy asshole by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:04 · Score: 4, Interesting

If you look for reasons to be unhappy with ANYTHING, you'll find them. Why not focus on what's good and what needs to be improved? "This is shit and too big of a pain in the ass to screw with" isn't a particularly exacting or insightful analysis.

Re:What a grumpy asshole by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:21 · Score: 3, Insightful

Why are so many people taking his comments personally? Did you write the video players he critisized? No, so WTF? If you replaced all the names of the Linux media players with Windows Media Player, this forum would be full of "Hurrah!" and "I totally agree!". His points are all valid and are HIS OPINION. Most of them I personally agree with as well. But just because he says some negative things about a Linux app *gasp*, you people are reacting like he killed you mother or something. I really don't get it, but it really strengthens my position that Slashdot has really gone downhill the last couple of years.
Re:What a grumpy asshole by eddie666 · 2003-01-24 06:37 · Score: 0, Flamebait

Linux is not the be all, end all...however, for the past 7 years, my desktops and servers have been crash free. I had to reboot my f-ing windows box 4 times this week. Linux still has a long way to go with implementing certain applications, but windows has a long way to go to actually producing anything resembling a stable environment.
Re:What a grumpy asshole by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 07:07 · Score: 1, Interesting

XP Pro is quite stable, although I've seen drivers for some sound cards (*cough* Hercules *cough*) that require you to reboot your computer to change digital output settings.

That being said, the price tag is insane, and no matter how hard you try, it's still Windows.
Re:What a grumpy asshole by sfe_software · 2003-01-24 08:19 · Score: 4, Informative

If you look for reasons to be unhappy with ANYTHING, you'll find them. Why not focus on what's good and what needs to be improved?

The thing is, he does make some good points. For example, why does everyone need to reinvent the GUI wheel (as if we didn't have enough widget sets and window managers to deal with on *nix)? Why does everything have to be skinable?

I use MPlayer extensively -- but I don't touch the GUI, I have a text-based front-end for it. When it comes to playing video files, scaling, utilizing my ATI's TV-Out, etc -- MPlayer kicks all sorts of ass.

However, it's such a common trend these days to make everything skinable, and to create one's own interface standards. That's one of the things I hate most about WMP for Windows (that, and it periodically just stops functioning).

It's one thing I hate about Mozilla (why can't they use the native menus and widgets?) -- though I use Mozilla exclusively, I still feel a lot of time was wasted implementing their own text box (that still doesn't work quite right), menus, etc...

While I personally use MPlayer, I can't say I'd recommend it to someone who doesn't know how to compile software (using a specific gcc version no less), figure out the appropriate command-line options, etc. Tried to walk a semi-linux-literate person through it, and he still has no working MPlayer. As for the GUI, I also wouldn't recommend it, for most of the reasons noted in Jamie's rant.

--
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
Re:What a grumpy asshole by Chazmyrr · 2003-01-24 08:45 · Score: 2, Interesting

This is disingenous. I have to reboot my fscking windows desktop 4 times a day at work. At work. Because the fscking PC support department just can't get it through their fscking thick skulls that they can't just push the same fscking image out to every PC. Because every batch of fscking PCs we order from the fscking vendor comes with different fscking internals even though they are the same fscking part number. Q:"Why is my PC broken again?" A:"I don't know. It worked in the lab."

On the other hand the NT servers I admin at work get rebooted when I have to patch. Period. Might be because I actually run the patch on each one instead of pushing some files and registry entries over and hoping I didn't miss anything. Then again maybe they just like me better.

At home I only reboot when some D3D game crashes my video drivers. That's hardly a Microsoft problem. It's a problem with the vendor supplied drivers.

Linux is stable. It's just irrelevant at the moment. I'd sooner go with OpenBSD on a server. As a desktop? It's a geek toy. People who just want to get things done don't use it. You know why? Because it takes longer to figure out how to get the hardware/software/user interface for a given task to work than it does to just do the work in another operating system.

This isn't directly related to the parent post but insomuch as the parent post seems to advocate Linux over Windows, allow me to relate my experience with Linux.

I've tried Linux twice. I tried it back around '97. Got the base system installed no problem. The 1024 cylinder boot limitation was annoying but not horrible. Configuring X was pretty horrible. Mostly because the kind of detailed specs X wanted about the monitor simply weren't available. PPP took me three days to get mostly working. I never did get it to consistently reconnect when the ISP did their hourly drop. X is probably the biggest reason I ended up dropping Linux. Call me a spoiled Windows user but I like being able to copy and or drag and drop without having to kill X from another box after it goes haywire. 3D gaming was pathetic. No real alternative to MS Office.

Tried it again a while ago with SUSE 7. Ran into the 1024 cylinder limitation. It was annoying on a 6GB drive. It was ridiculous years later on 20GB drive. Strike One. (Yes I know it's fixed now.) Trying to install any vaguely useful software quickly degenerated into darkest depths of conflicting libraries/ widget sets/ toolkits/ desktops/ etc. Dll Hell was never _this_ bad. Strike Two. (It isn't as bad now.) I had to recompile the kernal so it would recognize my NIC. Unfortunately something had apparently knackered gcc during strike two. (Probably fixed. I don't really know or care what the root cause was.) Strike Three.

I get paid decent money to admin computers at my job. I don't get paid to do the same at home. Time I spend trying to coerce and cojole Linux into doing the same tasks that other OS provide out of the box is less time with my family. If I'm not getting paid for it, and I wouldn't have to spend that time using a different OS, then it's a flat out waste of my time. You want Linux on the desktop? Get a version of Linux that provides the close to the same functionality of Windows or OS X out of the fscking box, and more people might take you seriously.
Re:What a grumpy asshole by Archie+Steel · 2003-01-24 09:23 · Score: 2, Interesting

What about pre-installed Linux? That's got the same functionalities as Windows and OS X out of the box - and it's being taken seriously. So far, the non-techies who have been using it seem to like it.

Remember, computers only become complicated when you install stuff/play around with the config. As geeks, we like to tinker with our machines, so obviously we run into troubles, but really we're looking for it. Mom/pop will usually be content to use it without try to change anything beyond the image background.

I've run into troubles with Windows before that took me as long to solve as Linux troubles. Some of the times, a complete reinstall of the OS was necessary. Obviously you had a bad experience with Linux - I haven't, and neither has my gf, who uses a Linux system that I've configured for her. It does everything she needs, and doesn't crash and/or suffer from general weirdness like her old Windows computer did.

Perhaps you should look into getting one of those preinstalled Linux boxes...

--

Reminder: find a new sig
Re:What a grumpy asshole by juhaz · 2003-01-24 10:25 · Score: 1

While I personally use MPlayer, I can't say I'd recommend it to someone who doesn't know how to compile software (using a specific gcc version no less)

Why would someone need to know how to compile software? Assuming our fictional newbie is using a popular distro and knows someone who knows things, he can get a precompiled and packaged version from eg. freshrpms, and I'd be guessing there is equivalent for debian and mandrake as well.

figure out the appropriate command-line options, etc.

Which would be ... exactly what?
Mostly, command-line options are not needed except for finetuning that our fictional dumbass does not need or want to do anyway. "mplayer filename" is enough.

As for the GUI, I also wouldn't recommend it, for most of the reasons noted in Jamie's rant.

Once you've got movie running, you don't need any stupid GUI to eat screenspace, and basic keyboard navigation takes six or four keys: arrows, F, and space.

Anyone can memorize that, especially as they are very logical choices for what they do.

Tried to walk a semi-linux-literate person through it, and he still has no working MPlayer.

No doubt he doesn't if you forced him to try to compile it himself and use the GUI version.
Re:What a grumpy asshole by Aglassis · 2003-01-24 10:27 · Score: 1

You said: "It's one thing I hate about Mozilla (why can't they use the native menus and widgets?) -- though I use Mozilla exclusively, I still feel a lot of time was wasted implementing their own text box (that still doesn't work quite right), menus, etc...

This was discussed extensively in the design of Mozilla. The reason native UI's aren't used is that in order to be standards compliant, the widgets had to differ from the functionality offered by the standard OS' widgets. If they used the same widgets with the different functionality it would mislead users who expect (and rightly so) that the same looking widget should act the same. It wasn't just so they could create XUL and make the browser completely skinable. That wasn't even a consideration.

--
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
Re:What a grumpy asshole by mixmasta · 2003-01-24 10:52 · Score: 5, Insightful

Just because he is a grumpy asshole, doesn't mean he's not right.

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#6495ED - cornflower blue
Re:What a grumpy asshole by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 10:55 · Score: 0

Because he's right, this crap mostly doesn't even GET TO the usability question, it fails before you can find anything to like.
Re:What a grumpy asshole by Malcontent · 2003-01-24 11:06 · Score: 1, Insightful

Because it's much easier to whine then to help, it's much easier to point and laugh rather then engage in a constructive dialog.

JWZ is perfectly happy to pull a nelson by simply standing in the sidelines and yelling "HA HA". I don't mean to critizise him exclusively he is not alone in that regard.

He left the mozilla project and yet mozilla turned out to be an awsome browser (the best in the market IMHO) maybe he is a bit upset about that who knows.

--
War is necrophilia.
Re:What a grumpy asshole by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 11:27 · Score: 0

Mozilla is a nasty bloated browser, inferior on each of its target platforms to some other browser for that platform.
Further, JWZ quit Mozilla a long time ago, and at the time he quit, it would have been a fair bet that Mozilla never produced anything worthwhile.
Re:What a grumpy asshole by Usquebaugh · 2003-01-24 11:50 · Score: 1

Or prehaps you have gone uphill?

Look /. needs page views, controversy = page clicks.
Re:What a grumpy asshole by susano_otter · 2003-01-24 11:51 · Score: 1

I had to reboot my f-ing windows box 4 times this week.
That's your own damn fault. I personally administrate over 200 Windows boxes, and average about 4 reboots a month over the entire group. Counting installs and upgrades.

--
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Re:What a grumpy asshole by buddyjones · 2003-01-24 11:55 · Score: 0

Right... I'd love to see this response to one of the typical rabid anti-Microsoft rants posted here.
Re:What a grumpy asshole by jackbox · 2003-01-24 12:27 · Score: 4, Insightful

"This is shit and too big of a pain in the ass to screw with" isn't a particularly exacting or insightful analysis.

True. But it's exactly the same analysis that every "normal" (non-techno geek) user will give. And that makes it extremely valuable.
Re:What a grumpy asshole by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 13:11 · Score: 0

Good point. In that case, Linux and everyone who uses it are "moron fucktards". Use a real (P)OS like Windows XP. Now discuss...
Re:What a grumpy asshole by baka_boy · 2003-01-24 14:06 · Score: 1

Please, don't start out making a quite viable point (namely, that "shrink-wrap" or "pre-installed" Linux systems are far more user-friendly) and the screw it up by saying that desktop Linux is ready to go head-to-head with OS X or Windows XP. My two primary computers run Linux and NetBSD, and for my purposes (90% of my time is spent in vi, bash, and perl/python/ruby scripting) they're great.

However, there's no way that I would seriously try to give a Linux system to my girlfriend, or even my fairly tech-savvy younger brother, simply because I know that they'd spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to do things that were idiotically simple on their Macs and damn-near impossible under Linux.

It's getting better, especially in the area of basic UI consistency for desktop apps -- and as much as I can't stand running a RedHat system, they're leading the way with the BlueCurve unification of GNOME and KDE. However, it'll probably be at least a couple more years before the Linux desktop situation improves enough to make a switch a less-than-excruciatingly-painful experience for the large majority of PC/Mac users.

Of course, by that time, the OpenBeOS crew will either have given up, or pulled off a working system, in which case I hope to be able to forget about XWindows, custom-built kernels, and the thousand twisty little /etc files, all *not* alike.
Re:What a grumpy asshole by King+of+the+World · 2003-01-24 14:41 · Score: 1

It's one thing I hate about Mozilla (why can't they use the native menus and widgets?)
Because they wouldn't be able to comply with CSS.

Next!

(oh, and if they're rendering the page, and there are standards like XForms and other DHTML/DOM guff coming, then the web is becoming a GUI toolkit of its own, with it's own requirements, and both Loonix and Windows couldn't satisfy the requirements as easily).

--
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
Re:What a grumpy asshole by wmshub · 2003-01-24 14:48 · Score: 1

"mplayer filename" is enough.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Command line MPlayer is not easy to use out of the box. When I run mplayer foo.mpg, as installed out of a Red Hat 8.0 distribution, I get 40 lines of garbage. Towards the end is this error:
It seems there is no Xvideo support for your video card available. Run 'xvinfo' to verify its Xv support, and read Xv section of DOCS/video.html ! See 'mplayer -vo help' for other (non-xv) video out drivers. Try -vo x11 Error opening/initializing the selected video_out (-vo) device!
Running mplayer -vo help gives a list of about a dozen different output drivers, with no hint as to which one is right for me. In fact, it's downright misleading; my graphics card is listed as one of the options, but that option doesn't work because I have the wrong X server!!! I defy you to find a non-techie who would be able to figure out that mplayer -vo x11 foo.mpg is the right option to give to make it work - yes, that is given as advice in the error message, but that is not an easy to read error message, and other (misleading and/or ridiculously hard to follow) advice is given as well. I bet that even most techie people would do what I did at first - give up and assume that the app is just plain broken. Which, I guess, it is...it's just broken in a way that can be fixed by knowing the proper magical command line switch.
Re:What a grumpy asshole by sfe_software · 2003-01-24 15:56 · Score: 1

> It's one thing I hate about Mozilla (why can't they use the native menus and widgets?)

Because they wouldn't be able to comply with CSS.

A couple people have corrected me on this, and I now understand. As I said, I do use Mozilla pretty much exclusively, and lately most of my previous gripes with Mozilla's widgets have gone away. The text box IS much better, and the menus work okay under multiple monitor systems (it had issues back in... geez, M12 I think it was. Moz has sure come a long way)

It does seem that the web will sorta need its own toolkit, and with this in mind, Mozilla's approach is pretty decent. For MSIE to update widgets, it has to update the OS widgets (which it *does* do from time to time; this is why so many programs that have nothing to do with the web require a certain IE version to be installed).

So in short, I'm convinced, I agree, and I like Mozilla even more now :)

--
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
Re:What a grumpy asshole by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 16:22 · Score: 0

"Being abusive to your family is one thing but I will not stand idly by while you feed a hungry dog!"-Homer,The Simpsons

Wow.. comments like that drove me away from the Simpsons long ago. I can see I'm not missing anything these days either.
Re:What a grumpy asshole by Archie+Steel · 2003-01-24 16:44 · Score: 1

However, there's no way that I would seriously try to give a Linux system to my girlfriend, or even my fairly tech-savvy younger brother, simply because I know that they'd spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to do things that were idiotically simple on their Macs and damn-near impossible under Linux.

Any examples of things they wouldn't be able to do in Linux? Seriously, I'd be curious to hear them.

The truth is, Linux is ready to go head-to-head with WinXP and OS X. I've seen it being used by total computer newbies, and it wasn't any harder for them to learn it from scratch than it would have been if they were learning Windows from scratch...now, people who are used to Windows might look around a little bit before finding the correct menu entry, but the distro makers are working hard to make this as painless as possible (with such things as "start here" menus and icons). UI consistency is pretty much a done deal with newer KDE and Gnome apps. And you don't need Bluecurve: the File menu is always in the same place, so is the Edit menu, etc. - stop imagining that users are morons! Don't you remember, back in the days of DOS and TRS-80 and C64? How user-friendly was it then? And yet people learned how to use these computers quickly.

In any case, it is not "excruciatingly painful" to switch. Stop exaggerating and take a good look at a modern, pre-installed distro, please. The UI on KDE 3.1 is better and more intuitive than that of WinXP, not less, AND it has more features. Years? The future is now, brother, which is why so many corporations and governments are switching - or are you saying that your girlfriend or your "tech-savvy" younger brothers are dumber than govt. pencil-pushers?

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Reminder: find a new sig
Re:What a grumpy asshole by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 17:11 · Score: 0

uh, son,

as much as i can't stand jamie sometimes, he's done his fair share. he's pretty much earned the right to stand up and criticize, because he isn't doing it from the sidelines.
Re:What a grumpy asshole by r6144 · 2003-01-24 17:14 · Score: 1

Although MPlayer is a great product and I like it much, I have to say that many parts of it are not well documented, and often it IS necessary to play with a lot of command-line switches to get things right. I find myself quite accustomed to command-line switches, but a few things are still troublesome to do in mplayer.
One thing is scaling. I have a old video card, so I have to do soft scaling. I resized the window --- no luck. Used -xy (or -x plus -y), the image size still doesn't change. Finally I found that -vop scale is needed to activate software scaling. Why don't they add a note about -vop scale in -x, -y?
Another is gamma correction. It turned out that mplayer CAN do software gamma correction, but the option "-vop eq2=2" is totally undocumented. (I dug that out by googling the mailing list)
Mplayer is hard enough, and Mencoder... When will it be as easy-to-use as oggenc or lame?
For now, if anyone wants to play video on linux, I recommend mplayer, but be sure to spend an hour to read the manual first.
Re:What a grumpy asshole by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 18:49 · Score: 0

here's something that is excruciatingly painful:

X does not have reasonable defaults. my brand new system is stuck in 640x480 land because X SUCKS and doesn't know that the 8xAGP 64MB 3D graphics card is capable of so much more.

nor is it intuitively obvious to the uninitiated how to get X to use a reasonable resolution WITHOUT BLOWING UP MY MONITOR or at least trying to and making it say "out of range".

set my kids or my mom on linux? bah! not for a few years!

by the way Tux Racer runs brilliantly on this new system - UNDER WINDOWS 2000!

fuck X windows and the morons who came up with it.
Re:What a grumpy asshole by Rysc · 2003-01-24 19:16 · Score: 1

You probably don't want to hear this, but have you tried Libranet? It's Debian-based, so you absolutely will not run in to those dependancy problems (unless you WANT to, which some of us actually do) but it's made for personal, desktop use, so it autodetects everything. I actually was most dissapointed after I found that my accumulated "How to get the fucking PPP connection working" knowledge, which I acquired from Red Hat, turned out to be totally useless under Libranet as the first time I booted I could hit "connect" and get online. Libranet (2.0 and later) uses grub, so no cylinder limit applies. Libranet's default kernel comes with most things anybody will need compiled as modules; I only recompile because I'm keen on playing "Let's break the system" and not out of any functional need.

Yes, it's true that on Linux you will spend a lot of time looking up/figuring out how to do what's easily point-and-clickable in those other OSs. I use Linux as my only OS, and it can be frusterating saying "I know this is possible, if I could only find what the hell it's called so I can at least do a google on the right keyword" and similar. I'm not defending Linux's shortcomings here (I'll do it next time, if you like) all I'm saying is your experiences are probably atypical.

(Why yes, this was a "Change your distribution" solution. Can I help it that all non-Debian distros are so fragile in the way they're put together that any attempt to touch them causes them to shatter?)

--
I want my Cowboyneal
Re:What a grumpy asshole by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 19:27 · Score: 0

I understand that one can play videos on one's computer. I understand these videos come in many different formats. Every now and then I try to figure out what the Done Thing is, as far as playing movies on one's Windows machine.

(Really my eventual goal is to be able to create video on Windows, but I figured I'd start small, and see if I could just get playback working before trying something that is undoubtedly ten thousand times harder.)
I finally found MSIs of Windows Media Player that would consent to install themselves on a Windows 5.0 machine, and actually got it to play some videos. Amazing. But it's a total pain in the ass to use due to rampant "themeing." Why do people do this? They map this stupid shaped window with no titlebar in some of the themes (oh, sorry, your choice of a dozen stupidly-shaped windows without titlebars) all of which use fonts that are way too small to read or no fonts at all! Just those stupid yellow help bubbles. But, here's the best part, there's DRM inside and out of this app as well as the OS. So if You ever want to copy something that "they" think You shouldn't, well sorry, you're out of luck. And half of the themes always map the window at the very bottom of the screen -- conveniently under my Start bar where I can't reach it. Considering the I tend to keep my start bar at the top, what is REALLY annoying is how Windows Media Player ALWAYS seems to want to put the title bar UNDER the start bar with no hope of raising it to the top.

Resizing the window doesn't change the aspect ratio of the video! How annoying. Sometimes I like to change the aspect ratio of what I'm watching for the coolness factor.

It moves the mouse to the upper left corner of every dialog box it creates! Which is great, because that means that when it gets into this cute little state of popping up a blank dialog that says "Error" five times a second, you can't even move the mouse over to another window to kill the program, you have to log in from another machine.

Fucking morons.

So I gave up on that, and tried to install Real Player. Get this. Their propose ``solution'' for distributing binaries on Windows systems? They point you at some proprietary ActiveX control that executes an installer without my permission! Yeah, that's a good idea, I want to allow who knows what full access to my system. Well, I found some MSIs for Windows 5.0, but apparently they expect you to have already rectally inserted Luna on your system first. Uh, no. I've seen the horror of Windows 6.0, and there's no fucking way I'm putting Luna on any more of my machines for at least another six years, maybe a decade.

Ok, no Real Player. Let's try The Playa. I found MSIs, and it sucks about the same as Windows Media Player, and in about the same ways: it doesn't change the aspect ratio when you resize the window; and at least its stupidly-shaped window isn't always forced to be on top. I don't like that either, but it's better than always being on top. It took me ten minutes to figure out where the "Open File" dialog was because they chose to use icons instead of text.

What are these fucktards thinking???

Then I checked out PowerDVD again, and it hasn't been updated since the last time I tried, six months ago. It's a pretty decent DVD player, if you have the physical DVD. It does on-screen menus, and you can click on them with the mouse. But I don't need a DVD player (I have a hardware DVD player that works just fine.) It can't, as far as I can tell, play anything but actual discs.

An idiocy that all of these programs have in common is that, in addition to opening a window for the movie, and a window for the control panel, they don't allow for displaying any of the various errors that could be happening in the background when you launch these apps from CMD. I imagine at some point, there was some user who said, `This program is pretty nice, but you know what it's missing? It's missing a lot of useful and important feedback about what plugins and fonts have been loaded in addition to the errors that make all of these players teh sux0rz!'

Translation by - 13370 j3ff

Now fuck off!
Re:What a grumpy asshole by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 20:37 · Score: 0

True. But it's exactly the same analysis that every "normal" (non-techno geek) user will give. And that makes it extremely valuable.

If this is the same assessment that every normal person would give then how is it valuable when it comes from jwz? I should be able to get this from any normal person I pull off the street. Coming from a normal person it may be valuable, but coming from jwz it is just condescending.
Re:What a grumpy asshole by King+of+the+World · 2003-01-24 23:00 · Score: 1

Yeah, I agree, Mozilla is great. I still have problems with the textboxes sometimes though (sometimes on slashdot I can't type into this box and have to refresh the page - it occurs more often in Phoenix), and drop down menus are easy to overload Mozilla with (drop down the file menu and run your mouse back and forth, you'll see the sluggish behaviour).

Having their own toolkit was the only way, but that's no real reason for these speed problems :(

--
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
Re:What a grumpy asshole by Archie+Steel · 2003-01-25 11:32 · Score: 1

I know you're a troll and all, but do you think you could possibly read the posts before replying to them? I was talking about a system with Linux PRE-INSTALLED, not about having your girlfriend, mom or whatever install a new card and configure X...

Now, about your problem, did you try to run the X configuration tools that came with your distro (like the Mandrake Control Center)? What was the distro you tried? What's your video card? Did you know that the recent Mandrake automatically does this for you? (It did so with my NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4400 - though I eventually downloaded the proprietary drivers).

And, BTW, do you think it is obvious to the uninitiated (i.e. your mom) to figure out how to set the monitor refresh rate in Windows? Just do the test and make her try to change it without telling her anything...Meanwhile, go back to your cave, Troll...

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Reminder: find a new sig

I like this guy, but... by mrseigen · 2003-01-24 05:05 · Score: 5, Informative

...command-line MPlayer works perfectly for me. Aside from that, he certainly lets people know what's wrong with the projects they've spent most of their lives on.

Re:I like this guy, but... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:26 · Score: 5, Insightful

command-line ... works perfectly for me

Everytime that phrase comes to your mind I want you to take a deep breath and think whether you would say that to your non-technical mother/father/granny/whatever. This is a great review in that it takes it from a true end user perspective. This is the experience that a regular joe would have. This is the battle that we must fight and the answer is not "command-line ... works perfectly for me."
Re:I like this guy, but... by LinuxGeek8 · 2003-01-24 05:38 · Score: 1

Yes, I prefer the commandline mplayer too.
If I want gui, I refuse to use xine, and mplayer isn't much better.
Totem and Kxine are good frontends though. Both are xine frontends.
There's also Kmplayer which seems usable, but I haven't used it yet.

Multimedia on Linux has caught up quite good, at least for playing. Now all we need are a few good video editors :-)

--
Well, don't worry about that. We can get you back before you leave. (Dr. Who)
Re:I like this guy, but... by DrMaurer · 2003-01-24 05:56 · Score: 4, Interesting

Yeah, it works fine for you, but it shouldn't be the only way, should it?

I like the concept of themes, really, I do, but most people who do them have no concept of user-interface-design. If you're distributing a product, you should endevor to create a professional appearance once the work's been done behind the scenes.

A lot of folks seem to think that if it works for them, it works for everyone. Look at the plethora of shitty themes on themes.org or winamp skins at winamp.com or whatever it is that mac users do . . . my mac doesn't work right now. (iBook's yo-yo power supply is busted.) Anyhow, they're mostly just bad, cluttered, and really not that cohesive. I'm sure there are a couple, but I end up just getting the background pictures mostly.

For chrissakes, if you spend your whole life on a project, is 8 hours to make a theme unadorned with pictures of Heidi Klum wearing a Tux baby-T too much to ask?

"Gentlemen, BEHOLD! This thing!"

You should be able to use command lines, if you want, but it shouldn't be required.

--
Dan
Re:I like this guy, but... by mir · 2003-01-24 06:16 · Score: 1

..but why would you need a GUI for a video player.

Whether I use XIne or MPlayer I just browse the files with any browser, double-click on the video I want to watch, click on the full-screen square at the top of the window... et voila! Oh, I forgot, in Xine I also have to hit the play button and hide the panel with a right click, which JMZ might describe as extremely complicated, although I would rate it as rather intuitive actually.

What else would I need?

Now I like a good rant as much as the next person, but this one strikes me as rather unfair and really not constructive. What is the point here?

--
Look, that's why there's rules, understand? So that you think before you break 'em. (Terry Pratchett)
Re:I like this guy, but... by Dave_bsr · 2003-01-24 06:22 · Score: 4, Informative

Ok, I struggled with getting every supposedly great media player for windows to work right, including iterations of WiMP and Quicktime. Don't talk to me about Realplayer. A different media player for every media.

So here ya go. Mplayer is just a media player. It opens every media you can think of - mplayer [file] and it just works. Period. Set it up to be the default media player in your pretty GUI file manager and you'll never think about it again.

Interaction is a bit different than usual, i'll admit, but it's intuitive and easy once you get used to it. Different != bad. Key-presses are faster than grabbing the mouse and pointing it at something, especially if you're watching a DVD and just want to reach over and slap the spacebar to pause, or hit an arrow key repeatedly to skip forward or back. Mplayer's key mappings are easy to remember and logical - q for quit, f for fullscreen, space for pause, and arrow keys to skip forward and back. You can even adjust audio playback sync to the video, if you learn a bit about it. I'd argue that the average "idiot*" user could learn it and love it just fine - especially since it's one media player, and one interface, for every video (even audio) file on his or her system.

Mplayer GUI's aren't that bad either, whiners...

: )

*Very few are idiots, and many learn fast...don't think that just because you and I can program that means everyone else is retarded.

--

Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
Re:I like this guy, but... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:23 · Score: 1, Insightful

I'm sorry, but somebody has brainwashed you into believing that a GUI is easier to use than the command-line. There is a serious "command-line" phobia that the Microsoft droids have been fostering that really needs to stop. If you look at the current state of TERRIBLE GUIs for these players, and compare it to the simplicity of mplayer's command-line, you'll see what I'm talking about. And if you complain about how hard it is to remember the keystrokes, how hard is it to remember to type mplayer --help if you forget? It's not like --help is intuitive or anything, seeing as EVERY UNIX COMMAND (save a few braindead ones) uses --help to show you the basics. Oh, I forgot, you can't read. You need little icons to show you how to wipe your ass.
Re:I like this guy, but... by LMCBoy · 2003-01-24 06:29 · Score: 2, Insightful

This is the experience that a regular joe would have. This is the battle that we must fight

Why must we fight this "battle"? Who cares if Grandma can use Linux or not? As long as enough geeks are using Linux to keep the platform viable, this geek will be happy, and perfectly content.

The Penguin cares not for market share.

--
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
Re:I like this guy, but... by Tom · 2003-01-24 06:29 · Score: 1

Everytime that phrase comes to your mind I want you to take a deep breath and think whether you would say that to your non-technical mother/father/granny/whatever.

Sometimes, yes.
My girl never had a computer before she met me. Now, a few years later, she prefers CLI in some cases where even I take the GUI.

Non-technical people aren't necessarily dumb, and can be educated. And for some things, the CLI simply is the tool of choice.

That said, some people absolutely need a mac since anything beyond one mouse button confuses them.

--
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Re:I like this guy, but... by MrResistor · 2003-01-24 06:34 · Score: 2, Funny

Everytime that phrase comes to your mind I want you to take a deep breath and think whether you would say that to your non-technical mother/father/granny/whatever.

I do say that to my non-technical wife, to which she responds "Fuck you, I'm not doing that!". That prompts me to write a script which I link to an icon on her desktop with a simple name like "play_dvd" (which would be a simple one-liner if it weren't for one stupid Powerpuff Girls DVD where Title 1 is one of the extras with a character voice over).

Granted, this approach won't work for households that don't include a Unix geek, but it will have to suffice until I can get mplayer to compile with a GUI.

--
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Re:I like this guy, but... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:45 · Score: 0

but why would you need a GUI for a video player.

You know at it, why do you need a ui on your dvd player. Buttons with explicit standard icons on them that let you know what the button does regardless of whoever DVD player was made by are utterly point less. I wanna be able skin my DVD player and replace the |> icon with panda bear, reshape the casing so it looks like pretzel. You know really, having any kind of buttons is pointless. Just a bunch of dipswitches in the back of player. Anyone who has half a brain will figure them out.
Re:I like this guy, but... by talesout · 2003-01-24 07:13 · Score: 1

No, it isn't.
See, if I want to spend three weeks screwing around with software packages and libraries and crap, maybe, just MAYBE I can watch a DVD on my system, but the sound will still be jerky because some schmuck decided to use some library for audio that is either impossible to find or incompatible with every other library on the system. The problem is, I no longer have three weeks to waste on crap like that. I tried it about four or five months ago, spent four days fucking around with it, and never DID get it to the point where it worked even remotely well enough to make it enjoyable.
Multimedia on Linux hasn't caught up. It hasn't even gotten started yet. I would kill for easy DVD playback, and good audio/video editing tools. Hell, I'd be satisfied with good audio tracking software. But, I know I can't count on Linux to ever have something usable that allows me to just get down to it. It's sad really. I despise having to go to other platforms to get work done, but that's what I'm stuck with. I can write on Linux, because text manipulation is the shit. But anything else I have to reboot. And I can't accomplish the same tasks on Windows as far as writing goes, so I have to reboot again. Makes it a pain in the ass if I want to do more than one thing a day.

--

Bite my yammer.
Re:I like this guy, but... by fitten · 2003-01-24 07:15 · Score: 1

Interaction is a bit different than usual, i'll admit, but it's intuitive and easy once you get used to it.

Doesn't "intuitive" mean you can figure out how to fiddle with it without having to get used to it first?
Re:I like this guy, but... by xdroop · 2003-01-24 07:55 · Score: 1

You should be able to use command lines, if you want, but it shouldn't be required.

It shouldn't be impossible either.

--
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.
Re:I like this guy, but... by iebgener · 2003-01-24 07:57 · Score: 2, Insightful

So here ya go. Mplayer is just a media player. It opens every media you can think of - mplayer [file] and it just works. Period. Set it up to be the default media player in your pretty GUI file manager and you'll never think about it again.

amen !

I have configured mplayer as the default player on nautilus and everything is F A S T ! and it reads about everything. Nautilus will always be a better file browser than any open dialog of any program since everything is dynamic. mplayer reads avi while they are downloading... not the microsoft one.

As the key mapping, well, the scroll button on the mouse will sroll the movie; ESC and close button will close the movie; space bar start/stop the movie. It's complicated ? 'The movie steches when you resize the windows' : then why did you resize the window anyway ????

and kudo to the mplayer team, to my opinion, they have done a great job!
Re:I like this guy, but... by sfe_software · 2003-01-24 08:24 · Score: 1

Why must we fight this "battle"? Who cares if Grandma can use Linux or not? As long as enough geeks are using Linux to keep the platform viable, this geek will be happy, and perfectly content.

I've been making this argument for a while. I don't care about "Linux on the Desktop". Linux on the server, and Linux on my desktop is all I care about.

I use Windows for some tasks. I use Linux for others (including all of my multimedia needs, as it happens). I don't want Linux to become a replacement for Windows -- I already have one of those. My Dad doesn't need Linux -- Windows does everything he needs.

You can argue the cost issue, or the monopolistic practices, etc, but realistically most people don't care about that. Most people, given a choice, would choose Windows, even if it meant higher cost and having to "activate" their installation. Even if Linux were free, worked out of the box, and could open most MS Office docs -- it wouldn't matter.

So, let's keep Linux for ourselves. Those who can't figure out MPlayer, the command-line, X configuration, etc -- don't need Linux. They don't want Linux.

--
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
Re:I like this guy, but... by twinpot · 2003-01-24 08:30 · Score: 1

I sort of understand his anger though. I've got xine, which works pretty well, but also wanted to get mplayer working. I could never get the RPMS to work (even to the extent that they locked the machine solid), and didn't fancy using the command line version all the time. And I prefer to use KDE.

Eventually I found a KDE front-end and compiled mplayer, sans gui, and.....happiness - it works, and properly too.

But, it took far more time and effort than many users can be bothered with. Get the program stable first, then do a simple, easy to use interface/GUI, and THEN worry about fancy skins.
Re:I like this guy, but... by fire-eyes · 2003-01-24 08:57 · Score: 1

If they can't deal with command line, Linux is not the OS for them.

Sure some distros try to pretend command line/shell doesn't exist, but it's shitty.

Linux is a techinical operating system. It isn't for grannies, etc.

--
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
Re:I like this guy, but... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 09:04 · Score: 0

+funny for the athf referance.
Re:I like this guy, but... by njdj · 2003-01-24 09:12 · Score: 4, Insightful

Different != bad.

I disagree. When it comes to user interface conventions, Different=Bad.

Just imagine walking into a car showroom to buy a car, and the sales guy shows you this neat-looking model. It has 2 pedals, one of them turns on the windshield wipers, the other turns on the heated rear window. The brake is operated by a stalk on the left of the steering column ... need I continue?

A lot of user-interface conventions are pretty arbitrary. If we were starting from nothing, maybe something else would have been better. But we're not starting from nothing. We've all gotten used to a bunch of conventions. Products which conform to the conventions we know are easier to use than products which do not.
Re:I like this guy, but... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 09:18 · Score: 0

There is a serious "command-line" phobia that the Microsoft droids have been fostering that really needs to stop.

Maybe, but I think the phobia started with Apple.
Re:I like this guy, but... by bbqBrain · 2003-01-24 09:33 · Score: 1

Heh, the scripts I've had to write for my wife are pretty simple, like:
wine /mnt/c/games/pipedream.exe
(can't remember the options now)

--

One of the reasons that I became a lawyer was to avoid ever having to hire one. -SPYvSPY
Re:I like this guy, but... by Afrosheen · 2003-01-24 09:36 · Score: 1

Oh, and I bet the guys on the mplayer mailing list would have a FIELD day with this guy. ;)

I use the commandline exclusively for Mplayer as well. Sure, it takes some time to learn, but it makes sense. Spacebar=pause, F to toggle fullscreen, arrow keys to rewind/ff. Not real tricky, and it definitely doesn't need a gui. This guy needs to spend 5 seconds RTFM and get on with his life, because mplayer is the best player on any platform, period.
Re:I like this guy, but... by Grahf666 · 2003-01-24 09:58 · Score: 1

Would it damage your geek-manliness if your OS of choice was actually easy to use? Irrespective of technical skill, I find it ridiculous that anyone would prefer a difficult to use OS instead of a difficult one.

Sure, maybe it doesn't bother you that you have to spend a day or five manually configuring every little thing that doesn't work... but wouldn't it be nice if things actually Just Worked?

Furthermore, wouldn't it be nice if our beloved rock-solid Linux Just Worked in many ways that it currently doesn't?

Obviously none of this matters if the only way you use Linux is without X, on a server, where you probably want to hand-configure everything. But oddly enough, people want to use linux in more roles than that. Saying that people who aren't good enough to use linux in its current semi-usable state just shouldn't bother, is ridiculous and elitist.
Re:I like this guy, but... by Eccles · 2003-01-24 10:27 · Score: 1

I'm sorry, but somebody has brainwashed you into believing that a GUI is easier to use than the command-line.

My five-year-old can use a GUI, yet she's still illiterate. I'd say a GUI is easier to use.

--
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Re:I like this guy, but... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 10:31 · Score: 0

You have no clue regarding usability.
Re:I like this guy, but... by seanellis · 2003-01-24 10:48 · Score: 5, Insightful

Sorry to disagree, but the original author is right, and you even point it out yourself:

Interaction is a bit different than usual, i'll admit, but it's intuitive and easy once you get used to it.

There's the problem right there, staring you in the face.

Why should I have to "get used to it"? I have already spent time and effort gaining knowledge about how to deal with scroll bars, file selectors, bringing windows to the top, minimizing windows, etc. If I can't apply that to this app, and have to learn all those things all over again just for this app then I lose.

I haven't got the time to "get used to" every app's idea of a pretty UI. I want something that works the way everything else works, thanks.

For some reason, it's media stuff that tends to sport these kinds of interfaces. Non-standard windows. Controls I can't see, or that don't work the way I expect, or that don't do anything because they are cruft that just looks like a control. More pixels dedicated to the skin than to the movie. Favorites bars. Channel bars. Media bars. Quicklaunch bars. For all I know or care, topless bars.

WHO ON EARTH THOUGHT I WANTED ANY OF THIS CRAP?

What I want from a media player is simple: a rectangular window with a standard title and menu bar. Controls: play, stop, and a horizontal scroll bar for fast forward/rewind - and it had better be a proper UI standard scrollbar too. Maximise widget for full screen video. Standard menus for everything else.

Of course, Linux isn't the only OS that has this problem. Windows Media Player is another execrable pile of "cool" skins and stuff. I selected the "classic" skin as soon as the thing installed, and turned every UI option off. And Quicktime player's UI rightly has its own page in the UI hall of shame. You don't even get a choice with this one.

No wonder users these days get confused. And when users get confused, they leave.

--
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
Re:I like this guy, but... by dusty123 · 2003-01-24 10:58 · Score: 2, Interesting

Well, the things he critizises are somehow right. Only the way he does is not helpful - it's more like "bashing" than "helping to improve".

But one thing has to be said:
I compiled mplayer for myself and it can now play any video format (except quicktime) I use and it plays it perfectly smooth. The only problem is that the TV-out of my VGA (Matrox G550) is not supported with Linux due to copyright issues, hence I have to switch to Windows when watching films on my TV.

Man, those Windows players are *really* a pain in the a**. The playback is not smooth, the video/audio gets out of sync, the Window Media Player stops decoding when there are errors in the stream, the DivX player notorioulsly crashes my system, the TV-Out is not working for SVGACD's/DVD's, for viewing Divx on the TV-Out you have to install a strange shareware-program, AC3-Audio codecs are sometimes not working; Well - an endless list.

I'm soooo happy to have MPlayer under Linux!
Re:I like this guy, but... by Malcontent · 2003-01-24 11:09 · Score: 1

"I disagree. When it comes to user interface conventions, Different=Bad."

As long as this attitude exists there will never be any innovation on the desktop. People critize Linux for not being innocvative and then slam them when anybody attempts something different.

Can't win.

--
War is necrophilia.
Re:I like this guy, but... by UnknownSoldier · 2003-01-24 11:45 · Score: 1

> I'm sorry, but somebody has brainwashed you into believing that a GUI is easier to use than the command-line.

You've never taken a UI class before have you? CLI's are *invisible interfaces*. Using a CLI means you need to use long term memory, whereas a GUI may allow one to use visual/spatial memory.

> If you look at the current state of TERRIBLE GUIs for these players, and compare it to the simplicity of mplayer's command-line, you'll see what I'm talking about.

No, it means those GUI programmers need to learn *how* to design an interface, whether the CLI or GUI is simple is irrelevent (and depends on the user)

Cheers
Re:I like this guy, but... by susano_otter · 2003-01-24 12:06 · Score: 1

As long as this attitude exists there will never be any innovation on the desktop.
This would be true if this attitude really was widespread, and we really were grovelling through a decades-old, obviously painful interface purely out of fear of change.

As it is, every non-UI-desiging idiot out there is trying to design a new UI to go with their pet programming project, and none of them improve significantly on the current model, and none of them seem to have any idea of how painful their "new and improved" UI will be to anyone else who might otherwise want to use their program for its obvious technical benefits.

The UI conventions should at least stop changing for a little while, before we start saying that it's time for a change, don't you think?

--
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Re:I like this guy, but... by WzDD · 2003-01-24 12:07 · Score: 1

I compiled mplayer for myself and it can now play any video format (except quicktime)

Mine does Quicktime Sorensen, too.

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/~alex/codecs/qt-howto.txt
Re:I like this guy, but... by zimbu · 2003-01-24 12:17 · Score: 1

Innovation isn't having customizable skins and non standard widgets which don't add any new functionality.
Re:I like this guy, but... by Gortbusters.org · 2003-01-24 12:45 · Score: 1

Don't forget he got the RPM, which for the longest time the mplayer group has said NOT to get. They want you to compile the source for best video support, etc.

--
--------
Free your mind.
Re:I like this guy, but... by Tomble · 2003-01-24 12:59 · Score: 1

Why should I have to "get used to it"?
I'm not 100% clear on this, but I think you're talking about the controls here. In which case, WTF is difficult about arrow keys for forward and backwards, and space for pause?
The reason why you have to get used to that sort of thing, is that unless I missed a trick somewhere, they are not being paid to do this 24/7 (JWZ should understand this as someone who has also created free software), and that until they had got the program to a certain point where they might think it worthwhile to add a GUI option, you have nowhere to stick your beloved scroll bars and clicky buttons and menus and things to select various options with. Sorry.
I will agree with you and with JWZ that the GUI part of mplayer is quite bad, which is why I only used it once or twice after I first saw it. Otherwise, I just use the plain command line. 99.9% of the time, I either run mplayer with no command line flags, or with one or two flags that I use a lot, eg -fs (gives full screen) or -vo x11 (to avoid using the xv driver that has made X crash once or twice when playing incomplete videos. Sorry, but there's no right in bitching about that, because it's a work in progress, they don't claim it's bullet-proof).
Now, as for the GUI, well till about a year or so ago, there wasn't even any GUI for it, there was only the command line, because what these people have basically done, is create a program that can play practically anything under the fscking sun. The GUI part came later, as an option, and AFAIK was an experimental feature. Sure, it turned out a bit crap. But they weren't making the program bad, they were adding something extra that we had gone without before.
Then JWZ, who sure, makes good screensaver things and stuff, and doubtless a billion other marvelous bits of code, calls the mplayer authors "a bunch of fucking morons". No, sorry, wrong wrong wrong. They made a damned brilliant piece of software, and they are STILL WRITING IT. Calling them morons for creating a bad user interface for something they are not being paid for and haven't claimed to have finished, is just as bad, IF NOT WORSE than insulting those people who can't understand a CLI program that needs practically no effort to use, or can't learn 3 or 4 simple keys to control the thing. The program is normally an utter no-brainer to use, but I'll bet it wasn't a no-brainer to code.
Normally, I myself tend to have a whinge and a rant about things, but seriously, they're absolutely the wrong bunch to be bitching about, they do a first rate job, if you think their GUI is badly designed (which I agree about, but am not really bothered), maybe you should be suggesting to them how it should be rather than insulting them.

--
Be careful! New moon tonight.
Re:I like this guy, but... by DF5JT · 2003-01-24 13:54 · Score: 1

"What I want from a media player is simple: a rectangular window with a standard title and menu bar. Controls: play, stop, and a horizontal scroll bar for fast forward/rewind - and it had better be a proper UI standard scrollbar too. Maximise widget for full screen video. Standard menus for everything else."

Use kmplayer and be done with it. (Google, yadda)

It's got the option to keep the aspect of the video, you can keep it on top since it uses the KDE window manager, offers all the configuration options you need in everyday operation.

With the exception of the horizontal scroolbar, it's got everything JWZ and you were complayining about.

Apart from that: What's the alternative? Don't get me startet on Windows, please, that Mediaplayer is the worst crap ever written with the "Multimedia"-tag on it - and I haven't even thought about DRM and the non-option to create movies or audio with free codecs.

I have mplayer configured with all the available codecs and options there are and together with kmplayer as frontend this is one hell of a piece of software that deserves the highest praise. I can't think of any mediaplayer that leaves more to be desired.

I use it to rip and encode DVDs, I use it as a VCR, it plays RealMedia, LIVE.COM streams, all kind of DivX-movies, MPEGs plus all the Windows audio and video codecs; it's fast, it doesn't crash on you.

What was it you needed in addition to that?
Re:I like this guy, but... by DF5JT · 2003-01-24 13:58 · Score: 1

"I can't think of any mediaplayer that leaves more to be desired"

fsck.

s/more/less
Re:I like this guy, but... by sfe_software · 2003-01-24 14:09 · Score: 1

Would it damage your geek-manliness if your OS of choice was actually easy to use?

You misinterpreted my post. I think it's fine if developers work toward making Linux easy to use. I'm just not one who really cares if Linux is accepted on the desktop by the average person. Linux works for me (I run with and without X, depending on the purpose of the particular machine).

It seems like any time someone (rather, some company) starts to focus on "Linux on the Desktop", it fails. Sometimes miserably, and sometimes the effort takes away from other aspects of the distro.

RedHat 8.0 is perty when you boot it up, and a lot of nice things happened. It worked on my laptop out-of-the-box and required zero X configuration on my part. I was quite impressed with the installation procedure, and that everything but the Winmodem worked right away.

But on the command-line side, I don't see much of anything changed from 7.x. The transition from 5.x to 6.x provided a lot of nice additions, and 7.x added more (2.4 kernel, journaling file system by default, etc). 8.x looks (from the console) like 7.x (minus any mp3 utilities). It seems that each release focuses more and more on the desktop side of things...

Anyway, my point is this: push for Linux on the desktop, or don't -- it doesn't make a difference to me. I'm not against it, but I'm not specifically hoping for it either. I like Linux for what it is already great for -- servers, embeded applications, etc. But again, I'm not against it either -- it's not an elitist (or "geek-manliness") issue at all.

--
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
Re:I like this guy, but... by zieroh · 2003-01-24 14:15 · Score: 1

command-line MPlayer works perfectly for me.

That's great. However, a command-line-interface will never ever ever be accepted by mainstream computer users. If you think otherwise, you're either delusional, or you've eaten too many Moon Pies. Possibly both.

The points made by JWZ are that video playback needs a whole lot of improvement before it can be casually used by those with better things to do than f*ck with a command line interface.

--
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
Re:I like this guy, but... by derF024 · 2003-01-24 16:08 · Score: 1

See, if I want to spend three weeks screwing around with software packages and libraries and crap, maybe, just MAYBE I can watch a DVD on my system

if, on a recent linux system, it takes you any longer than 45 seconds to get easy dvd playback, you're doing something horribly wrong. "mplayer --dvdnav" or "mplayer --dvd 1" if you like to skip right to the movie.

DVD playback on windows, however, is a complete mess. i screwed around on WinXP for nearly a day trying to get dvd playback, to no avail. finally, i needed to find some serial number on a porn-filled warez search engine to get winDVD to play for more than 5 minutes without shutting off. why doesn't winXP come with a DVD player like debian/redhat/mandrake/suse does?
Re:I like this guy, but... by gymbrall · 2003-01-24 17:00 · Score: 1

I disagree. When it comes to user interface conventions, Different=Bad.

Just imagine walking into a car showroom to buy a car, and the sales guy shows you this neat-looking model. It has 2 pedals, one of them turns on the windshield wipers, the other turns on the heated rear window. The brake is operated by a stalk on the left of the steering column ... need I continue?

Yes, please continue to explain how when the previous poster stated "Different != Bad", he really meant "Different cannot equal Bad".

According to what you've written, you basically believe that once a certain level of standardization exists, there is never a reason to try something different. And if, God forbid, you do try something different, it is equal to the worst example of a vehicle interface that you can think up. Is that about right, or did you want tell me how "your" car accelerates?

--
I'm sorry, but your analogy has run out of gas.
Re:I like this guy, but... by t_pet422 · 2003-01-24 17:25 · Score: 0

command-line ... works perfectly for me

Everytime that phrase comes to your mind I want you to take a deep breath and think whether you would say that to your non-technical mother/father/granny/whatever.

ummm...we're talking about Linux, right? how many grannys can handle linux? Hell, how many grannys can grasp the concept of a mouse and the Internet. Linux isn't (currently, and hopefully never will be) an OS for Joe Dumb-ass like windows or mac os. it's an OS for hackers/tweakers/progammers. It's designed for people who prefer to memorize and type commands, because they're used to that kind of stuff from writing code and momorizing function names. I want to see Linux succeed, but not at the expense of making it dumb.
Re:I like this guy, but... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 17:47 · Score: 0

I do say that to my non-technical wife, to which she responds "Fuck you, I'm not doing that!".

Do you fuck her then?
Re:I like this guy, but... by Malcontent · 2003-01-24 17:47 · Score: 1

" The UI conventions should at least stop changing for a little while, before we start saying that it's time for a change, don't you think?"

No I don't. The windows paradigm was invented in early eighties for god's sake. Don't you think 20 years of the same interface is enough?

--
War is necrophilia.
Re:I like this guy, but... by Malcontent · 2003-01-24 17:50 · Score: 1

Yes but innovation won't happen unless people keep trying new stuff. Some stuff sticks some doesn't. If customizable skins (an open source innovation) was not important then MS would not have adopted it for XP. If MS thinks it's good enough to steal why don't you?

--
War is necrophilia.
Re:I like this guy, but... by susano_otter · 2003-01-24 18:17 · Score: 1

If MS thinks it's good enough to steal why don't you?
. . .

--
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Re:I like this guy, but... by susano_otter · 2003-01-24 18:29 · Score: 1

No, I don't.

The windows paradigm works. Fooling around with widgets and making making arbitrary changes to the convention is neither improving the current model, nor producing a better model. We're not going to get a next-generation UI from Joe Engineer, whose idea of innovation is a widget cool enough for Microsoft to steal.

The next-generation UI is going to come from UI experts, who have the sense to keep what is good, and the insight to replace what is bad with something even more intuitive. It's going to come from the people who have sane UI standards, and stick to them, not from the people who think that haring off each in their own direction is "the next big thing". It's going to come from the people who reward me for the knowledge I've already accumulated, not from the people that punish me for not already knowing their one true way.

Besides, the real UI improvements will be in the fundamental design, not the superficial appearances. We probably won't even notice most of those innovations, because they'll be effectively improving our experience without intruding on our consciousness. Wake me up when user-customizeable skins and widgets can do that.

--
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Re:I like this guy, but... by imroy · 2003-01-24 18:30 · Score: 1

Just imagine walking into a car showroom to buy a car...

Oh yes, here we go with another car analogy. You think all cars are exactly the same? Right. Except for automatics that have no clutch pedal and a very different gear selection. The parking break handle can be on either side of the drivers seat. What about the controls on the steering column? The ones that control the wipers and lights and so forth. They often vary a lot among makes of cars. Hell, some cars even have the gear stick on the steering column as well. Some controls might be on the dash.

And then there's the performance of the car. How good are the breaks? Is the car heavy or light? How powerful is the engine? How long is the wheel base and what's the turning circle like? Have power steering? These things all affect how you drive a car.

Here's a tip: you have a part of your brain called the cerebelum. It allows you to abstract your actions. For gods sake use it and stop whinging about things being different.
Re:I like this guy, but... by pantherace · 2003-01-24 18:47 · Score: 1

Would it damage your geek-manliness if your OS of choice was actually easy to use? Irrespective of technical skill, I find it ridiculous that anyone would prefer a difficult to use OS instead of a difficult one.
It is easier to use. Takes a couple of hours for most windows users to ajust to.
As an example, a friend of mine, just got linux installed. Aside from not like a couple of the free programs (xcdroast (-> k3b) , and kit/gaim (-> aol's aim)) the person like (which were replaced by free alternatives), they didn't have much problem at all, after it was configured. And occasionally a reccomendation for other software. (mplayer, ogle)
I work in a lab with dual-boot computers (unified logon, files accessable from either yada yadda) and everyone who is not afraid of linux because it isn't windows, generally has a good grasp of the gui (be it gnome or kde(=generally prefered option)) in a few seconds/minutes, and there isn't much problem for most users. The few users who have had problems with linux have also had major problems with windows.
I do not buy the windows is easier than linux, nor the windows is easier than mac or vice versa. (IMO, and almost all linux users who have used windows, linux is easier. (how many people (yes they exist) who say windows is better than linux have used linux? (In my experence, not many)
Re:I like this guy, but... by seanellis · 2003-01-24 20:03 · Score: 1

maybe you should be suggesting to them how it should be rather than insulting them.

My point is that I shouldn't have to do this. There are UI design guides out there for any OS you care to mention: Linux, OSX, Windows.

I don't mind learning how to use the software. I do object when I have to learn how to use a scroll bar all over again just to use the software.

--
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
Re:I like this guy, but... by Malcontent · 2003-01-24 20:12 · Score: 1

"We're not going to get a next-generation UI from Joe Engineer, whose idea of innovation is a widget cool enough for Microsoft to steal."

Bullshit. Most innovations come from Joe Engineers.

"The next-generation UI is going to come from UI experts"

Did the windows paradign come from UI experts? No it came from engineers.

"It's going to come from the people who reward me for the knowledge I've already accumulated"

No it's going to come from people who don't give a flying fuck about you and what you know. People who care about you will keep making the same old interfaces because they are afraid you are going to throw a snit fit when their new application does not follow the same keyboard shortcuts as your old application and does not look exactly like your old application. How can somebody create a revolutionary UI if they make it look and act exactly like the old one? They can't.

--
War is necrophilia.
Re:I like this guy, but... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 20:49 · Score: 0

Allow me to lay it out real simple for the slow kids in the back of the class here.

"...it's intuitive..."

This means that if you want the window to be full screen, you try typing an 'f' and it works. If you want to advance the video, you try pressing the arrow keys and they do what you would expect them to. Thus, you are using intuition to determine how to use the software, and your intuition is generally correct.
Re:I like this guy, but... by FooBarWidget · 2003-01-24 21:01 · Score: 1

"Why should I have to "get used to it"?"

Simple, because it works better. You may have accustomed to all the nice GUI buttons and menus, but do you realize how slow they are in a media player? I can hit my Right arrow key faster than you can move your mouse and hit the scroll button.
This is fear for change. There is no excuse for that. Unwilling to spend *3 minutes* to get used to a better and faster interface is just laziness.
Re:I like this guy, but... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 21:20 · Score: 0

You're a moron. I'll even use your strained metaphor to exemplify this. Back in the early days of the automobile you used to have to crank the engine to start it. Then automatic starters came out, and people would walk up to cars and spend a few minutes looking for the crank before realising that there wasn't one. Most cars today don't have a manual choke on them either, which used to be common place. There are also at least three popular types of transmission available. If you actually open the hood on your car things get even more interesting. In fact, in a new car you might even have to hunt around for the release for the hood itself. The operation of the lights on a car is not the same across models either. I recently discovered that it is possible to turn off my driving lights be pressing a button on the dash exactly four times. In other cars I have driven you push a knob in to turn off the lights. You mentioned brakes. It turns out there in a randomly chosen automobile it is not entirely clear what engaging the braking system will do. This depends on things like the braking distance of the vehicle, and whether or not you have antilock brakes. Do I need to continue?
Re:I like this guy, but... by ealar+dlanvuli · 2003-01-25 00:09 · Score: 1

uh, Different != Bad means quite literally "Different is not equal to Bad", or alternatively "Different is anything but Bad".

--
I live in a giant bucket.
Re:I like this guy, but... by ronfar · 2003-01-25 02:26 · Score: 1

Hmm... It seems to that if they want a Mac because they need "one mouse click" they'll be disappointed if they use Windows ports. In those cases you really need a regular mouse, unless you enjoy holding down the control button and clicking to emulate a right click. (This is no fun in an FPS where you need to right-click quickly.)

--
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Re:I like this guy, but... by gymbrall · 2003-01-25 03:35 · Score: 1

uh, Different != Bad means quite literally "Different is not equal to Bad", or alternatively "Different is anything but Bad"

No, it means that different does not exist in the subset of bad. That just being different doesn't equate to being bad. The guy I replied to said basically the opposite (i.e. if it is different, it is bad)

In the same vein being a Democrat != Bad, being a Republican != bad, but there are bad Democrats and bad Republicans.

--

Grab a logic bucket and start bailing.
Re:I like this guy, but... by angelsdescent · 2003-01-25 05:04 · Score: 1

I had a good look at this before, and mplayer was the solution I ended up using - pulled it down off their website www.mplayerhq.hu (I think) and installed it with the quicktime, realplayer & windows codecs. ffmpegs libavcodecs and associated it with all video and sound files.

Now click on ANY sound/video file, and hey presto, every time - it works. Brilliantly. Every time.

That's the kind of service and reliability we get from Linux that I love.
Re:I like this guy, but... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-25 05:37 · Score: 0

I don't get it. I use mplayer (and gmplayer - the gtk gui-enabled version). The default "skin" is a basic blue bar,with video title scrolling right to left, a basic cassette-deck style stop, play/pause, forward, back (both slow and fast), playlist button, file open button, and volume dial. All very much standard as far as I'm concerned. Even a balance control. It's visible, stays on top (mostly - clicking the video area brings it up when it isn't), and is even asthetically pleasing.

I still use the keyboard (space, arrows, volume control, etc) because it's easier when in play mode, but it's nice having the gui to help load new videos, set up a playlist to play both CDs of a DivX, etc.

It was easy to install. The only difficulty was the need to put the Win32 libraries in place manually. I recently upgraded my distro, and it was very quick getting to the point where I could play a video:
1. install Slackware 9 beta from CD: 5-10 minutes.
2. install Dropline Gnome2 (dropline-install). After about 1/2 hour while it downloaded and installed the libraries, it was up on the first try)
3. Install mplayer + gtk GUI.
4. put gmp-xv.sh (gmplayer -vo xv "$1") in my Nautilus script folder
5. right-click and watch the video.
6. Have a beer and some popcorn.

Quite easilly done. Not good for joe-sixpack computer owner, but good enough for anybody reading this site.

David Bicking (yeah, I'll eventually get an account)
Re:I like this guy, but... by ealar+dlanvuli · 2003-01-25 06:12 · Score: 1

There is absolutely no value of different that = bad that can evaluate true in the statement different != bad.

Anyway he was negating you, he purpousfully said different = bad because it is.

Use OSX for a while and you will understand, a consistent OS for your entire computer using experience is somewhat like heaven.

--
I live in a giant bucket.
Re:I like this guy, but... by gymbrall · 2003-01-25 16:26 · Score: 1

My original post was purely in response to the horrible way in which njdj attempted to refute a post by Dave_bsr that basically said "just being different doesn't make something bad" by giving an example of how "different can be bad". I believe he did not respond to Dave_bsr's argument, he made an analogy full of holes and potentially based on opinion.

Anyway he was negating you, he purpousfully said different = bad because it is.

Now you want to start arguing emphatically about your opinion?

Use OSX for a while and you will understand, a consistent OS for your entire computer using experience is somewhat like heaven.

Are you THE straw man? I haven't even once commented on user interface consistency and it being good or bad.
Look, if Different == bad, then OSX is bad because some of it is different from OS9. Different is too broad a category to lump totally into the category of bad. Different is how innovation happens. It's different once, and then if it's good, it becomes the standard. Dave_bsr didn't say that different can't be a mistake (bad), he said difference in and of itseld does not mean something is bad. If you disagree with that, then give me something to back it up. Explain to me how you have never enjoyed or appreciated or thought that a change to a user interface was good.
Re:I like this guy, but... by seanellis · 2003-01-25 23:26 · Score: 1

The nice GUI buttons and controls are there for a reason. I have no problem learning an interface to a product - I do have a problem learning how to use and identify user interface *elements*.

That's what skinning buys you - a half-hour hunt for the "open file" widget. Skinning adds no functionality, and obscures what functionality is already present.

--
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
Re:I like this guy, but... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-25 23:55 · Score: 0

Don't you think 20 years of the same interface is enough?
I agree, let's rename all the common bash-commands. "grep" is too long, let's change it to "g", and "ls" is used so often that we can just change it to "l". "cd" to "c".
Re:I like this guy, but... by FooBarWidget · 2003-01-26 00:19 · Score: 1

[quote]The nice GUI buttons and controls are there for a reason. I have no problem learning an interface to a product - I do have a problem learning how to use and identify user interface *elements*.[/quote]

There are no UI elements if you compile MPlayer without a GUI. What's left is the simplest UI possible: a window with the video inside. No buttons, no menus, only what REALLY matters: the video.
Controlling the UI is extremely easy to learn AND to use: use your arrow keys to fast forward/backward, q to quit and f for fullscreen. And that's it! No weird custom widgets, no weird file selectors, just a simple, fast UI.
I've installed Linux at my friend's computer. He's by no means a guru (he can't even install Windows). After he tried MPlayer a while, he loved it, *because* it's keyboard-driven.

Sorry, but after having used MPlayer for quite some time now, I will *never* use any GUI video player again. Using the keyboard is just faster and better, AND easy to learn. I will gladly reboot to Linux just to watch videos.

And about skins: argue what you want, but consumers want skins because it's "cool". They don't care about your definition of usability, they want things to look "cool". People love skins, there's nothing we can do about that. If you create a media player using standard controls, you will satisfy that small minority that demands every single pixel is consistent, but it will never become mainstream for the sole reason that it is not skinnable.
Re:I like this guy, but... by ealar+dlanvuli · 2003-01-26 14:31 · Score: 1

I'm sorry, we were talking about applications with independant skining abilities?

I cannot see how this does *not* breed interface inconsistancy.

I will agree I'm using straw men, but that's because this seems mostly obvious to me. If you honestly disagree I'll write a real post in your reply to this.

--
I live in a giant bucket.
Re:I like this guy, but... by gymbrall · 2003-01-26 15:27 · Score: 1

I should apologize a bit, I'm being ruder than normal.

As for the topic I'm posting on, I'm haven't been commenting at all about whether the skinning of apps causes problems (I think it can and does) or about consistency (which I applaud), I was totally focusing on the fact that njdj didn't respond to whatshisname's post but instead used a straw man and a horrible analogy to attack him. That's all. Period. I think the phrase Different != bad is true. It's general a statement to be the any other way.

I do appreciate you responding consistently, most people quit after a post or two, and I have enjoyed the discussion very much.

I am posting this in haste, please excuse typos and errors.
Re:I like this guy, but... by talesout · 2003-01-27 05:05 · Score: 1

I think you've got that backwards. Windows does come with a DVD player. It's built into that Windows Media Player on every computer I've ever seen with WinXP and a DVD drive. However, I have yet to see a Linux system with a DVD player that works. You neglected to mention that on any and ever system with mplayer you still have to dowload and compile LibDeCss and some four thosand other dependencies, all of which conflict with half of the existing system. Unless you magically transported yourself into some future time where Linux always works out of the box.
Believe it or not, I'm a Linux supporter. But I'm not gonna lie about how difficult it is to get DVD playback on Linux. It hasn't ever worked for me, on either of my DVD enabled systems. I've tried Red Hat, Debian, and SuSE. Nadda. BTW, I've never seen anyone, anywhere, claim that simply typing mplayer with a flag will make it play DVDs. Especially without some huge string of library downloads. And even if that did work, how would anyone know that? It isn't exactly advertised. Google a little bit and all you find is about seventy different projects attempting to get DVD on Linux working, but none past the early, "This'll work if you plug your dick into a light socket, stand on three toes, hold your hand against your crotch and scream at a precise wavelength during the full moon on the seventh sunday of the New Year" stage.

--

Bite my yammer.
Re:I like this guy, but... by Belgand · 2003-01-28 17:11 · Score: 1

But what about the thousands of people who played games back in the days when if you wanted to game you used DOS? How many people posting here learned a damn good bit about their system by making boot disks, adjusting memory managers, editing config.sys and autoexec.bat and messing about with drivers and hardware? What about the people who just learned enough to type in "a: , install, cd c:\games\doom , doom"?

It may be in vogue to bash anything command line, but face it, at one time people used it all the time, tons of college students used it (in this case often Pine) as recently as 3 years ago on a regular basis. The problem isn't that it's hard to learn, it's that end users have gotten lazy and refuse to learn or do even the slightest thing that they've become convinced is hard, even if they did it every day a few years ago without any problem at all. This isn't replacing your mule with a tractor and commenting on the savings in labor, it's typing a few words.

Who is JWZ by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:06 · Score: 1, Interesting

And why should I care what he thinks?

Re:Who is JWZ by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:16 · Score: 2, Informative

JWZ is largely responsible for the existance of XEmacs and Mozilla.
Re:Who is JWZ by jedidiah · 2003-01-24 05:26 · Score: 2, Funny

Why should I care again?

--
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Re:Who is JWZ by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:28 · Score: 0

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
And here I always took great satisfaction that I never took part in the firebombing of Dreseden!
Re:Who is JWZ by arose · 2003-01-24 05:56 · Score: 2, Funny

Yeah, themes on mozilla are much better then mplayer's. END SARCASM

--
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Re:Who is JWZ by Craig+Davison · 2003-01-24 06:18 · Score: 1

He was only involved with Mozilla for about a year. But you're right that he helped get the project moving. He was a Netscape employee for years, and had a hand in Netscape up to version 3.x. He's probably personally responsible for the UNIX version of Netscape 1.x.

He also helped write Lucid Emacs, which became XEmacs. Some XEmacs/Emacs flamewars have started from time to time. XEmacs really is better when you're in X, but I personally use vi.

JWZ is also very intelligent and has some good rants. Maybe he gets a bit whiny at times though.

--
Hands in my pocket
Re:Who is JWZ by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:34 · Score: 0

Before anyone comments negatively on these 2 programs, I wanted to mention this:

Yes, XEmacs is a steaming pile of shit, but it is not JWZ's fault. The "X" in XEmacs is good, but there is no covering up the fact that the "Emacs" part sucks. Again not JWZ's fault but the underlying emacs is a bloated piece of shit.
Re:Who is JWZ by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 07:38 · Score: 0

Why should I care again?

It's entirely optional. What made you think you had to?
Re:Who is JWZ by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 07:53 · Score: 0

And Billy G of Redmond is largely responsible for the existence of M$ BASIC (which isn't that shoddy really), but that doesn't mean that we should listen to just any rubbish he spouts!
Re:Who is JWZ by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 09:01 · Score: 0

He used to work for Netscape. At one point, he was sorta "in" and knew what he was talking about then.

Now, he doesn't contribute much and rants. Apparently, he still uses a computer, that which I was somewhat surprised.

In this particular rant, he could simply go and improve the code. Or get another OS. And then write a constructive argument.

In yet another perspective, he's the Theo of the Linux world. Except while Theo de Raadt has massively improved his disposition (although many would debate that, but you haven't watched for 6+ years), JWZ's disposition just gets crankier.

Oh, and he used most of the money generated from the internet bubble for true marxist liberal contributions to society, namely that of improving San Francisco's nightlife/clubbing scene (heh heh, clubbing scene, heh heh). There was a /. article about this awhile back. He probably likes his Willie...that being San Fran's mayor.

And another oh, he is pro anti-Segway in San Francisco. He doesn't like new technology anymore, esp. that which uses less energy that a car but has the convenience of a bike without the effort.

He's one of those folks that makes California to the US sound like the Quebec of Canada.

More? Let me know.
Re:Who is JWZ by fault0 · 2003-01-24 09:47 · Score: 1

While at Netscape, he also invented the blink tag.

> Maybe he gets a bit whiny at times though.

Understatement at best.
Re:Who is JWZ by jedidiah · 2003-01-24 12:27 · Score: 1

should != have

--
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Re:Who is JWZ by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 12:37 · Score: 0

Anyone who is responsible for XEmacs has no business complaining about interfaces, arcane commands and nonintuitve keystrokes. Someone tell this dude his glass house is in shambles.
Re:Who is JWZ by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 16:05 · Score: 0

See, this just doesn't make me like this guy - themes in mozilla are shit.

And i've always wanted to *itch slap the moron that came up with the idea of the blink tag.
Re:Who is JWZ by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 17:13 · Score: 0

ROFL

It's funny because it's true.

This guy is way off base by bailout911 · 2003-01-24 05:06 · Score: 1, Insightful

So if I write a huge flame about the state of something in Linux, can I get it posted to Slashdot too? So let's see, he tried mplayer, hates the skinnable interface, tries gstreamer (under heavy development) and is pissed because it requires gnome2? Then he goes off on a rant about apt for RPM which he thinks will install 2 different packaging systems on his machine?

Give me a break, I've seen better "articles" posted in most message boards. Video playback works just fine on most new distributions (read NOT Red Hat 7.2). This has to be one of the worst articles ever posted to slashdot. We'll probably see it again next week.

--
--Stupid Sig Here--

Re:This guy is way off base by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:09 · Score: 2, Informative

So if I write a huge flame about the state of something in Linux, can I get it posted to Slashdot too?

Short answer: No, you don't matter. You're a politician, not a coder.

Long answer: If you wrote the original version of XEmacs and a little program called "Netscape", then people might listen to your opinions.
Re:This guy is way off base by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:15 · Score: 5, Insightful

Firstly I don't believe that he wrote this intending for it to be posted to Slashdot: It'd likely be much more politically correct if it were. Having said that, you are not JWZ (nor am I)--The guy was one of the primary developers at Netscape, was a major impetus in getting Mozilla up and going, and then flamed out of Netscape when the suits/AOL took over. You don't have to respect his opinion, but realize that a lot of people do give it credence because he has proven himself in the industry.

The primary point that he seems to be making is what a lot of people feel about Linux/open source: This isn't a hobby for me, so what's the point? For someone for whom it's a hobby, using a command line with reams of intricate command line options is a very reasonable option, but for someone who it isn't they want a clean and clear interface that affords usage in obvious ways (for a media player that of course is for VCR like functionality).
Re:This guy is way off base by Rayban · 2003-01-24 05:22 · Score: 1, Insightful

Short answer: No, you don't matter. You're a politician, not a coder.
Long answer: If you wrote the original version of XEmacs and a little program called "Netscape", then people might listen to your opinions.
Just because he was involved in the creation of a number of old applications doesn't give him the right to trash developers of applications that aren't quite as old yet.
I'm sure he loved hearing about the quality of his apps while they were in development by guys who had written CLI editors ten years back. It's really productive isn't it?

--
æeee!
Re:This guy is way off base by 0xdeadbeef · 2003-01-24 05:26 · Score: 1

Actually, it does, when those applications suck.
Re:This guy is way off base by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:32 · Score: 1, Interesting

If it isn't a hobby then use windows, or mac. I appreciate what he's done for the community, for the industry so I'm leaving him out of the discussion totally.

But there is a simple rule I like to stick to in life. If you do something and it causes you pain then DON"T DO IT. I'm quite quite happy with my computing life (I don't use windows, I don't use mac, I use openbsd, freebsd, various Linux distros (yoper currently). I enjoy using them, if I find a project or distro I don't like or I don't like the way its set up.....I DON"T USE IT.

It fixes a variety of things if people stick to this philosophy. First projects that are lacking in whatever way either make themselves better to draw more attention, or fade away (beneficial on all counts). Second less time is wasted complaining about things and more time is spent coding. Third I don't waste my time either.

In summary, can I play every video format I want to play on linux without taking endless hours to do so, I'm happy. Thank you and sorry for wasting space on a good web page stating the obvious.
Re:This guy is way off base by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:34 · Score: 0

So if I write a huge flame about the state of something in Linux, can I get it posted to Slashdot too? ... Give me a break, I've seen better "articles" posted in most message boards.

First: this was, originally, a message board posting.

And if you're upset that this is on slashdot, complain about the slashdot editors who let it through. jwz was just ranting. He didn't ask to be slashdotted; he'd probably prefer it if everybody on slashdot left him the fuck alone.

Geez, get a life.
Re:This guy is way off base by Junks+Jerzey · 2003-01-24 05:40 · Score: 2, Informative

So if I write a huge flame about the state of something in Linux, can I get it posted to Slashdot too?

JWZ is a long-time UNIX/Linux guru. He's not some AOL goofball. He's been around long enough, and has proven himself enough, that he's worth listening to, even if he does say "fucktard." Criticism from the inside is very valuable. It keeps you from becoming delusional.
Re:This guy is way off base by Waffle+Iron · 2003-01-24 05:40 · Score: 5, Funny

>>> they want a clean and clear interface that affords usage in obvious ways >>> (for a media player that of course is for VCR like functionality). Here's your VCR functionality user interface: #!/usr/bin/python import curses, curses.wrapper def vcr(scr): scr.addstr('12:00', curses.A_BLINK) scr.refresh() raw_input('') curses.wrapper(vcr) :)
Re:This guy is way off base by Anonvmous+Coward · 2003-01-24 05:46 · Score: 4, Insightful

"The primary point that he seems to be making is what a lot of people feel about Linux/open source: This isn't a hobby for me, so what's the point? For someone for whom it's a hobby, using a command line with reams of intricate command line options is a very reasonable option, but for someone who it isn't they want a clean and clear interface that affords usage in obvious ways (for a media player that of course is for VCR like functionality)."

Now you all understand where Windows users come from. A little bit of instability is a small price to pay for an interface that does what you expect.
Re:This guy is way off base by bailout911 · 2003-01-24 05:53 · Score: 1

Oh, that's right. Anyone who is referred to on Slashdot by their initials is probably a god around here. Excuse me if I don't bow down and worship the man who wrote XEmacs and Netscape. He may be a great coder and an all-around-good-guy, but that doesn't make his review of video on linux suck any less.

--
--Stupid Sig Here--
Re:This guy is way off base by maitkin · 2003-01-24 05:54 · Score: 1

I am not an alt.fan.jwz by any means, but this article definitely touches on some serious truths about the current state of linux software efforts.

Dispense with the skins (ugh!), focus on speed, intuitive usability, small resource footprint, etc. etc. Principles which are (were?) intrinsic to Linux itself.

-mwa-
Re:This guy is way off base by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:00 · Score: 0

Just because he was involved in the creation of a number of old applications doesn't give him the right to trash developers of applications that aren't quite as old yet.

When you've written anything even approaching the same sort of complexity as XEmacs or Netscape, give us all a call and we'll be impressed with what you think.

I'm sure he loved hearing about the quality of his apps while they were in development by guys who had written CLI editors ten years back.

Of course he would, dumbass. Its called criticism, and when it is thought out, it is constructive. People who have done something know about all the little pitfalls and fuckups that you can do, and they're perfectly placed to tell you about them so you do not make the same mistakes as they did.

It's really productive isn't it?

More productive than you'll ever be.
Re:This guy is way off base by arose · 2003-01-24 06:00 · Score: 2, Insightful

So when he bloody flames it's still good. But when RMS (GNU Emacs, GCC and the whole GNU thing, if I have to remind you) writes a good article half of /. flames him...

--
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Re:This guy is way off base by On+Lawn · 2003-01-24 06:04 · Score: 5, Insightful

I agree. The importance of "JWZ" is lost withough knowing a few of his choice quotes...

"Unix sucks. I use it becuase it sucks less then everything else."

and

"Linux is free only if you do not value your time".

He's an edgy glass-half-empty sort. I like his reading and commentary personally, and think its dead on. But I have never let it deture me from anything, he's just wired to compain about things.
Re:This guy is way off base by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:14 · Score: 0

Yes. JWZ's comments make sense (at least, in this case). RMS's in general do not. You'll see this theme continually: people say things are good when they agree with them, and bad when they don't, regardless of the author.
Re:This guy is way off base by dattaway · 2003-01-24 06:16 · Score: 1

To you, his opinions might suck. I've been using Linux exclusively for several years and I strongly agree with JWZ. I encounter the same problems he does.

He's raising awareness about usability issues that are also echoed by others I see who try to use my favorite operating system. Its my opinion that comments and critism are perhaps the most valuable reward a person can get. Feedback may be a great motivator for us to work for the best possible solutions.
Re:This guy is way off base by Dave_bsr · 2003-01-24 06:30 · Score: 0, Troll

Actually windows users use windows, most of the time, because that's whats on the computer when they get it. i've dealt with the whole spectrum of users, from powerful, capable people to the guy who says "it's broken@!!!" when he tries to dialup while calling me on the phone. Most of these guys don't know about linux, or that windows != computer.

In my book, a good interface means that the video player doesn't crash when you press Fast-Forward, it plays all video files, and doesn't send usage statistics back to The Man.

Stability. Simple, basic interface. Plays all media files. GUI if you want it. Easy to learn, given a few minutes.

Hmm...sounds like mplayer...

--

Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
Re:This guy is way off base by Maltranar · 2003-01-24 06:33 · Score: 1

He was one of the major developpers of an application that when released, the code base had to basically be scrapped because it sucked. He was a major developper of Mozilla? The web browser that Apple didn't want to use because it was too bloated?

And he's bitching at others because he perceives their products as bad? Talk about calling the kettle black.
Re:This guy is way off base by Dave_bsr · 2003-01-24 06:34 · Score: 1

hmmm...speed - mplayer is very fast.

No skins- check.

intuitive usability: left, right, spacebar, q, f - that's all the important keys.

small resource footprint. yup. mplayer is smaller than vi...well almost. Vim for sure... : )

--

Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
Re:This guy is way off base by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:36 · Score: 0

Ah, Open Source. Will you never cease your half-assed hackery? If the answer is no, Microsoft has nothing to worry about.

You, bailout911 are exactly the problem. Your first reaction is to say "but it works". And then you go and do what you want to do and ignore the fact that some guy has correctly identified major problems.

I have a theory on why Linux video and other things are the way they are. People who enjoy writing this stuff rarely also enjoy carefully planning its aesthetics and usability. Therefore once the functionality is taken care of it is considered finished. There is nobody making enough money to pay a design team to craft an interface or a bunch of programmers to do the often-boring job of making it work just like the spec says. So while free apps might be just as capable as RealPlayer or Windows Media Player most people would never know that because they're so butt-ugly and the features are so well-hidden.

Would a video professional, or even someone just wanting to watch pr0n clips really be interested in learning to use one of these apps? Or maybe they'd rather use something that works. Like Windows or MacOS X.
Re:This guy is way off base by Trepalium · 2003-01-24 06:37 · Score: 5, Insightful

Except he's right. Video players on Linux do suck. The only real problem is, the brain damage isn't limited to Linux. Virtually every operating system is overrun by these monstrosities of application skinning. The blame probably should lay squarely on WinAMP, which pretty much pioneered the idea of skinning media applications. Everyone's doing it. Everyone from Apple and their Quicktime software, to Microsoft and their Media Player software are doing it. Is it any wonder that Linux developers are doing it, too?
Apple, above all else, should know better, but instead cave into customer demand, and produced Quicktime Player, with an interface that is neither uniform or intuitive. Older versions of Quicktime were not pleasant to use on Windows, but at least they didn't have these disgusting custom widgets.
Then there's Microsoft Media Player. The last useful version was 6.4, which still had a sane, native interface. 7, 8 and 9 all share the 'skinned html' interface, which is difficult to use and slow. Microsoft's only solution to this was to provide a skin that provides poor emulation of the old 6.4 features with non-functional menus and permanently stuck in the extended mode instead of compact.
Real has never been immune to the influence, with even early versions of RealPlayer using custom widgets. Things only got worse with the release of RealOne. Need I say more?
Now, there are applications for Linux, Windows, etc, that do have a decent interface. I'm sure old versions of Quicktime were great to use on MacOS, although they have always been a little cumbersome on Windows because of the menu issue. Windows Media Player 6.4 has served me well for some time when I'm using Microsoft Windows. I liked using XMPS (gnome user interface) on Linux until it stopped being developed. VLC doesn't have a terrible UI, but it doesn't have a great one either.
Perhaps it's just easier to make a pretty bitmap with clickable portions that developing a real usable UI for media applications? Perhaps there's something special about media players that make them immune to normal UI development research? Or have we just become so accustomed to the status quo, that we don't expect any different?

--
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Re:This guy is way off base by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:37 · Score: 0

The guy was one of the primary developers at Netscape, was a major impetus in getting Mozilla up and going, and then flamed out of Netscape when the suits/AOL took over.

So, what are you saying? That that is a lifetime-license to act like an asshole? Remind me again where that is written....

I don't work on any of these projects, but bitchy rants based entirely on first impressions aren't worth reading, from anyone.
Re:This guy is way off base by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:42 · Score: 0

Of course he would, dumbass. Its called criticism, and when it is thought out, it is constructive. People who have done something know about all the little pitfalls and fuckups that you can do, and they're perfectly placed to tell you about them so you do not make the same mistakes as they did.

Yeah, fucktard is some great constructive criticism! I don't see any suggestions about solutions, just some impatient jerk. I know what software he's written and I don't care. If he is such a great programmer, why didn't he fix it himself? He was too pissed off since he hasn't had any action since he wrote emacs!! I fully understand trying to write a review on the current video capabilities on Linux, but he really isn't helping anyone.
Re:This guy is way off base by BlackHawk-666 · 2003-01-24 06:42 · Score: 1

That little bit of instability is exactly what I expect from my Windows OS, maybe I should add some more expectations now too ;-)

--
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Re:This guy is way off base by Rayban · 2003-01-24 06:44 · Score: 1

Besides the fact that you have no knowledge of the projects I have worked on, your ad hominim attack is weak to begin with. If I were to have worked on no projects of value, this would

If you don't know what this is, refer to this site that explains this fallacy: here.

My point should have been written like this:

"I'm sure he loved hearing about the quality of his apps while they were in development by guys who had written CLI editors ten years back if they made their points by trashing him in public forums."

More productive than you'll ever be.

You're attacking my point that negative criticism is not productive by saying that I'm not productive? How does my lack of productivity affect this point? Please see this part of the ad hominim page:

ad hominem (circumstantial): instead of attacking an assertion the author points to the relationship between the person making the assertion and the person's circumstances.

Please attack my points and not me. I'm interested in what you have to say, but I don't care what you think about me as a person.

--
æeee!
Re:This guy is way off base by HamNRye · 2003-01-24 06:55 · Score: 1

Ummm, did he miss the point of Linux?? If you don't like it, fix it. I'm sure for someone of his skill, he could have fixed many of these horrific UI examples in the time it took him to rant about it. Someone else has done the hard work, making the movie playback work, he can't do a little interface work??

Honestly, how will linux ever achieve usability when the people who are angry about it would rather criticize that construct. There are three type of people: those who complain somethings broken and those who fix things when they're broken.

P.S. If this joker wrote XEmacs, he has no room to criticize anyone. Talk about crappy UI's....
Re:This guy is way off base by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 07:24 · Score: 0

Then maybe you should upgrade to Win2k or WinXP.
Re:This guy is way off base by Master+of+Transhuman · 2003-01-24 07:27 · Score: 1

-The blame probably should lay squarely on
-WinAMP, which pretty much pioneered the idea of
-skinning media

Absolutely! I do not understand why some idiots thought that making a program look like a badly-designed media appliance was an advance in usability! Programmers should read a text like "Why Things Don't Work" or "Design For the Real World", before they get cute.

Fortunately, a little help for Winamp is available by running Jukebox for Winamp which has a slightly better interface - at least the fonts and icons are big so you can see them. And you can access the underlying Winamp if you need to. I much preferred MusicMatch Jukebox to Winamp, initially, despite the spyware and Registry abuse, but thanks to Jukebox for Winamp I could ditch MusicMatch and get something that makes Winamp at least marginally usable.

--
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Re:This guy is way off base by fitten · 2003-01-24 07:34 · Score: 1

bailout911 says:
Video playback works just fine on most new distributions (read NOT Red Hat 7.2).

From the article:
By the way, the suggestion to switch Linux distrubutions in order to get a single app to work might sound absurd at first. And that's because it is (http://www.jwz.org/doc/linux.html). But I've been saturated with Unix-peanut-gallery effluvia for so long that it no longer even surprises me when every question -- no matter how simple -- results in someone suggesting that you either A) patch your kernel or B) change distros. It's inevitable and inescapable, like Hitler.
Re:This guy is way off base by Junks+Jerzey · 2003-01-24 07:43 · Score: 1

Ummm, did he miss the point of Linux?? If you don't like it, fix it.

That better not be the point of Linux. Provide crap and let the user fix it? If it is, good riddance.

P.S. If this joker wrote XEmacs, he has no room to criticize anyone. Talk about crappy UI's....

True.
Re:This guy is way off base by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 07:58 · Score: 0

This is so true. Programmers DO NOT understand usability. They think they do, but just look at there work. Usability is as big a field as programming, and programmers are amateurs.
Re:This guy is way off base by Anonvmous+Coward · 2003-01-24 08:01 · Score: 1

"Then maybe you should upgrade to Win2k or WinXP."

I wish either of these OS's had come out instead of Windows 9x. Windows 95/98/ME is/are total garbage. Windows 2000/XP, though, is considerably different a MUCH more stable and reliable.

I wish the /. community was a little more informed about that. I bet you anything the pro Windows people here are talking specifically about the NT based OS's.
Re:This guy is way off base by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 08:15 · Score: 0

I don't care WHO the fuck you are, if your opinions are based on rock-stupid information and you present them in the worst possible manner (read INCOMPLETE and SHITTILY WRITTEN) ...

then YOU don't matter, so why should we give a shit about your opinions?
Re:This guy is way off base by Panoramix · 2003-01-24 08:42 · Score: 1

Actually windows users use windows, most of the time, because that's whats on the computer when they get it. i've dealt with the whole spectrum of users, from powerful, capable people to the guy who says "it's broken@!!!" when he tries to dialup while calling me on the phone. Most of these guys don't know about linux, or that windows != computer.

I would say, if I may, that at this point the Windows dependency is more complex and serious than that. It is not only that Windows was the OS installed on Joe's computer, but that it is also the OS installed in all the computers he has ever had, or used, in his entire life. Windows is the only way of interacting with a computer that the vast majority of people knows of. My point is that if he could get a machine with Linux preinstalled, it is quite likely that he would go out of his way to replace it with Windows, because that is what he knows and feels comfortable with.

There's a little cyber-cafe in Mexico City's airport, that has some four or five Macs, and one Windows computer. I've seen people queue up to use the Windows box, instead of just sitting at a Macintosh and firing Internet Explorer to get their HotMail.

IMO, the only chance that Linux has for taking over the desktop is emulating Windows so well that it becomes indistinguishable from it. Which is why I'm fairly against the common notion that Linux should strive to replace Windows: that would make Linux, well, suck. My very personal opinion is that Linux GUI developers should focus in something actually better than Windows (say, put a lot of work on GNUstep, or Berlin, that kind of stuff, instead of pushing Gnome or KDE to become the best Windows clones they can be). Make that as bullet-proof as the core OS is, focus on the needs of the young (say games and edu software), and the next generation of users will switch, if that stuff is good enough. The current generation is completely lost.

Stability. Simple, basic interface. Plays all media files. GUI if you want it. Easy to learn, given a few minutes.

Hmm...sounds like mplayer...

Just as an example of my point, mplayer crashes on me more often than it should. I mean, it has crashed at least twice in the three months or so that I've been using it. Compared to, say, Postfix or Apache, two crashes in three months is kind of a poor record (not that I'm saying that there's a better piece of multimedia software that I know of, for Linux).
Re:This guy is way off base by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 08:44 · Score: 0

JWZ is fine. But: Netscape sucked. It sucked because it was made in a death march. JWZ documented this. Then, when given a chance to make Mozilla, he left, why? Because OSS doesn't have the discipline for a death march... progress was not up to his speed standards --- the standards that made Netscape the Program suck. Hello? He is the type that complains about the death march, and about the fact that you won't go on one, feels great about the money he got from the IPO because of the death march (the IPO wouldn't have waited for Mozilla-Time), and now he runs a night-club with that money and feels quite deserving because he made software badly, on a good schedule.

Hmmmm. No, I don't think he proved himself in an industry. Quite the opposite. Netscape BURNED HIM OUT, and he blamed Mozilla!

He should be using a Mac. No doubt.
Re:This guy is way off base by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 08:55 · Score: 0

When I finally got a few hours to spare I decided to try to get my DVD playback to work properly. After 8 hours - I had managed to compile and run xine with decss. This ordeal included jumping around onto various sites downloading snippets of code that needed to be compiled - no packaging, crap documentation etc etc. And what did it get me? - a player that displayed crap quality. It was jerky and the gui was crap. This took me roughly 8 hours (including reading up on the alternatives etc.). This IS pathetic. Whenever some windows user ask me about dvd playback under Linux I usually feel that I have to be honest. If you feel that you NEED DVD playback - then Linux is probably not right for you. I'm a relatively experienced Linux user (have used it since 95). I just bought a laptop. I chose a cd burner instead of a DVD reader since I know I will never use dvd playback under linux.
The status of movies/dvd support etc. is completely pathetic in the Linux universe. Thats the honest truth.
Re:This guy is way off base by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 09:26 · Score: 0

You don't have to respect his opinion, but realize that a lot of people do give it credence because he has proven himself in the industry.

There are others who have also "proven" themselves, but that doesn't mean that everybody needs to bow to their every word (RMS, ESR - OK I may be streching it with him). There is such a thing as being clear/concise without throwing a hissy fit.
Re:This guy is way off base by dattaway · 2003-01-24 10:17 · Score: 1

I use gentoo. Here's my experience with playing DVD's. xine wanted to install too many useless packages and wanted to patch the kernel(!) for ir support? So I settled for mplayer, "emerge mplayer" and several minutes later I was watching my DVD from Blockbuster with the command "mplayer -dvd 1" The only problem was, it was in French. After the first half an hour of trying to grok French, I discovered the "-alang en" option so I could hear everything in English. The performance was flawless. No GUI, but I'm sure a front end will make an appearance soon.
Re:This guy is way off base by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 11:43 · Score: 0

JFC!!!
That is Hilarious!!! :)
+100
Re:This guy is way off base by khuber · 2003-01-24 11:47 · Score: 1

Haven't you noticed that a ton of Linux programs are always "under development" and partially functioning? Linux has a half dozen or more crappy half-working video players. Currently I am using mplayer and that seems to have the best all around support, though apparently not for layer 1 audio (let me know if there's a way to do it). I had to build mplayer from CVS and do some goofy non user-friendly stuff to get support for other codecs (move a directory from ffmpeg, that is just goofy). At one point you had to build part of Wine for the Sorenson codec.
Jamie said what he tried and what he didn't like, which is a lot more than you've offered (a childish write-off with no counter argument). Yes he's inflammatory but it's his own damned web page, not Linux Video Review Monthly. Maybe you could post what you recommend instead of inane flames next time.
-Kevin
Re:This guy is way off base by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 12:24 · Score: 0

Just because he was involved in the creation of a number of old applications doesn't give him the right to trash developers of applications that aren't quite as old yet.
This statement is technically correct, but only because everybody has the right to trash crappy applications; JWZ's right to do so has nothing to do with the fact that he's written good, useful software himself.
Re:This guy is way off base by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 12:30 · Score: 0

I'm sure for someone of his skill, he could have fixed many of these horrific UI examples in the time it took him to rant about it. Someone else has done the hard work, making the movie playback work, he can't do a little interface work??
If you really believe it's that easy to jump into an unfamiliar codebase and start making changes, you've never done any real programming in your life.
Incidentally, the tendency to call the low-level stuff "the hard work" and thus blow off UI in comparison is one of the major reasons that Linux UIs generally suck.
Re:This guy is way off base by jackbox · 2003-01-24 12:39 · Score: 1

It's a damn shame BeOS died. I played with BeOS 4.x (4.5?) a few years back. I had BeOS installed and displaying 5 full-motion video windows simultaneously on my PII 450... and it took about an hour, including installing the OS and browsing around a bit. It was effortless. It was cool.

That's the functional model Linux should be trying to imitate if it's going to imitate anything.
Re:This guy is way off base by dvdeug · 2003-01-24 12:51 · Score: 1

Now you all understand where Windows users come from. A little bit of instability is a small price to pay for an interface that does what you expect.

Someone can actually understand Windows well enough to anticipate what it's going to do? Wow!

I understand your point; and it doesn't help that I only use Windows on others' systems; but I often can't figure out what Windows is going to do, besides assuming it's just going to do the most perverse, inconsistent thing in this situation. I use Unix because it almost always does what I would expect, promptly and quietly.
Re:This guy is way off base by Afrosheen · 2003-01-24 16:25 · Score: 1

I'll risk offtopicness to respond to this..with excellent karma, I can risk it.

While some may consider win2k/xp a quantum leap from win9x/me, you need to think about one thing: disaster recovery. With the older series of Windows, if something went batshit, 9 times out of 10 you could coax it into safe mode or make some repairs by booting from a win98 or dos boot disk. These days you're practically fucked if you have a major problem with xp or 2k. Please don't mention the worthless recovery console, it takes a manual 100 pages long to accomplish anything with it, and heaps of cryptic commands. It's not as simple as booting from a floppy, editing a file or deleting/copying/moving something and rebooting. I guess with progress comes complexity.

Case in point: winxp on my dual boot machine. Upgraded motherboard and processor, plugged the ide cables in for all the drives in the same order. Result? Linux booted, Winxp completely lost it's mind, an instant bluescreen followed by an instant reboot. The BSOD was so fast that it was literally 1 frame for .005 seconds. I didn't even get a chance to work on it. I ended up doing myself a favor and converting those wasted partitions into linux partitions. Winxp was just there for me to toy with once a week...and now it's gone. No tears, just a smile. :)
Re:This guy is way off base by Anonvmous+Coward · 2003-01-24 16:46 · Score: 1

I think you bring up a valid point. Linux is definitely more worthwhile there. I can't say I share that experience with you.

Granted, most of my experience is with 2k. I recently bought a laptop that came with XP. It's not bad, but I don't trust it right now. Most of my company uses Win2k, and it's my job to fix the machines when they go done. They haven't gone down. The only real work I've done with 2k was migrating people from one machine to another.

As I said, your point is quite valid, but I really haven't had a need to boot from a floppy with Win2k.
Re:This guy is way off base by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 17:17 · Score: 0

Like what? XEmacs is a smoldering pile of shit.
Netscape's unix builds were buggy, bloated. useless garbage. The codebase was so bad they tossed it aside and started from scratch.

OH MY GOD HE WROTE XKEYCAPS!!111
jwz is a retard.
Re:This guy is way off base by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 17:31 · Score: 0

Are you people fucking blind? At 1600x1200 on my 19" monitor I can easily read every piece of text in Winamp.
Re:This guy is way off base by catenos · 2003-01-24 19:22 · Score: 1

but for someone who it isn't they want a clean and clear interface that affords usage in obvious ways (for a media player that of course is for VCR like functionality)
Now you all understand where Windows users come from. A little bit of instability is a small price to pay for an interface that does what you expect.

I grant you this for Microsoft Windows users. They don't know better. But the original poster spoke about clean and clear interfaces, and I can tell you that not one of my technically non-savvy acquaintances considered the GUI of MS Windows clean and clear when first confronted with it.

Most of them found it very confusing and some of them still do not dare "playing" around, because always "strange, unexpected things" happen.

The UI of recent Linux distros are not that bad anymore. They just differ from what most people know, i.e. Microsoft Windows.

--
Keep an eye on which arguments are silently dropped in replies. Not always, but often times it's very telling.
Re:This guy is way off base by BlackHawk-666 · 2003-01-24 21:29 · Score: 1

Two words: Norton's Ghost
Just make a ghost of your machine when it's all going well, and then if it goes tits up you can completely restore it. You can do this to either a second hard drive, over the network, or over a paralel cable - or even tape if you have it. Ghost rocks! I also use another product that does my Linux partitions (reiser format). Now to feel nice and safe.

--
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Re:This guy is way off base by BlackHawk-666 · 2003-01-24 22:46 · Score: 1

I think you'd have a hard time doing this, since you can't boot NT from a floppy. It's not supported.

--
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Re:This guy is way off base by Anonvmous+Coward · 2003-01-25 09:05 · Score: 1

"The UI of recent Linux distros are not that bad anymore. They just differ from what most people know, i.e. Microsoft Windows."

Both KDE and Gnome, though they are significantly better now, are still inferior to Windows when it comes to UI. (as of Redhat 7.3, I have not used the ones with 8.0, I've heard they're supposed to be better.) It suffers from serious lack of refinement. It's hard to find anything (In KDE, nearly every app begins with K), and I've had no luck doing any real configuration. You still have to use the CLI to change desktop resolution, for example. Installing something is a cruel joke. The RPM Packager thing-a-ma-bob is not a very clear UI, nor is it immediately obvious why you need to go through that. Coming from the Windows world where you use setup.exe and pick where you want your stuff to go, RPM is full of un-necessities.

So no, it's not a matter of 'just being different', there are serious defficiences here that desperately need to be addressed. Microsoft has put a great deal of research effort into making a usable UI. Like or hate it, millions upon millions of people are able to make use of it.
Re:This guy is way off base by catenos · 2003-01-25 10:30 · Score: 1

The UI of recent Linux distros are not that bad anymore. They just differ from what most people know, i.e. Microsoft Windows.
Both KDE and Gnome, though they are significantly better now, are still inferior to Windows when it comes to UI. (as of Redhat 7.3, I have not used the ones with 8.0, I've heard they're supposed to be better.)

Well, that's what recent was about.

It suffers from serious lack of refinement. It's hard to find anything (In KDE, nearly every app begins with K),

I can only speak for Mandrake and Debian, because that's what I regularly use. In Mandrake, there is a menu which let's you choose the application by the task you want to accomplish, not by name. It is not perfect yet, but it's a good start.

and I've had no luck doing any real configuration. You still have to use the CLI to change desktop resolution, for example.

Last time I needed to use the shell for that was several years ago. If Redhat really has no GUI for this, it sucks more than I thought. But it sounds more probable that you are out of date.

Installing something is a cruel joke. The RPM Packager thing-a-ma-bob is not a very clear UI, nor is it immediately obvious why you need to go through that. Coming from the Windows world where you use setup.exe and pick where you want your stuff to go, RPM is full of un-necessities.

I can only tell for Mandrake, but there installing a packet does not involve rpms in any visible way. You simply choose in the GUI the packet to install, it will ask you to insert the CD or it will download it and that's it. No unnecessities involved.

Btw, Windows installer regularly asks question in such a cryptic way, that the uninitiated don't know what the question is about at all (ever hade a code version conflict - it happens regularly with non-English versions).

So no, it's not a matter of 'just being different', [...]

Oh yes, it is. You just proved it yourself. You are obviously coming from a Windows background and comparing to that.

My point was about people who are not used to any OS. I am the "computer guy" here and from the cries for help I get and the misconfiguration people make, I can tell you that Microsoft Windows is a lot more confusing than you admit - for quite some people.

Microsoft has put a great deal of research effort into making a usable UI.

Yes. I never said anything contrary. Microsoft has done a lot to further usability. I just claimed that Linux distros have catched up in recent versions. And that the stuff people still complain about is mostly that it simply does not behave as they are used to. Different. Not more difficult. See?

Like or hate it, millions upon millions of people are able to make use of it.

The amount of users does not imply anything regarding usability, since usability is only one of several reasons to buy software. Microsoft being a monopoly another one amongst others.

--
Keep an eye on which arguments are silently dropped in replies. Not always, but often times it's very telling.
Re:This guy is way off base by Anonvmous+Coward · 2003-01-25 13:16 · Score: 1

"In Mandrake, there is a menu which let's you choose the application by the task you want to accomplish, not by name. It is not perfect yet, but it's a good start."

Cool. I agree, that is a good start.

"If Redhat really has no GUI for this, it sucks more than I thought. But it sounds more probable that you are out of date."

I'm a Linux newb. I have no way of knowing. If other distros are better, that's fine, but that's still a problem in mass adoption of Linux.

"I can tell you that Microsoft Windows is a lot more confusing than you admit - for quite some people."

I support Windows for a living, I don't agree with your comment. I've had a rather easy time talking people over the phone with how to solve a problem. I do not look forward to the day where I have to talk somebody through a command-line problem. If Linux had a stronger UI (like BSD does with Apple's OSX) then all'd be good.

"And that the stuff people still complain about is mostly that it simply does not behave as they are used to. Different. Not more difficult. See?"

If I were unfamiliar with Linux, I'd agree with you and let it drop. But I'm coming fresh from trying to use it. I can make my way around a Mac. If I can do that with a Mac, but not in Linux, then there is something horribly wrong there. I hope it's just a case of Redhat sucking ass. I'm not anti-Linux. I'd love to be using it, but it's painful. I admit some of the pains I've had are from lack of familiarity, but a significant portion of them are coming from lack of access to things I need, or just confusion about getting it to do what I want it to do.

"The amount of users does not imply anything regarding usability, since usability is only one of several reasons to buy software. Microsoft being a monopoly another one amongst others."

Yeah yeah, people always pull the monopoly card. Never mind that people ran out and bought Windows. Never mind that even though the Mac was a success, it was still very pale in comparison to MS's success. No no, everybody got it because it was rammed down their throat.

Sorry, I don't buy that. I've personally watched a number of people pick up Windows and fly around it, doing the things they want to do. These are not technically inclined people, but they've been able to do what they need.

The monopoly agrument is very stale.
Re:This guy is way off base by catenos · 2003-01-25 15:03 · Score: 1

I do not look forward to the day where I have to talk somebody through a command-line problem.

I don't see your point. How is this different from tweaking the registry or having to run ping in the console (what I see Windows users doing here regularly on trouble-shooting)?

I just told you, you have a GUI for most issues with recent distros. Sure, some problems still have no GUI solution, especially if the software is brand new (but end-users shouldn't use alpha software anyhow), but that is the same for Windows, IMNSHO.

[...] The monopoly agrument is very stale.

I expected that rebuttal. That was why I wrote there are several reasons.

I did mention it, because it is a real concern for us. If we could do as we want, we would be a complete Linux/FreeBSD/Mac shop. But half of our desktop computers/notebooks have Microsoft Windows installed solely or as dual boot because we have to.

Every time I suggest Mac or Linux when I install a computer for an aquaintence, I get to hear, they want Windows because that is what everyone uses and that are the computer skills employers ask for. So it may an old argument, but at least for my company and me personally, it is not stale, but going bothering every day.

--
Keep an eye on which arguments are silently dropped in replies. Not always, but often times it's very telling.
Re:This guy is way off base by Anonvmous+Coward · 2003-01-25 17:34 · Score: 1

" How is this different from tweaking the registry or having to run ping in the console (what I see Windows users doing here regularly on trouble- shooting)?"

I've never had to talk anybody through mucking with the registry in Windows. Nearly all the functionality is there via GUI. Can't say the same for KDE or Gnome. I didn't get interested into the GUI until 3 years after I started using Windows.

As for 'ping' on the console: You have one example, for Linux there are quite a bit more because the functionality's only available via CLI.

"I get to hear, they want Windows because that is what everyone uses and that are the computer skills employers ask for. So it may an old argument, but at least for my company and me personally, it is not stale, but going bothering every day."

I understand you're saying.
Re:This guy is way off base by HamNRye · 2003-01-31 05:56 · Score: 1

Then complain about the underlying code. If your UI is so complex that you couldn't dive into in a weekend, there's something wrong with your code. This isn't KDE, this is a 100x50 player bar...

Some of his complaints were on the extremely petty, and were fixes that would have taken a weekend. After that weekend he would have enough grounding in the code to make more improvements. If he spent 40 hours doing it it is still cheaper than buying all of the software in the Windows or Mac world.

I talk of all of this from my own experiences, and I am certantly not as skilled a coder as jwz... But it took me a week to write SCSI support for my Linux 0.71 kernel. That is the history and legacy of Linux, guys who knew going in there would be coding needed just to make it work. Now you asswipes complain that it doesn't work like a Mac or WinXP.

I am just tired of seeing all of these "blessed coders" from the ex-Mac world bitchin when they should pitch in. Anyone can complain, it takes no skill or even thought.

My point about XEmacs still stands. He can't even get a UI right in his own program. So who the fudge cares what he thinks of Linux video players??

jwz is an idiot by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:06 · Score: 0

first of all:
installing apt on redhat DOES NOT COMPETE WITH RPM. apt just grabs packages. if he even took a single goddamn second to read ANYTHING about apt he would find that it COMPLEMENTS rpm much like up2date does.

If you dont like the mplayer gui.... DONT USE IT. set up proper mime types in your preferred desktop environment. voila, no magic keystrokes to remember, just 'double click'.

If the binary package of your software doesnt work, TRY READING THE DOCUMENTATION AND COMPILING YOUR OWN.

you are a moron jwz. you fit slashdot perfectly

Re:JWZ is an idiot by PurpleBob · 2003-01-24 08:46 · Score: 1

And if these programs are really as bad as he says they are, he has every right to make the complaints.

Skins are just kind of dumb. Skins that break the functionality of the interface are an actual bug. And error windows that make your computer entirely unusable are rather sad.

"doesn't want to install the required libs" - This is a bit of a special case when the required libs are GNOME 2. Hell, if I had known that the transition to GNOME 2 would rape my desktop, I wouldn't have done it either. I recently made the transition on Debian, and I had to restore my settings from scratch a few times.

xine could have used a standard file browser instead of making up their own and calling it "MRL Browser" which you get to by clicking on a button labeled "://". How does this not merit the word "fucktard"? (This is so amusingly dumb that I wanted to try installing it myself - but Debian actually refuses to install xine; only gnome-xine, with a reasonably standard interface, is available. Good choice there. I suppose any Debian maintainer who was asked to support xine simply convulsed in a fit of laughter.)

Perhaps this isn't a review of video on Linux. Perhaps it's a review of the way that important programs tend to be written by people who want to say "My interface is l33ter than yours!", wasting the time of the rest of the community who has to clean up their mess.

--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Re:JWZ is an idiot by wdr1 · 2003-01-24 10:36 · Score: 1

Why are you calling jwz idiot? His article was entitled "usablity on linux", which was entirely appropiate. Michael is the fucking moron who posted the story with the dumb-ass title.

-Bill

--
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
Re:JWZ is an idiot by infront314 · 2003-01-24 12:46 · Score: 1

I find it strange that there are no people talking about Avifile. It's a great movie player!
The GUI is not the most beautiful in the world, but it has all the basic controls I need: Open, Pause, Play, Stop and a slider. It also has the option to preserve video aspect ratio when resizing.
Re:JWZ is an idiot by 0x0d0a · 2003-01-24 22:40 · Score: 1

mplayer -- doesn't like the UI
gstreamer -- doesn't want to install the required libs
xine -- doesn't know how to use a file browser (or pass args on the CL)
ogle -- doesn't do what he wants, even though it makes no claims that it does

Let's see how Windows stacks up:
Real Player -- UI *sucks* and is very slow in its latest incarnation, plus has spyware. Tons of *crap* all over -- people who have used it know what I mean. Can't play all types of media.
Quicktime -- Floating menu bar, dumb brushed metal interface, favorites are a bunch of thumbnails (usually black) with a "knob" volume and a "pull out favorites drawer". Can't play all types of media.
Windows Media Player -- enormous set of buttons and other stuff, forming a huge frame around the edge. New look downright blah.
All the Windows DVD players I've seen -- awful, pixmapped interface, usually similar to a VCR.
Sonique -- even worse for finding controls than xine. Way too much glitz cutting into utility.
WinAmp -- same as Sonique, these days.

--
May we never see th

Ok, youre right... by japhar81 · 2003-01-24 05:08 · Score: 0, Insightful

RANT The current state of video on Linux sucks ass. Especially on RH7.2. You dont want to have to patch your kernel or change distros? Ok, I can see that. Don't want to install Gnome2? Hey, it's your decision.

All that said, if you dont like it the way it is, break out your EMacs, and Write something better, otherwise, quit bitching!

Enough of these stupid reviews, you have all the code of these shitty projects. Rewrite the GUI for one. What? You dont feel like it? Then stop bitching.

Developers code this stuff to work how they want, they're sharing it out of the goodness of their hearts (politics and BS aside, they really dont have to, and no one can make them). Be grateful its out there at all, and quit bitching.

/RANT

Re:Ok, youre right... by Nightpaw · 2003-01-24 05:30 · Score: 1

Write something better, otherwise, quit bitching!

What, Netscape isn't good enough for you?
Re:Ok, youre right... by j_kenpo · 2003-01-24 05:32 · Score: 4, Insightful

"All that said, if you dont like it the way it is, break out your EMacs, and Write something better, otherwise, quit bitching!

Enough of these stupid reviews, you have all the code of these shitty projects. Rewrite the GUI for one. What? You dont feel like it? Then stop bitching"

And this, right here, is why its going to be a hard, uphill battle for Linux on the desktop...
Re:Ok, youre right... by overbored · 2003-01-24 05:34 · Score: 1, Insightful

No, no, NO.

Let's put on our thinking caps for a moment. What do you think would happen to your project if you ignored your user base and responded to their complaints with "If you don't like it, write something better. Otherwise, go fuck yourself?" Of the (generously estimated) 20% of your users who have the know-how to hack the code, how many do you think will have the time to even bother?

And don't give me any of that "it's free so quality doesn't matter" crap. If you want your project to enjoy widespread use, you listen to what your users have to say.
Re:Ok, youre right... by binaryDigit · 2003-01-24 05:37 · Score: 2, Insightful

All that said, if you dont like it the way it is, break out your EMacs, and Write something better, otherwise, quit bitching!

I think you're missing the point of HIS rant. In the end, computers (and the apps that run on them) should be tools that allow users to get what they want done done, with as minimal amount of effort required. He is approaching this as a USER of the software. As an OS, Linux suffers when things like this happen to a category of app that is very "common". And the generic "well write it yourself" response is amusing, but in the end, not very productive.

Now his style certainly leaves a lot to be desired, and he does attack the apps (and via association, it's writers) and that is VERY counterproductive, but one can't let his style get in the way of his general message, the state of Linux applications is not where it should be. Yes, it's getting there, but it's NOT there.

Being "greatful its out there at all" is fine for a "tinkerers" OS, not one that is vying to become a "real" OS for the masses (and yes, there are those whose opinion about this differ as well).
Re:Ok, youre right... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:40 · Score: 0

So you mean THIS is the guy responsible for taking Netscape Navigator from the decent browser it was into the crappy 4.7x series? No wonder he can't even figure out what apt is...
Re:Ok, youre right... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:43 · Score: 0

> And this, right here, is why its going to be a
> hard, uphill battle for Linux on the desktop...

POTD, right here, right now.
Re:Ok, youre right... by JWW · 2003-01-24 05:48 · Score: 1

I don't know. Read mplayers FAQ and then watch to see what happens. They have exactly that attitude.

Xine however seems much more user friendly.
Re:Ok, youre right... by Anonvmous+Coward · 2003-01-24 05:50 · Score: 1

"Write something better, otherwise, quit bitching!"

Is this really +4 insightful? Do you really think that if people had the time/motivation/knowledge to write something like that they wouldn't go solve it themselves? Didn't it occur to you that maybe people are bitching because they want the problem fixed but are unable to do it themselves?

I hate comments like these. They're devoid of intellectual thought, but people cheer it on anyway.
Re:Ok, youre right... by Aix · 2003-01-24 05:52 · Score: 2, Insightful

The problem with this attitude is that you can't have it all. If Open Source developers always respond with "Don't like it? Fuck off, write something better!" it will never be anything more than a cult phenonmenon. Here's a little secret: most people aren't software developers. Telling them to "write something better" means nothing. If you really want Open Source and Linux to take off, it is necessary to embrace the wants and needs of users who don't know anything about coding. As something of a side note, too, there is a compromise for Linux: commercial closed-source software that companies actually sell for profit. Then users can make demands and developers actually have an interest in meeting them. Oops, there goes my Slashdot Karma for mentioning commercial software development on Linux ...

--
Nonperiodic Central Trajectory
Re:Ok, youre right... by fritter · 2003-01-24 05:57 · Score: 1

All that said, if you dont like it the way it is, break out your EMacs, and Write something better, otherwise, quit bitching! Enough of these stupid reviews, you have all the code of these shitty projects. Rewrite the GUI for one. What? You dont feel like it? Then stop bitching.

Word for word, this is exactly what I tell my grandma when she tells me Linux is too hard to use! Have you considered a career in quality control?
Re:Ok, youre right... by dinivin · 2003-01-24 05:57 · Score: 1

Didn't it occur to you that maybe people are bitching because they want the problem fixed but are unable to do it themselves?

Then maybe they should thank the developers for the work they've done so far and politely point out ways that their work can be improved, rather then calling the developers fucktard.

I hate comments like these. They're devoid of intellectual thought, but people cheer it on anyway.

As compared to your comment which is devoid of any thought, fucktard?

Dinivin
Re:Ok, youre right... by avdi · 2003-01-24 06:00 · Score: 1

All that said, if you dont like it the way it is, break out your EMacs, and Write something better, otherwise, quit bitching!
I think if had personally written "your Emacs" (XEmacs, in JWZ's case), as well as a number of the most popular UNIX/Linux programs (Netscape, xscreensaver, etc.), you too would be a little sick of having to write your own program whenever you wanted something done right.

--

--
CPAN rules. - Guido van Rossum
Re:Ok, youre right... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:00 · Score: 0

Nope, he was writing it from the beginning.

And even 4.7 netscape is better than any linux app like mplayer. Yuo are delusional.
Re:Ok, youre right... by Anonvmous+Coward · 2003-01-24 06:05 · Score: 1

"Then maybe they should thank the developers for the work they've done so far and politely point out ways that their work can be improved, rather then calling the developers fucktard."

Though I agree he could have been more tactful, it's hard to blame a guy for being upset at a mistake that should have been rectified with a little testing.

"As compared to your comment which is devoid of any thought, fucktard?"

What, didn't find anything interesting in my comment? The fault is yours, not mine. Heh too bad you couldn't take your own advice. That must be embarrasing. :)
Re:Ok, youre right... by TMLink · 2003-01-24 06:06 · Score: 1

And this, right here, is why its going to be a hard, uphill battle for Linux on the desktop...

Does it matter? I thought that most programs were written for Linux because someone wanted to do something that either wasn't possible before, or was a pain in the ass to do before...not to try and advance Linux in whatever use.

Yeah, Linux on the desktop has many stages left to go before it's ready for grandma...but who cares? If people are bothered by some of the clunkyness enough to write something better or make changes to an existing program, great. If not, who cares. Linux will still be here for those of us that want to use it to use.

If that bothers you, then great...go write code. And if you don't want to do that, try another OS. You'll eventually find something that works for you.

--
Every time a guy gets a threesome, somewhere in heaven an angel gets his wings. --Cary Tennis
Re:Ok, youre right... by cbreaker · 2003-01-24 06:19 · Score: 1

And my TV is better then your Stove!

That's the kind of comparison you're making here.

A media player and a Web Browser are kinda, like, different. Creating a media player today is a hell of a lot more complicated then creating a web browser in 1991.

Not to say that I love all the skinning and user interfaces on these things, but they are still pretty new and I'm sure they will improve. xine looks pretty darned good these days, and eventually the functionaliy will improve as well. /shrug

Can't expect miracles overnight. So, this guy should keep on using O2 or whatever, and see how many avi/DivX/mpeg2 movies he can play without using one of these media players.

I use unfinished software becuase I want the functionality now. So, I deal with the dumb problems and I'm happy to be able to use it at all.

--
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Re:Ok, youre right... by CableModemSniper · 2003-01-24 06:19 · Score: 1

Nobody ever told me we were at war. Everybody seems to think it will be the end of the world if Linux doesn't work as Mom's desktop. Guess what, I love the "Don't complain, do something about it" attitude. It is great, and it will get things done. Frankly I could care less if Linux gets adopted as a mainstream desktop, it works for me.

--
Why not fork?
Re:Ok, youre right... by JoeSmack · 2003-01-24 06:19 · Score: 1

All that said, if you dont like it the way it is, break out your EMacs, and Write something better, otherwise, quit bitching!
Believe it or not, even open source projects can benefit from user suggestions/criticism. By nearly all accounts, Linux on the desktop is not ready for mainstream, though it would benefit people tremendouly if it was. The last thing anyone, except maybe Microsoft, should be saying is, "stop complaining about Linux."
Re:Ok, youre right... by MoneyT · 2003-01-24 06:21 · Score: 1

With the exception of the fact that it has been pointed out many many many time and many different ways that themes which render the program unusable or nearly so are BAD. Yet it doesn't seem to get through.

--
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Re:Ok, youre right... by CableModemSniper · 2003-01-24 06:29 · Score: 1

Oh and just to head it off at the pass, yes I meant to say "couldn't care less", sorry.

--
Why not fork?
Re:Ok, youre right... by Rutulian · 2003-01-24 06:41 · Score: 1

The current state of video on Linux sucks ass. Especially on RH7.2. You dont want to have to patch your kernel or change distros? Ok, I can see that. Don't want to install Gnome2? Hey, it's your decision.

On that note, I think it is unreasonable to expect a good user experience if you aren't willing to use updated software or install the necessary dependencies. GNOME2 encompasses a huge remodeling of the GNOME development framework and usability of the desktop in general. Likewise, RH8 includes many usability improvements. So you are really limiting your options if you stick with software released over a year ago.

Open source development happens very rapidly and you have to be willing to make frequent upgrades if you want to be on top of all the improvements. This is especially true if you are running a desktop machine. GNOME 2.2 is going to be out soon with many improvements over 2.0, and then development on 2.4 is going to begin.

Now, if you are running a server you probably don't want to upgrade every 6 months and that is perfectly understandable. It is also unnecessary. Aside from security patches and bug fixes, once a service is running it should stay running. If you are still using the 2.2 kernel, fine, who cares as long as it works on your hardware. But if you want the latest and greatest (which should be true if you are writing a review on CURRENT technology), you have to keep upgrading.
Re:Ok, youre right... by MrResistor · 2003-01-24 06:44 · Score: 1

The current state of video on Linux sucks ass. Especially on RH7.2

That would be a perfectly reasonable statement if RH 7.2 were the current state of Linux.

But it isn't!

You might as well bitch about the current state of NTFS support on WindowsME.

--
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Re:Ok, youre right... by BlackHawk-666 · 2003-01-24 06:48 · Score: 1

Fuck no, it's rubbish and I wish it would die a horrible death - particularly version 4.0 of it. FFS people, it's free to upgrade to either Netscape 6.0/Mozilla 6.0 or some other browser that isn't retarded! I have to design websites that work for that browser because 2% of the people visiting our sites (big ones you would have heard of) still use it...sigh. It doubles the amount of effort involved in page layout because it is so utterly broken.

--
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Re:Ok, youre right... by dinivin · 2003-01-24 07:00 · Score: 1

Heh too bad you couldn't take your own advice. That must be embarrasing. :)

I did it to help demonstrate my point that being rude to others isn't very helpful. Obviously that went right over your head :-)

Though I agree he could have been more tactful, it's hard to blame a guy for being upset at a mistake that should have been rectified with a little testing.

What about his mistakes (like thinking apt would cause conflicts with RPM)? Does this mean we should now act likes pricks towards him?

Dinivin
Re:Ok, youre right... by Anonvmous+Coward · 2003-01-24 07:33 · Score: 1

"I did it to help demonstrate my point that being rude to others isn't very helpful. Obviously that went right over your head :-)"

You really should have thought out your delivery a little more then. :-)

"What about his mistakes (like thinking apt would cause conflicts with RPM)? Does this mean we should now act likes pricks towards him?"

I don't live in a world of absolutes. I don't think everybody should be tactful or that they should shout expletives at every chance they get. I'm not a rulemaker, and I'm not going to generalize every situation. To assume that I'd do so is ignorant.

If he's being really boneheaded, then go for it. I'm a fan of being tactful about it, but if he's envoked a strong emotion in you then why hide it?

Funny thing is, we're arguing, but we sort of agree. I thought a little bit more about what you said and yeah, fucktards was a bit excessive. Thing is though, he's being honest. He got his point across: he was frustrated to the point that he didn't want to mess with it. He could have said it more politely, but either it'd be considerably longer, or it'd lose his emotional response.

*Shrug* I'm not particularly passionate about this issue. He made his point. The developers can balk at being called fucktards, or they can see what they can do to make this process easier. Linux is supposed to be the 'oh so great' OS, but that gets hindered when things are broken here and there.
Re:Ok, youre right... by LoadStar · 2003-01-24 07:35 · Score: 1

All that said, if you dont like it the way it is, break out your EMacs, and Write something better, otherwise, quit bitching!

Not all Linux users are programmers. I'm a Linux user (occasionally) and while I have some programming experience from school, I wouldn't consider myself a programmer. I've never touched emacs to be perfectly honest.

There's a large number of Linux users - larger than you'd imagine, I'd guess - who use Linux because it's a powerful operating system, or because it's an alternative to Windows and/or Mac, or for whatever reason - not because they want to code all day to get a decent working OS.

The point of JWZ's rant was that video on Linux sucks. And from what he wrote, I'd tend to agree with him. Just because it can be fixed by a programmer doesn't mean everyone who uses it has to be a programmer. Sometimes, you want to be just a regular user and say "You know what? This bites! Someone needs to fix this!" That's what JWZ was doing.

Could he fix it? Oh, undoubtedly... he knows very well how... but I'm sure when he's trying to play a video he just downloaded, he doesn't want to bother with coding up a new GUI or fixing the current one - he wants to load up the video and play it.

It's the toaster metaphor - when you want toast, you put the bread in the toaster and press the lever down. Want it darker, you turn the dial. You wouldn't want at 6 a.m. to be told "Well... if you want it done a little darker, you'll have to rewire the toaster, and turn the voltage up to the heating coils, and..." A lot of developers are forgetting about this little metaphor - they spend time coding up this elaborate skinned interface, and forget that their app should, by default, be able to simply do the task it was designed to do. Skins are extra - if the user wants to screw with the interface they can, but give those who DON'T want to screw with the interface something that is as simple as the lever and dial on a toaster.

This is a problem with Linux as I see it. There's no standard way of doing things, so you have all these programmers coding up these apps that all operate differently, and in a lot of cases, badly, because the programmer had lack of clue, or he thought it was "cool," or he thought it was easy FOR HIM/HER to use, or whatever. There's no one tried-and-true toaster-lever-and-dial interface, such as Mac has (had?) and Windows has (to a degree). If someone who just wants to use Linux, in many cases he/she has to sit down and in a best case scenario learn each app's unique way of doing things, or in a worst case scenario re-code the app so that it works as it should.

Once you're done, sure, you'll know how to use it - but there's definitely a steep learning curve that you shouldn't have to deal with if you just to load up the computer and play a video.
Re:Ok, youre right... by j_kenpo · 2003-01-24 09:07 · Score: 1

(Excuse the length of this message, I believe strongly in this so I have a lot to say, and this response is not pointed towards anyone in particular)

Yes, it does matter. The philosophy behind open-source is great for developers. There have been plenty of apps that I have used in proprietary environments that I've thought to myself "This would be a great app if..." With open-source, and being a developer, these issues, including UI can be fixed.

But this philosophy is unacceptable for the general public. This attitude is not acceptable for the everyday average person. Whenever criticism about Linux being on the desktop comes up, most (not every) Linux supporters go into an uproar, begin criticizing Microsoft, and refuse to acknowledge the issues at hand. This attitude of "if you don't like it, fix it yourself" isn't going to work for that very thing that Linux supporters are holding their breath for. The everyday average person just wants something to work, and work with ease. They aren't going to take the time to learn to program to fix an app that they are considering. And they definitely aren't going to switch to an operating system that the apps are difficult to use, and the attitude of the experts is "fix it yourself". Most will just pay the 200 bucks for an operating system that has these kinds of apps natively and continue to crack jokes about it crashing, because at least it will do what they need without them having to learn to program.

As sad as it sounds, the general Linux population needs to pick a side and stay with it. If they want Linux to be a viable desktop OS for the masses, then they need to quit running back to the "well its not designed for you, go back to Windows" mentality when the least bit of criticism about its failing in the UI department. I for one would love to see Linux on the desktop, and this point is one that hinders its success in this area.

The point of the authors article is to say that these thing, which you point out are written in Linux "because someone wanted to do something that either wasn't possible before, or was a pain in the ass to do before" is just that, a pain in the ass to use. Ill continue to use Linux, because the user interface doesn't bother so much, and there are plenty of alternatives and solutions, and I'm willing to program to fix my gripes with programs, but the average person is not...

How about what's wrong with JWZ? by ejaytee · 2003-01-24 05:08 · Score: 4, Insightful

I used to think JWZ was cool. Lucid EMACS, the whole RMS techno-tension thing, his general sense of mightiness.

Now I think he mostly likes to complain about stuff and run his nightclub.

It's probably fun to make lists of things that suck all day long, but why not use some of that talent and nervous energy to join in and help?

Re:How about what's wrong with JWZ? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:29 · Score: 0

jwz traded in his geek chic to play rock star
with the money he made from selling out
but owning a nightclub does get you laid more often.
Re:How about what's wrong with JWZ? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:42 · Score: 0

...why not use some of that talent and nervous energy to join in and help?

He hacked on Unix Netscape, Lucid Emacs, and several other projects. What have you done?

I see.

Next time you want to find somebody to pick on for not contributing, it would look better if you first found somebody who hadn't contributed.
Re:How about what's wrong with JWZ? by digitalsushi · 2003-01-24 06:13 · Score: 1

Now I think he mostly likes to complain about stuff and run his nightclub.

Uh oh.

Wait up a sec...

What did the rest of you start programming open source for?

--
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Re:How about what's wrong with JWZ? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:32 · Score: 0

And how is any of that a bad thing, again?
Re:How about what's wrong with JWZ? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:55 · Score: 0

Wow what a great post.

1. Ask somebody a question.
2. Pretend they answered.
3. Say "I see" to the pretend answer
4. Be smug

Hint: On /., there's a good chance this person has made a contribution.

Your response makes you look silly.
Re:How about what's wrong with JWZ? by Suidae · 2003-01-24 07:14 · Score: 1

Posting as an AC, criticizing another AC's post? Who looks silly?

hey, wait a second...
Re:How about what's wrong with JWZ? by zimbu · 2003-01-24 07:33 · Score: 1

Hint: On /., there's a good chance this person hasn't done much of anything except bitch about how Microsoft is ruining the world.
Re:How about what's wrong with JWZ? by bogie · 2003-01-24 07:57 · Score: 0, Flamebait

He's an asshole. All he does now is try to shit on the Mozilla project and make it look bad. Have a look at his blog, he's a bitter douchebag.

Re: his sarcastic "review on the state of linux video". Fuck him, stick with Windows next time.

There, now my comments are on the same level as his.

--
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Re:How about what's wrong with JWZ? by threephaseboy · 2003-01-24 08:47 · Score: 1

I liked you better before you sold out.

--
.
Re:How about what's wrong with JWZ? by Daniel+Phillips · 2003-01-24 09:41 · Score: 1

It's probably fun to make lists of things that suck all day long, but why not use some of that talent and nervous energy to join in and help?

Indeed. Instead of whining about the obvious gui glitches in mplayer, he should have submitted patches, he's certainly capable of it. If the patches are refused or ignored, then whine.

--
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Re:How about what's wrong with JWZ? by Raul+Acevedo · 2003-01-24 10:00 · Score: 5, Insightful

It's probably fun to make lists of things that suck all day long, but why not use some of that talent and nervous energy to join in and help?
Because part of his point is that at this point in the history of the computer, being able to use a simple app to view video under Linux should not require one to have to do it oneself from scratch to do it right.
This gets mentioned a lot on slashdot; "if you don't like it, stop complaining and YOU do it right!" While there's a lot of validity to that, there are many times when the issue is that by now, certain basic things of using a computer have been solved 10000 times over.
I mean come on, "://", or the "MRL browser", to open a file dialog? WTF? I went through the same frustration with Xine, it took forever to figure how to do something as simple as open friggin' files.
Innovation is one thing. But coming up with a hard to use interface, ignoring some really, really basic UI guidelines that have been around for what 30 years is another. At that point, "if you don't like it, do it yourself" becomes an excuse, not a valid response.

--
In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
Re:How about what's wrong with JWZ? by CanSpice · 2003-01-24 11:15 · Score: 1

Now I think he mostly likes to complain about stuff and run his nightclub.
If I could do this all day long and still make money, I'd jump all over it.
Re:How about what's wrong with JWZ? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 12:56 · Score: 0

Aw... how sweet. You sound just like every 15-year l33t g4m3r or 20-something vapid urbane hipster. Come on, people. If you hate someone or something, pick an issue (*gasp* like JWZ did!), but stop claiming that they've "Sold out".
Re:How about what's wrong with JWZ? by gli · 2003-01-24 13:05 · Score: 1

Yeah right, just to watch a 10 minute video and you have to spend days to 'contribute'.
Re:How about what's wrong with JWZ? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 17:33 · Score: 0

Funny how you get modded down and his drivel hits the front page.
Re:How about what's wrong with JWZ? by Malcontent · 2003-01-24 18:05 · Score: 1

" At that point, "if you don't like it, do it yourself" becomes an excuse, not a valid response."

It's not an excuse it's a valid response. Open source is about taking other people's code and making it better. How else is any of this shit going to get done? Do you really think that calling people fucktards makes them want to code better GUI's for you?

--
War is necrophilia.
Re:How about what's wrong with JWZ? by hfx_ben · 2003-01-27 14:20 · Score: 1

It's easy to be cool when all you have to do is put in your 35 hours and collect a cheque, but gawd forbid if you should have to actually get something done! /That/ puts a tiger in your tank. *does that date me somewhat?*
In another place (is it PC to mention LiveJournal?) a friend mentionned how her mic stopped working; she had upgraded to OS-X 10.1 ... the advice was *drumroll* upgrade to 10.2 ... but 10.2 has the same problem ... sooooo &tc &tc &tc. My comments there:
"... gawd, isn't this lame? I remember dreading upgrades because 1) the printer might stop working, 2) the backup disks might be unreadable, 3) it might scramble the passwords, 4) the batch files would no longer work, 5) bla-bla-blah ... but that was in the mid 80s!!
As a side-note, Linux geeks spend a lot of time beating up on themselves and each other cuz of SNAFUs like this ... I'm sorry to hear that OS-X is just as stuhned, but in a perverse way it leaves me feeling better."
When little things are a royal pain, is it any surprise sysadmin types are loathe to do bigger jobs, like install SPs in M$ $QL $erver?
FWIW, this is my favorite part of JwZ's rant ... and I defy anyone to say the points are trivial:
"Resizing the window changes the aspect ratio of the video! Yeah, I'm sure someone has ever wanted that.
It moves the mouse to the upper left corner of every dialog box it creates! Which is great, because that means that when it gets into this cute little state of popping up a blank dialog that says "Error" five times a second, you can't even move the mouse over to another window to kill the program, you have to log in from another machine."

--
-- When you look to see how the system works, you usually find that it doesn't.
Re:How about what's wrong with JWZ? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-28 14:08 · Score: 0

Slashdot is full of wanking teenagers and other useless souls. What have you contributed?

who's the moron? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:09 · Score: 0

What a joke. JWZ is a "fucking moron".

mplayer aspect ratio by CaptnMArk · 2003-01-24 05:09 · Score: 1

He's right about mplayer changing aspect ration on resize.

That's my #1 annoyance with it. Especially when it happens on a fullscreen switch.

Otherwise, great work.

Re:mplayer aspect ratio by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:18 · Score: 2, Funny

Actually, being able to change aspect ratios is a good thing. A lot of the pr0n I grab is encoded out-of-aspect, with the rectangular pixels of NTSC represented as squares, flattening the picture. Changing aspect ratio on resize lets me see pr0n the way the director intended.
Re:mplayer aspect ratio by c.derby · 2003-01-24 05:28 · Score: 2, Funny

Damn, I can't decide whether to mod this Funny, Insightful, or Informative.

--
-- derby
Re:mplayer aspect ratio by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:38 · Score: 0

I believe that problem's been fixed. Grab the 0.90rc3 release, compile, and run make install. Then type in "mplayer foo.mpg" and hit the "f" key once it's running. Or if you want to run it full screen directly from the command prompt, pass the -fs parameter to the program.
Re:mplayer aspect ratio by Anonvmous+Coward · 2003-01-24 05:54 · Score: 2, Funny

"Actually, being able to change aspect ratios is a good thing."

For ameteur porn, it's fun to make fat chicks skinny.

OS X + Fink = bliss by IvyMike · 2003-01-24 05:09 · Score: 5, Interesting

I know he poo-poos this idea, but he really should go to OS X. JWZ highly prizes usability, and so do most Mac developers (quicktime viewer aside), so it seems like a good match. He wants xemacs; he can get xemacs with fink and run it on a rootless X server, and thus get the best of both worlds. All the video stuff is likely trivial on a Mac.

And admit it, any time you see someone with hair like his, you immediately think, "Mac user".

Re:OS X + Fink = bliss by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:11 · Score: 0

Exactly what the fuck has JWZ ever done? Do we care so much about his opinion because he walked away with sacks full of Netscape options or because his biggest venture was a couple dinky xwindow toys?
Re:OS X + Fink = bliss by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:13 · Score: 0

And admit it, any time you see someone with hair like his, you immediately think, "Mac user".

Actually, I think "freak", but to each his own.
Re:OS X + Fink = bliss by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:18 · Score: 0

And admit it, any time you see someone with hair like his, you immediately think, "Mac user".

Actually, I think "freak", but to each his own.

Same thing.
Re:OS X + Fink = bliss by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:24 · Score: 0

What has he done? Women, lots of them. Get out more, slashdot troll, you might lose your insecurity.
Re:OS X + Fink = bliss by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:37 · Score: 0

Oh wow... after reading that "review" I'm really inclined to listen to anything the big mouthed, rude and arrogant fool has to say. JWZ's a protoypical geek - fast fingers on the keyboard, fast with the insults... but if he ever met any of the people he called fucktards in real life, he'd run like a scared little girly. What a jackass.
Re:OS X + Fink = bliss by Trepalium · 2003-01-24 05:56 · Score: 1

So, you're saying that he should move to Mac OS X because of usability. Then you continue by acknowleding that Apple completely fouled up THEIR media player. "Come to Mac OS X, our media player is even less usable!"
Is there some logic here I'm failing to see?

--
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Re:OS X + Fink = bliss by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:04 · Score: 0

And you are correct. I recently picked up an iMac myself. Why? Because video on Linux is TERRIBLE.

And no, I'm not talking about playback. I can deal with playback. MPlayer on the command line works well enough for me (and jwz is certainly right about the assinine themed GUIs out there).

I'm talking VIDEO AUTHORING. Warning JWZ, don't even try it...or actually, DO try it, because it will drive you to a Mac faster than you can say "Is that Quicktime?"

Video authoring on Linux is not for the timid. Even if you can figure out how to get the mjpeg-tools to produce an MPEG in which the audio is actually in SYNC with the video (I couldn't), or if you can somehow manage to learn the bewildering array of command-line arguments for 'transcode', you STILL need to get over the hump of encoding the video to a disk. Thanks to the GNU VCD tools, (S)VCDs are no problem. But that's small potatos...what about DVD? This is where it hurts the most.

The Linux DVD authoring stuff is so fresh it's not even close to being cooked. The DVD command-line tools used to create the necessary *.VOB and *.IFO files barely work at all--and when they do, the BEST you can do is create a DVD with no menus or anything. Even if you GET that far, you'll find that the DVDs you create have all kinds of problems...changing between chapters is NOT seamless (there is an ugly pause), and WORST OF ALL, seeking doesn't work. If you try to seek forwards or backwards the player will get confused and basically pick a random place on the DVD.

I spent MONTHS fighting with this crap. Then I tried my friend's iMac. Then I went and bought an iMac and said "nuts to video on Linux".

iMovie and iDVD are worth the price of admission alone.
Re:OS X + Fink = bliss by sweetooth · 2003-01-24 07:28 · Score: 1

You are completly ignoring the fact that he thinks running X of any sort on Mac OS X defeats the purpose. I'd tend to agree with his reasoning.
Re:OS X + Fink = bliss by Gainax · 2003-01-24 07:28 · Score: 1

Rootless X on OS X is still a disaster. It's still slow and ugly. Maybe that's just OS X's fault though.
Re:OS X + Fink = bliss by IamTheRealMike · 2003-01-24 07:31 · Score: 2, Funny

he can get xemacs with fink and run it on a rootless X server
What the fuck? And struggle with two fucking competing packaging systems, AND two fucking different fucking display systems? Yeah, THAT'S A COCK-SHAPED GOOD IDEA. You seem to expect me to install MacOS as well. Uh, no.
Fucking hell. I think Windows is looking more and more attractive. At least on Windows everything looks equally crap.
note: that was meant to be sarcasm. i don't actually talk like that :)
Re:OS X + Fink = bliss by truenoir · 2003-01-24 08:34 · Score: 1

I haven't used it much so far, but do you refer to the XDarwin rootless X or the new (in beta) Apple X11 that includes OpenGL and Quartz Extreme support?
Re:OS X + Fink = bliss by Ryan+Amos · 2003-01-24 09:22 · Score: 1

With oroborosx, X windows are integrated into aqua and behave as if they were OS X windows. So really all you have are some OS X windows that happen to be running X programs. It's really not cluttered at all. In general, Mac users like the unclutteredness of their OS and thus shareware authors try to keep it that way. On windows, on the other hand, shit is already fucked up so nobody tries to fix it.
Re:OS X + Fink = bliss by IvyMike · 2003-01-24 09:48 · Score: 2, Interesting

You are completly ignoring the fact that he thinks running X of any sort on Mac OS X defeats the purpose.

I am guessing (and maybe I'm wrong) that he's really against running X as his only window manager. I suspect he has not considered running a rootless X server so that he can have his xemacs window and still eat his OS X cake, too. This is actually a pretty nice solution; it is a bit of a hack, so it might offend JWZ's touchy sensibilities, but in practice, I like it.

Another poster suggests that rootless X performance is bad. It does have problems, but if you use it to run a small set of apps, it's good enough for me.
Re:OS X + Fink = bliss by sweetooth · 2003-01-24 09:58 · Score: 1

From what I've read JWZ absolutly hates X. Based on that, and the way he stated he didn't want to use X on Mac OS X, it leads me to believe he doesn't want to use it at all, even rootless.
Re:OS X + Fink = bliss by IvyMike · 2003-01-24 10:46 · Score: 1

From what I've read JWZ absolutly hates X.

Yeah, but he has to have learned to live with it; it's what he's doing now on linux.
Re:OS X + Fink = bliss by FooBarWidget · 2003-01-24 10:47 · Score: 1

Wait a minute, isn't the general attitude of Slashdot that X is slow, bloated, outdated, and not designed for the consumer desktop?
Re:OS X + Fink = bliss by sweetooth · 2003-01-24 10:53 · Score: 1

So he's learned to live with it. He's lived with it for a long time. The move to Mac OS X would be done to get away from what he doesn't like. Carrying forward X and the things he doesn't like would defeat the purpose of switching at all.
Re:OS X + Fink = bliss by andfarm · 2003-01-24 10:55 · Score: 1

Or you can use Apple's quartzwm, which makes X windows behave exactly like Mac windows because they *are*.

--
TANSTAAFI: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free iPod.
Re:OS X + Fink = bliss by IamTheRealMike · 2003-01-24 11:21 · Score: 1

I know. I was taking the piss out of jwz.... oh, never mind
Re:OS X + Fink = bliss by KH · 2003-01-24 11:40 · Score: 1

I never installed fink and (I hope) I never will.

XFree86 (beta) is now available from Apple. You can tell that you are running two display system just by the ugly fonts on one.

I compile xemacs from the source. I found that a lot easier than looking for appropriate binaries that fills my need (mule). If I am lucky, it just compiles and runs. If I am not, I will try an older version.

Compiling from the source may sound a lot of work, but somehow I came to avoid fiddling with packaging system. I don't need to install XEmacs so often.
Re:OS X + Fink = bliss by IvyMike · 2003-01-24 13:47 · Score: 1

It would not defeat the purpose of switching. He would be carrying forward a piece of X, but only for the X thing he refuses to give up, xemacs. That's it. In almost every other respect he could ignore the fact that X Windows is running. He would have video watching tools. He would have video editing tools. He would have an environment that many consider to be quite useable. He would even have a pretentious little industrial-themed titanium notebook that matches his nightclub's decor. He would be moving forward, one step at a time. Would he be done moving forward? No. But baby steps, man, baby steps.

JWZ is still around? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:10 · Score: 0

JWZ is as relevant as Navigator 1.0 .. I'd rather read an RMS rant.

JWZ is an idiot by PhysicsGenius · 2003-01-24 05:10 · Score: 1, Flamebait

His reviews, encapsulated:

mplayer -- doesn't like the UI
gstreamer -- doesn't want to install the required libs
xine -- doesn't know how to use a file browser (or pass args on the CL)
ogle -- doesn't do what he wants, even though it makes no claims that it does

This is a review of "video on Linux" how exactly?

When JWZ left the Moz project in a huff, I was alarmed because I'd heard what a great programmer he was and I thought Mozilla was never going to be released. The above review (and the amazing state of Mozilla) only bolster my belief that JWZ is a primo donna past his prime. All that's left is the rage and none of the talent.

WTF? by jaymzter · 2003-01-24 05:12 · Score: 0, Flamebait

Why is this guy's rant considered "news that matters"? If I wanted to be exposed to that much bitching and cursing I'd just ask my wife. Personally I run mplayer on RH 7.2, I compiled it, and have no trouble resizing, moving, or using it. It plays everything. And for DVDs Ogle is hard to beat. Hell, can I write a review and get it posted?

Worst. Review. Ever.

--
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love

Re: WTF? by Black+Parrot · 2003-01-24 05:23 · Score: 1

> Hell, can I write a review and get it posted?

> Worst. Review. Ever.

Hey! You did write a review and get it posted!

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Re:WTF? by Neil · 2003-01-24 05:49 · Score: 1

Why is this guy's rant considered "news that matters"?

Probably 'cos of his involvement as a primary developer of XEmacs and Netscape Navigator 1.x and 2.x.
Re:WTF? by bytor4232 · 2003-01-24 05:56 · Score: 1

No kidding. I think Jamie is over the hill. Why doesn't he help with MPlayer development if he doesn't like its state? MPlayer does it all, its our only hope for Video on Linux. I re-compiled about my 10th MPlayer version and installed it last night on my Debian box for QuickTime video, and its still a work of beauty. The QuickTime looks better than on my buddies Titanium Powerbook.
This is the second or third article I've seen bashing MPlayer this week. What the hell? I have NEVER had ANY problems compiling MPlayer. I mean for God's sake Divx 5, DVD, QuickTime, Real, Windows Media, every popular video format I've ever seen. What the hell do people want? This guy has been smoking too much cheap dope. He needs to go OS/X and be done with it.

--
-- 4 8 15 16 23 42
Re:WTF? by kzinti · 2003-01-24 05:58 · Score: 1

Why is this guy's rant considered "news that matters"?

Welcome to the cult of personality and post-modern dance phenonenon that is Jamie Zawinsky. Jamie's opinion "matters" because he used to Be Somebody and because he states his opinion in a manner that is guaranteed to raise hackles and Slashdot headlines. He made significant contributions to two open-source projects, XEmacs (Lucid Emacs) and Mozilla, and in between he made a shitload of money at Netscape. He also has a history of bailing out of projects before they're quite complete.

The sad thing is that he's right - the state of affairs in linux video just plain sucks. I've been there, I know. But Jamie has lost his edge. Instead of merely posting a scathing review littered with profanity, a real hacker would have spent a few sleepless nights throwing together his own elegant, attractive, and functional GUI, and would have posted the code somewhere for others to benefit from - accompanied by the scathing review littered with profanity. That's what Jamie Zawinsky might once have been capable of.

These days, though, he should just stick to selling beer.

--Jim

JWZ should STFU by Enahs · 2003-01-24 05:13 · Score: 5, Insightful

Really. We know he's got the know-how to change the situation, and instead he just sits around bitching and calls other developers "fucktards."

Dammit, when you worked at Netscape, JWZ, Navigator sucked ass. Sorry, dude, but Communicator has improved since you had a hissy fit and left.

What, I'm not allowed to criticize the great JWZ?

So do it, JWZ; either put together something that works the way you think it should work, or give up and buy a fucking Mac already.

--
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.

Re:JWZ should STFU by the+gnat · 2003-01-24 05:48 · Score: 1

Actually, Navigator was pretty decent when he actually worked on it; remember, he wrote the original X Windows version. Then he got moved to doing other stuff at Netscape, and the Unix versions really went downhill. He's certainly not to blame for the abomination of Communicator 4, which was the single worst aspect of using Linux (or Irix) until Mozilla matured.

If you read some of the other stuff he's written, you'll see that he still prefers to use Netscape 3 whenever possible.
Re:JWZ should STFU by wunderhorn1 · 2003-01-24 05:48 · Score: 1

Dude. Which Communicator are you using? I haven't found a Netscape product that didn't suck ass since 1996.

--
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
Re:JWZ should STFU by BlackHawk-666 · 2003-01-24 07:02 · Score: 1

Netscape 3 was the peak for Netscape. It's been all downhill from there.

--
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Re:JWZ should STFU by sweetooth · 2003-01-24 08:06 · Score: 1

I believe that JWZ was moved from the Navigator project onto other things after version 3 which was the last good version of Netscape. That's also the point where it became the "Communicator" nightmare.
Re:JWZ should STFU by fault0 · 2003-01-24 09:58 · Score: 1

> Dammit, when you worked at Netscape, JWZ, Navigator sucked ass. Sorry, dude, but Communicator has improved since you had a hissy fit and left.

That's not true; Netscape 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 were much better than Netscape 4.x, 5.x, 6.x.

Between NS 3.x and 7.x, I prefer 3.x, without all of 7.x's AOL crap.
Re:JWZ should STFU by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 10:20 · Score: 0

Good bye karma.

Great idea. JWZ should fix every damn program with a shitty interface. Because he can't complain if he won't do anything about it right?

I better not hear him complain about traffic, unless he's out there building roads.

Nothing pisses me off more than people complaining about the weather, because what are they doing about it? Nothing!

Jeeze. Get a grip. If he sees a shitty program he has a right to talk about it, or do you think otherwise?

Huzzah! by wowbagger · 2003-01-24 05:14 · Score: 5, Insightful

Finally, somebody who else who is unafraid to point out the stupidity of the interfaces being foisted upon us!

Look, folks - your program is NOT a physical device I can stack in my equipment rack - DON'T MAKE IT LOOK LIKE ONE! It is a PROGRAM! Make it look like a program! I want a simple menu bar across the top of the window. I want that menu bar to follow accepted standard practice - File, Options, Help. I want a minimum of BS - just play the DAMN FILE!

--
www.eFax.com are spammers

Re:Huzzah! by Qzukk · 2003-01-24 05:25 · Score: 1

So where do you want your menu in full screen mode? An ugly pop up menu that blocks everything like windows media player?

Face it. On Screen Displays are the way to go. They worked for TVs, they worked for VCRs, they worked for DVDs. Sure, it might be a little more work to make an OSD pick a file without causing physical pain, but I bet someone could modify mplayer's OSD shell to become a reasonably sane file picker. You could have "play filename", "info filename", or even something like "scan 5" and go through 5 seconds of every mp3 in the directory.

--
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Re:Huzzah! by athakur999 · 2003-01-24 05:26 · Score: 4, Insightful

Amen! The number of software DVD players that try to look my hardware DVD players is amazing. I mean, who actually uses the front panel of their hardware DVD player, other than the "eject" button?

At the very least, if you feel the need to make your software look like hardware, make it look like a hardware DVD player remote control, which people actually use...

--
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
Re:Huzzah! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:38 · Score: 0

quit whining and start coding
Re:Huzzah! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:10 · Score: 0

So...you don't want a pop-up menu because it "blocks everything" and it's "ugly"...but you do want an On Screen Display which would ... block everything and look ugly.

That's the power of Open Source, I guess.
Re:Huzzah! by mad.frog · 2003-01-24 06:18 · Score: 1

Yes. YES. YES!!!!! I don't understand the obsession with skinnable-ness with all media-player authors. It's just another app; make it look like one.
Re:Huzzah! by gregRowe · 2003-01-24 06:21 · Score: 1

That's great but some people like skins - I am not one of them. If you want a video player that isn't skinned why not just make a derivitive work? I am sure it wouldn't be very hard to do a facelift of xine?

Greg

--
There\'s no place like ~
Re:Huzzah! by Tackhead · 2003-01-24 06:25 · Score: 4, Funny

> Amen! The number of software DVD players that try to look my hardware DVD players is amazing. I mean, who actually uses the front panel of their hardware DVD player, other than the "eject" button?
> At the very least, if you feel the need to make your software look like hardware, make it look like a hardware DVD player remote control, which people actually use...
"I did that for TackLinux-TV-Tuner, and these stupid users complain that they want to use the numbers on their keyboard when trying to select Channel 112, rather than mousing to the '1', '2', '3', ... '0' icons! Stupid users!
So I made a new sk1n for the keyboard. Put a real keyboard on the scanner and made a 1600x400 bitmap of it! It looks just like an IBM keyboard, you can mouse over and click on the '1', through '0' keys, or the numeric keypad, provided you mouse over and click on the NumLock icon first! And the stupid users still didn't like my UI! One of them even complained because he was building a home theater with an LCD projector, and at 1280x1024 as his screen resolution and my image of the keyboard was too wide for his screen!
"Stupid user! Like duh he should have just gotten a bigger screen! (Like, doesn't everyone watch movies at 1600x1200?) I mean, what did he want me to do, scan in a Sinclair ZX-80 so the image of the keyboard sk1n would fit in his dinky 1280x1024 layout or what?
I told him I was sorry, but if he couldn't stay current with hardware, he should just go fuck himself and use Windows or something. Stupid ungrateful users! Sometimes I don't know why I bother to code for them!"
Re:Huzzah! by 303 · 2003-01-24 06:37 · Score: 1

This is the only half-decent point of jwz's rant (not review). xine, mplayer and xmms skins are generally hard to read (much like jwz's site) and do not integrate with the desktop very well. you can use sinek for xine, which is the gtk interface.
or you can use totem, which is a gnome2 movie player. it uses the xine libs and kicks ass. looks very nice and plays almost anything.
here is a screenshot
and
here is the url
i think "hissy fit" is the word jwz is looking for rather than rant. if this guy is such a mad coder, why doesn't he do something instead of crying about it? i am sure he could whip an all-singing all-dancing media player in no time at all. lol, right....
Re:Huzzah! by Qzukk · 2003-01-24 07:05 · Score: 1

Sorry, I forgot to explain what the OSDs I've had experience with were like. If your TV blocks out the screen with useless junk just because you turned the volume up, I'm sorry but you need to get a new TV.

What I expect from an OSD is:
- Its small: I don't need an 80 point font to read "30:25/1:20:05"
- Its semi-transparent: I can see around the letters, and through them to some extent.
- Its temporary: once the operation is complete, its gone again.
- Its responsive: Only the parts of the OSD called for are displayed. I don't need to navigate some menu on my TV just to turn up the volume. Likewise, changing the volume doesn't waste my screen space showing me my current channel, brightness,contrast, tint, focus settings, and the current time.

I've been thinking of my original post, and file picking probably shouldn't be an OSD feature, its just too complex and too much information on the screen at once.

I think when I get home from work today (can't do GPL stuff here) I should take a look at mplayer and see if I can't play with the OSD code some.

--
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Re:Huzzah! by BlackHawk-666 · 2003-01-24 07:10 · Score: 1

How about a really cool skin of a command line interface where you type arcane commands in to control it. That'd be way cool!

--
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Re:Huzzah! by Suidae · 2003-01-24 07:30 · Score: 1

I'm not much of a fan of skins. However, I've got to say that done right, they work well. I'm thinking of winamp here. I have no idea what it takes to make a winamp skin, nor what the code dealing with it looks like. But it works, and it works very nicely.

You want a standard interface? No problem, theres a skin for it. Want something ultra custom? No problem.

The vast majority of apps don't need skin support (including mozilla), most of them I just want to use my system settings. But there are a few, like winamp, that I want to do something specific and different (mostly because I want it to be as out-of-the-way as possible, but still quickly accessable), and I probably don't want it to do it the same way everybody else does.

The only drawback in winamps case is that it doesn't seem to have a 'standard' mode where it just uses standard widgets so it can look like the rest of my system.
Re:Huzzah! by gregRowe · 2003-01-24 07:50 · Score: 1

haha! If I had mod points you'd get +1 funny.

Don't knock the idea though! I think it would be cool if most apps had a command line interface *and* a gui. Take GIMP for example. It has libguile so you can script operations *and* it has a GUI. Why compromise?

Greg

--
There\'s no place like ~
Re:Huzzah! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 08:12 · Score: 0

Because nowadays he's too busy gettin' laid and gettin' paid to dink around with YAMP. The man gets more 'tang than toilet seat; do you blame him for not staying up late doing the umpteenth version of xplayer?
Re:Huzzah! by elgaard · 2003-01-24 08:16 · Score: 1

At the very least, if you feel the need to make your software look like hardware, make it look like a hardware DVD player remote control, which people actually use...

The same goes for the desktop metafore.
Why does almost every desktop GUI put shadows on buttons, scrollbars etc?
Why not take advantage of the fact that a GUI does not have to follow the rules of the physical world. Make pressed buttons change color or shape.
Re:Huzzah! by poot_rootbeer · 2003-01-24 08:35 · Score: 1

Don't.

Just don't.

If I'm watching a DVD on my computer, or really any video content, chances are I want it to take up as much screen real estate as possible. Don't clutter up my view with bitmapped brushed-metal borders or 2-dimensional remote controls or miniature web browsers. At the most there should be a menu across the top, a moderate collection of iconic buttons at the bottom. Anything more than that will just distract me from the content.

The 'emulate a real world control' idiom should have died ten yers ago.
Re:Huzzah! by Wiwi+Jumbo · 2003-01-24 15:39 · Score: 1

The scary thing is I've seen posts like this in the past but they were completely serious.... :-/

--
Wiwi
"I trust in my abilities,
but I want more then they offer"
Re:Huzzah! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 19:55 · Score: 0

Foisted? Foisted?! No one is foisting anything on you 'tard (just emulating the admirable parent), the software is free. A gift from the developers. If you don't like what they offer, Cleopatra, crowbar that wallet-on-a-chain from your back pocket and buy what pleases you. The masses don't slave for your sole benefit, they develop for the pleasure of doing so.
Christ, what an all-about-me atitude there is flying around here today!
Re:Huzzah! by salimma · 2003-01-25 07:00 · Score: 1

I want a simple menu bar across the top of the window

Or across the top of the screen, like OSX and optionally KDE - even better :)

--
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut

jwz discovers Rez :) by fatcow · 2003-01-24 05:14 · Score: 0

Hehe!

jwz discovers Rez.

Of course, jwz being jwz, he has to include a link to a blog featuring the special trance vibrator

You get what you pay for. by dannycim · 2003-01-24 05:14 · Score: 4, Insightful

Instead of bitching about OpenSource and free (as in beer) products which have not even reached 1.0 stable release, be nice to the project developpers and make constructive suggestions.

Man! People are such a***oles nowadays. They expect everything for free and delivered on a gold plate. Pffft!

Re:You get what you pay for. by Chester+K · 2003-01-24 07:49 · Score: 1

They expect everything for free and delivered on a gold plate. Pffft!

Perhaps they expect that because that's what evangelists been saying that's what Open Source software delivers? I certainly don't recall Eric Raymond touring the world to spout off the virtues of "your choice from a vast collection of free (as in beer and speech) software that is stuck in perpetual alpha or beta".

--

NO CARRIER
Re:You get what you pay for. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 08:13 · Score: 0

You know, I believe Bill Gates said the exact same thing in relation to why you pay for MS but you can get OSS/FS for free.

I guess he's right then eh? If I expect something decent I have to pay for it, otherwise I might as well put up with the implient crap that OSS/FS is?

That's what I think is COMPLETELY wrong when (probably) Bill Gates said it and when you and a lot of the other OSS/FS programmers say it. If you're going to write a crappy program, then why release it. If you release it, then why not just say "here do what the hell you want with it and I know its a piece of shit but who cares cause I never intend to improve it because it does what I want and thats all I care about" and not this "use OSS/FS so you can escape the MS monopoly and besides you'll feel all warm and fuzzy inside because its developed by a community instead of a cold-heartless corporation".

While I have nothing against donating money to OSS/FS projects, reporting bugs, and maybe even trying to track down and even fix some bugs and submitting them -- I'm certainly NOT going to do this for a bunch of rude assholes belching out "You get what you payfor so RTFM!". I'll just use MS where I know it will work 99% of the time. Paying MS for support is no different than paying SuSE, Mandrake, Xandros, RedHat, ... for support. I can search MS-help newsgroups and IRC channels just as easily as I can search OSS/FS resources the same way too so don't say that help is any better.

The only chance that OSS/FS community has in getting "regular" people to adopt it, is in the hands of the Linux distro businesses such as I mentioned above. Because at least they wont say RTFM or "you get what you pay for".

And no one really expects everything for free and delivered on a "gold plate" as you say. But they do expect a certain level of user-friendlyness as given by MS and yes it does have a lot more user-friendlyness then any of the programs that JWZ reviewed.
Re:You get what you pay for. by SpeedBump0619 · 2003-01-24 18:45 · Score: 1

Several comments here:

1) most open source projects almost never reach 1.0. Even the successful ones. The vast majority continue stacking 9s on the end of their version numbers for all eternity

2) People have always been assholes, we just communicate faster and more widely now so you see it a lot more

3) People don't care if something is free or not. If it doesn't do what it seems like it should in a convenient way they will complain. I used to program control systems for industrial automation. When I started I would add useful features *beyond* those specifically called out in the requirements docs. Free. No cost. Worst plan ever...if it doesn't work for whatever reason the clients still complained just as much as about the parts the paid for.

Never give people something for free...people suck...if you give them an inch they want a ruler to make sure you gave it all to them. If you *do* give something to them for free you need to simply expect ingratitude. Welcome to human nature.

MPEG4IP has a nice interface by benwaggoner · 2003-01-24 05:15 · Score: 1, Interesting

Folks,

While it doesn't play all the bazillion formats of MPlayer, the CIsco-sponsored MPEG4IP has quite a nice little UI, compared to all the others. And it's just one package to compile, none of these source code + codec packs + skin + font downloads.

MPEG4IP only does MPEG-4, but since that is almost certain to be come the standard "open" video format, I'd expect it to become more and more useful throughout 2003. We're testing Cringely's NerdTV against it, and it works just fine.

http://mpeg4ip.sf.net

--

My video compression blog

Re: MPEG4IP has a nice interface by Black+Parrot · 2003-01-24 05:26 · Score: 1

> MPEG4IP only does MPEG-4, but since that is almost certain to be come the standard "open" video format, I'd expect it to become more and more useful throughout 2003.

We don't want an "open" format. We want whatever format the Windows users use when they post to alt.ripped.porn!

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Re:MPEG4IP has a nice interface by deepchasm · 2003-01-24 05:47 · Score: 2
While it doesn't play all the bazillion formats of MPlayer, the CIsco-sponsored MPEG4IP has quite a nice little UI, compared to all the others.

Hmmmm, I went to the website and looked at the screenshots. You're right - nice uncluttered simple interface that *matches* other programs.

Perfect!

Then I went back to the main page and the "What needs to be done" box caught my eye:
- Better UI for the player - skins/artwork would be nice
How ironic.
Re:MPEG4IP has a nice interface by benwaggoner · 2003-01-24 06:55 · Score: 1

Indeed. Skins support seems to mean there will be a choice of dozens of whacky looking interfaces with crappy usability. I don't mind them being an option, but I want the software to inherit the native UI of the system it's running on!

MPEG4IP on RedHat 8.0 does the whole Blue thing, which means it is doing the right thing today.

--

My video compression blog
Re:MPEG4IP has a nice interface by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 10:17 · Score: 0

I'm sorry, but that looks "normal", but still reeks of dogcrap.

Is there some fundemental problem with Linux toolkits that prevents the icon from being centered on the button? What the hell is wrong?

Also, the Motif 'look' was discredited back in the 1980s. Stupid checkboxes, stupid dropdowns. Someone please kill it.
Re:MPEG4IP has a nice interface by wmaycisco · 2003-01-25 03:59 · Score: 1

That's been up for over a year. While I wrote most of the player code, I'm not a GTK writer - a lot of the interface could be written a lot better, most likely. It does seem to work... But thanks for the compliments - it's nice to hear. One thing to add - in addition to mpeg4, we also do mpeg1/2, H.261 and raw video, and mp3/raw audio. Bill May

This review sucks.. by Maeryk · 2003-01-24 05:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

Mainly because he limited himself to RPM's and didnt specify what WM he was using.

I use both mplayer and gmplayer on Mandrake just fine. It doesnt have resize problems, has resize ability, etc. That _may_ be because Im using windowmaker and/or blackbox, but it seems to work fine in KDE as well. Course, I installed the source for them, and compiled from scratch, after doing all the enable/disable flags the right way for my system.

The only issue Im having with Mplayer right now is it has a tendency to put some .viv files upside down when it plays them.. not sure, and not really bothered by it, but it was something i noticed.

Xine hasnt worked for me since day one.. but i have never tweaked it.. I just think it doesnt like my DVD drive.. as soon as it comes up and tries to hit the drive it locks the system hard.

I dont know what the problem is for this guy, other than the fact that he seems to be RPM happy and he uses RedHat. (which is certainly his prerogative)

Maeryk

--
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?

Re:This review sucks.. by Tackhead · 2003-01-24 05:41 · Score: 5, Insightful

> Mainly because he limited himself to RPM's and didnt specify what WM he was using.
>
> I use both mplayer and gmplayer on Mandrake just fine. It doesnt have resize problems, has resize ability, etc. That _may_ be because Im using windowmaker and/or blackbox, but it seems to work fine in KDE as well. Course, I installed the source for them, and compiled from scratch, after doing all the enable/disable flags the right way for my system.
Congratulations.
So write up an FAQ. Tell us:
1) What WMs work with what video programs.
2) What libraries are required.
3) What version of gcc you used *G*
4) What flags are set, where to set them, and what's "right" for a wide range of systems, say, a few nVIDIA and ATI systems on AMD and Intel chips, and/or any specific motherboard-related issues.
5) All the other variables I've overlooked, but that you didn't, that make the difference between "It Works" and "It Doesn't".
The problem JWZ is ranting about is usability, not functionality. You don't have a usability problem, because you already have a large base of knowledge, because you've made a large investment in time and energy to figure out how to make it work.
I made a similar comment the other day - and I've seen the same flames today, which pretty muchn boil down to "Hey, asshole, we code for the fun of it, not because we want to save the world from Microsoft! We code because we like to, and couldn't care less if anyone other than us ever uses our code!"
(The rest of this comment isn't addressed at you per se, it's addressed to the readership who've flamed JWZ for being a clueless and ungrateful twit - you've seen 'em - "hey, asshole, what have you coded for us lately", and "hey, be thankful you have any code at all, just 'cuz you're not 31337 enough to run it!")
Well, that's fine. Good to have you guys out of the closet. Billgatus will take over the world - and hey, that's fine, since it won't stop you from coding.
But if your code compiles in a forest where there are only 100 systems that can execute it (because those 100 systems all belong to the developers working on the project, as opposed to those of us who develop other things don't have time to keep up with the developments in every open source/free software video project), can you really be said to have created something useful in the first place? If code compiles on no machines, can it really be said to be code? And if you don't give a shit about your code running on a wide variety of platforms ("What, our code only runs on Distro X! You wanna run his app that needs Distro Y, and my app, you gotta dual-boot, or choose between his app and my app! Choose my app, 'cuz I'm cooler!") why should I give a shit about your code in the first place?
If that's how you want it, hey, it's your code, but under that scenario, what value does open source/free software offer me?
"Well", you say, "if you haven't coded anything for us, why should we give a fuck what you? It's open source, take it or fuckin' leave it."
Fair enough - but then why should any of us give a rat's fried patoot about freeing that DeCSS guy, or that Ogg Theora stuff, when it's plain as day that I'll never view a video with code based on it anyways?
The difference between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs offering me closed-source binaries on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, and you offering me code that I can't necessarily compile or use on a take-it-or-leave-it basis -- is that at least the frickin' movie plays on Windows and OS X.
Re:This review sucks.. by clintp · 2003-01-24 05:52 · Score: 1

Mainly because he limited himself to RPM's and didnt specify what WM he was using
You missed his point spectacularly then! He doesn't want to hack at installation of his video apps, he just wants to be a user of them. And if the WM was to blame, then a pox on their developers as well.

If he wants to wade through README's, kernel patch, compile, tinker, collect libraries, and fiddle with installations he can go off and do that with his own applications (and he does!). He apparently just wants a video player that installs and runs sanely.

My gripes were similar which is now why I use WinXP as a desktop environment (for the creature comforts) and Linux as a pseudo-unix development environment (through ssh and mounted filesystems).

--
Get off my lawn.
Re:This review sucks.. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:21 · Score: 0, Informative

+5 Insightful
Re:This review sucks.. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 07:33 · Score: 0

remember this point.....

mplayer from source... make; make install

mplayer from RPM ... rpm -Uvh mplayer*.rpm

from source you get a newer less buggy version of this BETA SOFTWARE.. from rpm you get crap.

first and foremost.. this guy is a complete idiot. I dont care what he has done in the past, obviousally he doesnt have the ability to do it now... now he bitches about free BETA software??

you know, he should be drawn ald quartered because Netscape 2.0 Beta sucked horribly and had resize problems...

someone needs to ignore this know nothing has-been.
Re:This review sucks.. by Tack · 2003-01-24 07:48 · Score: 1

I just installed mplayer 0.90pre3. (I did compile from source, however.)

After unpacking the Quicktime 6 DLLs into /usr/lib/win32, Quicktime Sorensen videos just worked. Very nice.

But I noticed that as I resized the window, it maintained the aspect ratio. I'm not sure when mplayer introduced this, but it's a very welcome. And it addresses at least one of jwz's complaints.

It'd be very nice to see an Mplayer RPM that included all the codecs. Are there any legal issues with that?

Jason.
Re:This review sucks.. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 09:42 · Score: 0

Look, let me boil down to you, in less fire-cloaked form the gist of this.
People write software, and documentation. They spend their time doing it, because they want to. And then someone comes along and grips and complains cause they actually have to do a little legwork to run things.
You aren't going to get much sympathy for most people. Once you've invested the time to have a basic understanding of building applications, it doesn't take much to do one more. If you want to use a powerful OS, that has the flexibility of linux you should be willing to put in the effort to learn what the hell you're doing.
As for why you should care about that DeCSS guy, it's because freedom matters. Period. That is totally unrelated to whether or not you feel like putting in the effort to learn something new. Tring to say you won't care about your own freedom/liberty just because someone won't hold your hand and wipe your ass for you is just ridiculous.
And there is very little code that works only on select linux distributions...with exceptions for specific jumps in kernel/glibc/gcc revisions. Which can't be helped. You can't run w2k apps in MSDOS 3.3 either.
I will grant you, that it will be /easier/ on some distributions than others, and sometimes it will be suggested that you switch to make your life easier, but that doesn't mean you have to. If you choose not to you just have to accept that there'll be more work involved.
Re:This review sucks.. by blakestah · 2003-01-24 10:34 · Score: 2, Interesting

So write up an FAQ. Tell us:

1) What WMs work with what video programs.
2) What libraries are required.
3) What version of gcc you used *G*
4) What flags are set, where to set them, and what's "right" for a wide range of systems, say, a few nVIDIA and ATI systems on AMD and Intel chips, and/or any specific motherboard-related issues.
5) All the other variables I've overlooked, but that you didn't, that make the difference between "It Works" and "It Doesn't".

One working example.

First, install Debian. Use this in your /etc/apt/sources/list
deb http://marillat.free.fr/ unstable main

To install, run
apt-get install mplayer-686
apt-get install ffmpeg

Also, grab the extra binary codecs from the Mplayer site and throw them in /usr/lib/win32

That site is here

To play a vid, download it first. IF you get a stupid quicktime page thingy, load the page source, use "wget" to grab the vid, and play it.

If you get a windows streaming site, use mplayer -dumpstream to dump the stream to an ASF file on disk, and then play it. I usually use the options -vo xv and -xy 2 (or 3) to enlarge, and ensure usage of the XVideo extension.

So much for playing vids. To record digital vids, do the following

1) grab a cheap Firewire card. If you pay more than $20 you paid too much.

2) Build Firewire options into kernel and load the modules (or reboot if you build them in)

3) Use kino to grab digital video. Again, from Debian, apt-get install kino. Edit in kino, export to a type 2 AVI file.

4) Use ffmpeg to make a divx file. I like to use these options
-f avi
-vcodec mpeg4
-s 360x240
-b 200
-g 300
-bf 2
-acodec mp3
-ab 128

If you have a lot of motion consider also using -4mv and -me FULL. If you have an IDE drive make sure dma transfer is enabled.

Again, just one working example.
Re:This review sucks.. by Malcontent · 2003-01-24 11:19 · Score: 1

"Well, that's fine. Good to have you guys out of the closet. Billgatus will take over the world - and hey, that's fine, since it won't stop you from coding."

If you don't code but spend all your time giving shit to people who do code, critizing the people who code, berating the people who code then they will stop coding too. Why should somebody spend their time coding when all they get in return is a bunch of whining asshole users who go on a tirade about how stupid the coder is?

--
War is necrophilia.
Re:This review sucks.. by Permission+Denied · 2003-01-24 12:26 · Score: 1

But if your code compiles in a forest where there are only 100 systems that can execute it (because those 100 systems all belong to the developers working on the project, as opposed to those of us who develop other things don't have time to keep up with the developments in every open source/free software video project), can you really be said to have created something useful in the first place? If code compiles on no machines, can it really be said to be code? And if you don't give a shit about your code running on a wide variety of platforms ("What, our code only runs on Distro X! You wanna run his app that needs Distro Y, and my app, you gotta dual-boot, or choose between his app and my app! Choose my app, 'cuz I'm cooler!") why should I give a shit about your code in the first place?
I've written a couple of larger projects which I've never released. A window manager (30000 LOC), a file manager (20000 LOC), etc. I've also written larger projects that I have released under BSD license (web and ftp daemons, ldap gateways, etc.).
There is a pattern. I release/publish code that will probably be used by clueful admins, and I don't release any graphical software.
Why? Because I don't want to deal with twits like you. I write code because I like to write code and because I need the stuff I write. I don't write code for fame or glory, and if I release something, it's because someone else might find it useful and I'm really a nice guy. I don't write code so I can be your personal fucking tech support line. I'll be happy to explain to you how to get mplayer working because I'm not some anti-social recluse and I'll fix any bug or portability issue in my code since I take pride in my work, but I won't give you the time of day if you continue with that attitude. The mplayer lists are probably inundated with comments like yours and I honestly don't know how they can continue writing their code.
So yeah, take it and be grateful or leave it and STFU. Just don't complain to me.
Fair enough - but then why should any of us give a rat's fried patoot about freeing that DeCSS guy, or that Ogg Theora stuff, when it's plain as day that I'll never view a video with code based on it anyways?
Separate issue - you might care about open formats, DRM and the DMCA when your computer turns into a TV and you can no longer play your CDs in your device of choice. The GNU/slashdot folks like to mix all their politics together, but you can release all the code you like and use only OSS on your machines and still work for the MPAA (like some effects studios), or conversely, you can keep using your Windows XP and clicking through life without releasing a line of code, while donating to the EFF.
Re:This review sucks.. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 13:08 · Score: 0

If you don't code but spend all your time giving shit to people who do code, critizing the people who code, berating the people who code then they will stop coding too. Why should somebody spend their time coding when all they get in return is a bunch of whining asshole users who go on a tirade about how stupid the coder is?

because 99% of the world are assholes? Seriously, they are. I don't know if you've been outside lately, but trust me-- they're shit chutes to the maximum.

So, now we have a problem. We have touchy programmers who do things for the love of it, we have an asshole populace who wants things functional AND powerful, and anytime someone suggests that things aren't all rosy, people start bawling and threatening suicide. Wonderful. Makes me want to go back to Windows XP.

Moral of the story: if you're not prepared for end-users to complain, don't design software for them. But you also have no right to bitch about Microsoft, Apple et all if you have no desire to build something people WANT.

Sheesh.
Re:This review sucks.. by gli · 2003-01-24 13:30 · Score: 1

Xine hasnt worked for me since day one..
Then stop whining and contribute!
Re:This review sucks.. by gli · 2003-01-24 13:45 · Score: 1

You chose to publish your own code. And be prepared to receive critism for anything you present to the world. If you can't put up with it, just keep the code to yourself and be happy.
Re:This review sucks.. by t_pet422 · 2003-01-24 17:46 · Score: 0

The only issue Im having with Mplayer right now is it has a tendency to put some .viv files upside down when it plays them.. not sure, and not really bothered by it, but it was something i noticed.
uhh, sure, upside-down is perfectly acceptable...?
Re:This review sucks.. by Malcontent · 2003-01-24 17:55 · Score: 1

"And be prepared to receive critism for anything you present to the world"

Bulshit. It's a fucking gift. If you don't like it you don't get to throw it in the face of the person who gave it to you. It's rude and uncivilized.

What we need to do is to slam the shit out of any idiot who bitches and moans about something they got for free. It's better then slamming people who are trying to make a difference in the world. If the assholes aren't happey with something they got for free then they should pay for something else and shut the fuck up.

--
War is necrophilia.

Shouldn't rant about things you don't understand by Rayban · 2003-01-24 05:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

First of all, installing apt on RedHat doesn't compete to install packages - it uses apt to install RPMs, rather than debs. This means that it will automatically locate RPM dependencies and install them, exactly as a Debian system would. It just adds missing functionality to the RPM system.

It all comes down to people complaining and complaining that they can't do something right away. Why not build a package for mplayer that installs it the way you want? These people are writing software in their free time. You don't have to use it.

"Uh, no. I've seen the horror of Red Hat 8.0, and there's no fucking way I'm putting Gnome2 on any more of my machines for at least another six months, maybe a year."

I can't understand why you would complain about installing dependencies for a product that is still in development. How is software supposed to advance if we're always using v1 of libraries instead of v2?

"What are these fucktards thinking???"

Why do people get off on putting other people's work down? Just because you made a quick buck in an IPO doesn't give you the right to rant about whatever you want and expect people to bow down. Why not write up a bug report or a quick suggestion? Isn't that what we do if something bugs us? That's the beauty of having each access to the application developers! Your riches don't elevate you above the rest of us, my friend.

Don't whine that something doesn't work unless you are willing to fix it or willing switch to an environment that satisfies your needs. I should know better than to read JWZ's blog.

--
æeee!

JWZ nice dude by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:16 · Score: 0

because he doesn't give a fuck about the opinion of non-programmer fucktards. That's the main thing today. Do your piece and screw them.

Go JWZ!

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2003-01-24 05:16 · Score: 2, Informative

Comment removed based on user account deletion

What's the point? by tewfik · 2003-01-24 05:17 · Score: 0, Flamebait

I don't get the point of the author?! If he was to pay for those pieces of software he wouldn't be that verbose would he. Maybe he could try developping sommething, since the source code is there. If I was to rate that i'd say : FLAME HIM GOOD! and hey, slashdotters, give us something better to chew..

--
-- Or So Tewfik Wrote. --

Re:What's the point? by swordgeek · 2003-01-24 05:29 · Score: 5, Insightful

"Maybe he could try developping sommething, since the source code is there."

I just have two things to say to this comment.

1) Shut.
2) Up.

I am so SICK and TIRED of people mistaking the point of open source in this way! I am not a developer. I am not a programmer. I do not have the time, skills, or inclination to write a media player from scratch, or even fix one of the many broken ones. The fact that I (theoretically) CAN get and modify the source doesn't automatically mean that I MUST do so, if I don't like what's out there. It also does not affect the degree to which the existing players suck!

Once again:

1) The openness of the source code doesn't make the current software suck any less.
2) The OSS-given ability to (re)write software is not a de facto requirement to (re)write said software. It does not absolve the original programmers of their responsibilty to write non-crap.

--

"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Re:What's the point? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:42 · Score: 0

Then heed your own advice...

"1) Shut.
2) Up."

Fucktard.
Re:What's the point? by xyzzy · 2003-01-24 05:46 · Score: 2, Insightful

Amen, brother.

The attitude of people who say this is stupid blame-the-victim krapola. Furthermore, it denigrates the whole of the open source movement to something analagous to a hobby shop. "Oh, you don't like how this soapbox derby car runs? Well why don't you go whittle your own!?!?!"

99 and 44 100ths% of people don't really want to crucify themselves just to get something done. Hey, if video for Linux isn't there, no biggie. Rome wasn't built overnight, and maybe JWZ should lighten up. But he calls them as he sees them. The *current* state of the world is crap, and fscking around with skins doesn't amount to a hill of beans if you really want to just solve a simple problem.
Re:What's the point? by tewfik · 2003-01-24 05:57 · Score: 2, Insightful

what the hell! I seldom had to say that but .... this is basic stupid idiocy.
A minimum of respect for the guys out there who spend sleepless nights just for the four of you to get high on a good porn movie. Respect the ones who the job man. There are better ways to give advice and make comments.
try google a brain for a start.

--
-- Or So Tewfik Wrote. --
Re:What's the point? by swordgeek · 2003-01-24 06:13 · Score: 1

Hmm. This is an important point. The programmers/developers work hard. They try to write stuff they want to use. If it doesn't work well (or doesn't work well for YOU), then that shouldn't lessen your basic respect for their attempt. (It may or may not lessen your respect for their programming abilities, but that's valid)

I still stand by my original point: telling people to go write their own if they don't like it (because the source is there!!!) is a cheap cop-out, excuse for not taking responsibility for your own work.

But yeah, programmers deserve basic human respect.

--

"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Re:What's the point? by FreeUser · 2003-01-24 06:50 · Score: 2, Insightful

I am so SICK and TIRED of people mistaking the point of open source in this way!

You are the only one "mistaking" anything here. Free software is about freedom, freedom of choice, freedom to use (and reuse, modify, etc.) the software that runs and orders much of our lives.

If someone gives you a gift you have four choices, three of which are acceptable and one of which is completely contemptable.

1) accept the gift (graciously or with constructive criticism)
2) return the gift (with or without constructive criticism)
3) accept the gift and modify it to better suit your needs.
4) bitterly lambast the gift giver for their presumption in offering Your Holiness such a shoddy and unworthy gift, do so publicly, loudly, and with few criticisms even remotely applicable to the gift you've received.

JWZ did the latter (4), and deserves the contempt he has so richly earned, both for his lack of insight and comprehension of the very technology he is lambasting, and his lack of manners in doing so.

I am not a developer. I am not a programmer. I do not have the time, skills, or inclination to write a media player from scratch, or even fix one of the many broken ones.

You may not be, but JWZ is (or at least is leveraging his reputation of having once been a competent programmer), and instead of doing something he is perfectly capable of (or at least represents himself of being capable of), and for which free software and open source are specifically designed and intended, he has chosen instead to publicly vilify those who have given him a gift.

He is not only incompetent (staying married to an outdated distro and complaining he can't get current software to run seemlessly with it with no effort, something akin to complaining about the lack of support for MS Office 2000 on his old Windows 3.11 machine), he is rude, obnoxious, and above all wrong in almost all of his assertions, and if he had any honor he would, quite frankly, be very ashamed at having ever put up such a diatribe in a public place (which, in case you missed it, is exactly what a web page, even a personal one, is).

--
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Re:What's the point? by Zimm · 2003-01-24 07:03 · Score: 1

2) The OSS-given ability to (re)write software is not a de facto requirement to (re)write said software. It does not absolve the original programmers of their responsibilty to write non-crap
The original programmers responsibility is to produce non-crap by *Their* defenition, not yours. They are scratching *their* itch not yours. Sometimes the software they produce is valuable to others, sometimes not. Commercial software exists to scratch other peoples itches, maybe you should go there. Oh and if the commercial software "doesn't scratch your itch", then your screwed, since you can't just modify their code to your satisfaction.
Re:What's the point? by Hyler · 2003-01-24 07:12 · Score: 2, Funny

He is not only incompetent (staying married to an outdated distro and complaining he can't get current software to run seemlessly with it with no effort

I've said it before, some of the Linux aficionados suffer from severe Versionitis. You always have to have the latest version of everything, and often it is the minor version number (i.e. the 15 in 2.15) that matters in unexpected ways. "Oh, you want to use KFlarb 3.1.4.15? Then you have to have Blarglib 6.66. But the update patch for Blarglib has a dependency to Gnitzlib that you have to compile yourself. And Gnitzlib for some reason doesn't have version numbers, the developers for some reason chose a versioning scheme based on color and taste. You need Gnitzlib Blue.Minty, which comes with Debian Potato or is available at SourceForge."

Feel free to draw your own car analogies.

Why can't he use 7.2 if it works for him?

--
It's its. They're their, there. You're your. Who's whose? A looser loser, though those two too threw through the trough.
Re:What's the point? by NineNine · 2003-01-24 07:18 · Score: 0, Troll

You are the only one "mistaking" anything here. Free software is about freedom, freedom of choice, freedom to use (and reuse, modify, etc.) the software that runs and orders much of our lives.

It's also about the freedom to waste your time with utterly pointless crap. I put a DVD in my W2K box, it plays. I put a DVD in my PS2, it plays. I put a DVD in my DVD player, it plays. Anything more complicated than that is a waste of time. But hey, feel free to waste your own time!
Re:What's the point? by demon · 2003-01-24 07:38 · Score: 1

And if you have to buy it to find out if it scratches said itch or not, and it doesn't accomplish it, you don't get your money back. You can, of course, continue spending more and more money for bolt-on crap that may make it do what you want, however - they'll gladly keep taking your money.

--

Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Re:What's the point? by IamTheRealMike · 2003-01-24 08:15 · Score: 1

Why can't he use 7.2 if it works for him?
He can, but basically he's too lazy and ignorant. If he wanted to, he could install Totem direct from garnome, which involves extracting a tarball and typing "make install". Nothing to it. If you use an old distro, or want to be on the cutting edge, this is a good way to do it.
Nonetheless, he is bitching because oh golly gosh he'd have to install some new files. Note that Windows installers do this too. He appears to have missed the fact that you don't actually need to use gnome as your desktop to run gnome2 apps. He can use whatever bizarro desktop setup gives him kicks, and it'd still work.
Re:What's the point? by swordgeek · 2003-01-24 08:56 · Score: 1

In this particular case, I tend to agree with you with one exception:

"...with few criticisms even remotely applicable to the gift you've received."

Amongst all of the crap and spew that he posted, there were several valid criticisms of the product(s) he tried. Consider this:

(A) There are two ways he could have returned the 'unacceptable' gift while providing input. These are...
>>>"This fucking damned program is a pile of shit! It doesn't even do "X" right!!! What a bunch of fucktards."

and

>>>"I've tried and I've tried, but I just can't get "X" to work on this program. It seems to me that "X" is really a necessary feature of any program that claims to do (generic X-related function)."

The developer (and supporters) in turn, can respond in one of two ways.

>>>"If you don't like it, then write your own, asshole!"

or...

>>>"OK, valid point. I should be working on basic functionality and stability before toys (like skins)."

In a proper world, JWZ would complain in the second (polite) manner, and the developers would consider the complaint and respond in their second, constructive manner. (this is assuming that the complaint is valid in the first place)

JWZ complained in the first way, which is inexcusable. The manner, though, does not affect the amount of information in his diatribe.
The developers (or in this case their supporters on /.) responded in the first way, which helps even less(!) than JWZ's obnoxious complaint.

Worse yet is that I've seen the religion of OpenSourceSoftware be used as an excuse to reply to EVERY suggestion, complaint, or commentary with "fuck you, write it yourself."

And just as an aside, his "outdated distro" was released on the same date as Windows XP. If you have an OS that will run for two years without a reboot, but needs to be reinstalled every four months, then you're not very far ahead.

--

"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Re:What's the point? by DarkVein · 2003-01-24 09:25 · Score: 1
(which, in case you missed it, is exactly what a web page, even a personal one, is).

It would be a public place if:
- It was not owned by a private citizen.
- You could be exposed to events within by accident or intent
- It were not owned by a private citizen, or ownable by a private citizen
- You did not request to view the content, and the author/owner subsequently granted you permission.
The internet, let alone the small subset known as 'the web', is not a public place by any stretch of the imagination. It is more like millions of private book collectors spontaneously setting up a public-libarary-like lending system.
--
I'm as mimsy as the next borogove but your mome raths are completely outgrabe.
Re:What's the point? by _johnnyc · 2003-01-24 11:08 · Score: 1

I put a DVD in my W2K box, it plays.

Try to open an mp3 in win xp - it doesn't play.
Re:What's the point? by sheldon · 2003-01-24 13:00 · Score: 1

Try to open an mp3 in win xp - it doesn't play.

Will you eat a bar of soap if you are wrong?
Re:What's the point? by sheldon · 2003-01-24 13:02 · Score: 1

Furthermore, it denigrates the whole of the open source movement to something analagous to a hobby shop.

Uhh, Open Source is a hobby movement.

You're kidding yourself if you think otherwise.
Re:What's the point? by xyzzy · 2003-01-24 14:36 · Score: 1

Oop, silly me :-) You're right!

Heh.
Re:What's the point? by _johnnyc · 2003-01-25 07:07 · Score: 1

All I can say is a friend of mine's girlfriend bought an IBM XP box back in October, installed Kazaa, and tried to play an mp3. The message recieved was "You must upgrade your digital rights management workstation in order to play this file". The usual "OK" or "Cancel". After some bitching on my part ( I was asked to help them out), I chose OK. Nothing happened - not even a request to reboot. We waited, tried to play the file, but it wouldn't play. It didn't "just work". They had no idea what a DRM station was - they thought they had a computer that could play music.

Rebooted (what else?), and then clicked the file. After a pause, IE comes up with a an MS URL which redirects to a web page on the artist. How transparent is that? With the exception of RH 8, this would not be the case with any pre-configured Linux box.

In my experience, MS operating systems don't "just work", and I've supported all of them to a greater or lesser degree for the last 5 years. Things might work for a while, but then they break mysteriously. Ask the average user who knows next to nothing about Windows if it just works. Right now, I'd say Apple are the only vendor who can rightly make this claim, but even they occasionally miss the mark.

Mplayer, while a pain in the ass to install and configure, once done, is a joy to use. It plays almost anything you can throw at it and was developed by a small group of programmers for no wages. If somebody bought a preconfigured Linux box with Mplayer installed with sensible defaults, it would be as easy (though not as slick in the UI dept.) as WMP, and would certainly play more files.

Give me a sub-1000 dollar system and a decent Linux distro and I'll give you something that just works.

It's a mindset. (Stating the obvious). by Bollie · 2003-01-24 05:18 · Score: 3, Informative

Every single person I know who has played video on Linux (except DVDs) with MPlayer fell in love with it. Really, there are only six shortcut keys you need:

right, up : ffd ffffd
left, down : rev rrev
f : fullscreen
space : pause

That's 99.9% of what I do when I when I play movies and MPlayer does it REALLY well. No smegging around with codecs, plays broken .avi's as easily as non-broken ones AND now features Sorenson SVQ4 playback! Hint: keyboard is faster than mouse!

I'd really like to see this guy giving constructive criticisms. No, don't ask him to criticize my post, NO NO NO!

Re:It's a mindset. (Stating the obvious). by syle · 2003-01-24 05:24 · Score: 1

I imagine it would go something like, "Keyboards suck! What was that fucktard thinking!"

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/syle
Re:It's a mindset. (Stating the obvious). by CSG_SurferDude · 2003-01-24 05:27 · Score: 3, Funny

But what's the key to change NOW to a previously defined educational movie, for when you unexpectedly hear your spouse, GF|BF|SO, parent, etc. opening up the door of your bedroom/Office while you're watching the latest download of "Debbie Does Dobies!"?

--
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
Re:It's a mindset. (Stating the obvious). by 0xdeadbeef · 2003-01-24 05:31 · Score: 1

Every single person I know who has played video on Linux (except DVDs) with MPlayer fell in love with it.

That's because they're using it to watch pr0n. It's called operant conditioning, look it up.
Re:It's a mindset. (Stating the obvious). by PDHoss · 2003-01-24 05:32 · Score: 1

Get the secret weapon on Level 4: up up down down left right left right a b fire.

I think JWZ's comments here are more that it should be logical and intuitive, not that it should be possible with assorted keyboard commands.

--
======================================
Writers get in shape by pumping irony.
Re:It's a mindset. (Stating the obvious). by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:38 · Score: 0

whats more logical than the right arrow fast forwarding?
Re:It's a mindset. (Stating the obvious). by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:43 · Score: 0

First off: I like mplayer in general. They are doing a kick-ass job of getting codecs integrated into their builds.

However - mplayer still does a *REALLY* poor job with sound in the videos. On all three of my very different machines, using fast forward or rewind from the keyboard causes the sound to get out of sync with the video. And you can't get it back. This has always been the case and noone cares enough to get it fixed (I even tried.) I guess watching pr0n all day means never having to rewind to see the double-penetration scenes over and over.
Re:It's a mindset. (Stating the obvious). by damiam · 2003-01-24 05:43 · Score: 1

Sawfish, and probably most other window managers, makes it trivial to map "killall mplayer; mplayer ~/educational.avi" to any key combo you want.

--
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Re:It's a mindset. (Stating the obvious). by CSG_SurferDude · 2003-01-24 05:44 · Score: 1

Get the secret weapon on Level 4: up up down down left right left right a b fire.
Ooooooh, so that's what it is.
I've been trying: up down up down up down left right up down FIRE.
I mean, hey, it works with my wife, after all. ;-)

--
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
Re:It's a mindset. (Stating the obvious). by glwtta · 2003-01-24 05:46 · Score: 1

space : pause
Speaking of which, what genious decided that Windows Media Player should no longer do this in the later versions? I still haven't figured out how to make that damn thing pause in full-screen mode; and hey, I don't have any problems using Xine.

--
sic transit gloria mundi
Re:It's a mindset. (Stating the obvious). by PetiePooo · 2003-01-24 05:46 · Score: 4, Insightful

Ok, here's some constructive criticism:

From his article (and FWIW, I am in total agreement):
... it's a total pain in the ass to use due to rampant "themeing." Why do people do this? They map this stupid shaped window with no titlebar (oh, sorry, your choice of a dozen stupidly-shaped windows without titlebars) all of which use fonts that are way too small to read.

One of the reasons M$ Windows has done so well is that it looks the same from one machine to another and from one program to another. If I have Windows on my computer, I know how to use your Windows computer. If you know how to use Word, you know how to use Excel. The menus are in the same order and have largely the same items. The active titlebar is a different color from the inactive ones, and clicking on it raises that window to the top. Standard, default appearances and actions! How WinXP is turning it into a Fischer-Price toy is a rant for a different day..

One of the most well liked "themed" programs for Windows is WinAMP. I submit to you that one of the reasons it was so well accepted is that the default skin looked like a normal window! Only the color and size were different. That meant that my mom (BTW, she still can't spell WWW..) knew how to resize it, move it and close it.. Instead of having a round volume control, like a home audio componenet, it had a slider bar, like a *gasp* PROGRAM! (Clue for those that need one: WinAMP is a program.)

Developers, if you want to give your interface themes and skins and other "fluff", by all means, knock yourself out. However, the default skin should be one that implements the interface as it would appear without a skin. Please! For everyone out there how likes to make their computer look like Fantasia, there are probably more of us who like it to look like a computer.

</rant> Call me old fashioned...
Re:It's a mindset. (Stating the obvious). by Dan+Ost · 2003-01-24 05:48 · Score: 1

Shouldn't that be: up up down down left right left right b a select start?

--

*sigh* back to work...
Re:It's a mindset. (Stating the obvious). by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:50 · Score: 0

The coin-op lacks a select button...
Re:It's a mindset. (Stating the obvious). by CSG_SurferDude · 2003-01-24 06:03 · Score: 1

Shouldn't that be: up up down down left right left right b a select start?
Well, On the Nintendo Gamecube, it's: Shouldn't that be: up up down down left right left right b a Z start. They need to use that Z button for something. ;-)

--
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
Re:It's a mindset. (Stating the obvious). by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 07:20 · Score: 0

Contra?
Re:It's a mindset. (Stating the obvious). by alannon · 2003-01-24 09:34 · Score: 1

It's control-p. Yes, seriously. Or maybe alt-p. can't remember.

I had to look it up in the help files. What a bunch of loons.
Re:It's a mindset. (Stating the obvious). by DrCode · 2003-01-24 09:53 · Score: 1

I agree completely. Plus, the first time I used mplayer, I right-clicked on the viewing window, and saw a standard popup menu with all the choices I would need. So what is there to complain about?
Re:It's a mindset. (Stating the obvious). by cobar · 2003-01-24 09:54 · Score: 1

I totally agree with this. It's the only technical fault in mplayer. If you need someone else to complain about it, let me know and I'll chime in.
Re:It's a mindset. (Stating the obvious). by juhaz · 2003-01-24 10:08 · Score: 1

I don't now why, or when the trend has started (maybe it's reading, left from right...), but direction "right" is generally associated as more, or forward, and "left" as backwards.

So light and left arrows as fast forward buttons do make perfect sense, they are intuitive and logical.

Space is pause in LOTS of video players, whether they are on linux and not, so copying it is also perfectly logical, since it's the first place someone that has used any video player at all will search. Not only that, but it's biggest key and easy to find and press quickly. F stands for fullscreen, but maybe the fucktard can't spell.

What exactly DO you find to be not logical and unintuitive in those "assorted keyboard commands", all four of them?

Worst of all, the troll is (or so it seems, I've never heard of "JWZ" before) emacs freak, and HE has guts to comply about few simple keyboard commands? Did he forget to take his medicines or something?
Re:It's a mindset. (Stating the obvious). by analog_line · 2003-01-24 13:55 · Score: 1

I use mplayer for all my computer video needs as well. Even on my Macs (save the ones it's too much of a hog for, or for regular Quicktime, which I don't have much call for) I use the version of mplayer that has been compiled and given a simple GUI for MacOS 10.2.

However, the mplayer development team are a bunch of pig-headed idiots. If there was something else that played the stuff I needed to play, I would jump right to it. Unfortunately, if you're able to figure out exactly what you need, and are actually able to get it working (try even COMPILING mplayer on a stock RedHat 7.x install without it complaining to high heaven about the gcc version...I don't know about you, but I don't trust myself to change the version of gcc on my system without screwing every possible dependency up) it's the most fully functional media file player I've found. I've never found anything that I can't play with my compiled version of mplayer. It doesn't change the fact that they INTENTIONALLY make it a pain in the ass to do almost anything. They've got a serious attitude, and while it's their right, I don't feel any sympathy for them being called to task for their blatant user-unfriendliness.

I don't care about skinning. I've never actually had enough patience to get the GUI working for it, so I don't know how crappy it is or isn't. Xine's GUI is a completely unwieldy piece of crap. I haven't bothered to look elsewhere, 'cause I finally learned how to make mplayer do what I needed it to do, but DAMN did they go out of their way to make it difficult.
Re:It's a mindset. (Stating the obvious). by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-25 23:57 · Score: 0

Developers, if you want to give your interface themes and skins and other "fluff", by all means, knock yourself out. However, ....
(emphasis added)
When you come to, write the interface using native controls instead of making your users guess what you had in mind.

EMacs... by dark-br · 2003-01-24 05:20 · Score: 5, Funny

All that said, if you dont like it the way it is, break out your EMacs, and Write something better, otherwise, quit bitching!

But i was sure EMacs has its own built in movie player :P

Re:EMacs... by WWWWolf · 2003-01-24 06:53 · Score: 1

But i was sure EMacs has its own built in movie player :P

Haven't seen a movie player yet, but seeing how TiMidity (software synth MIDI player) got its Emacs interface a year or two after the program was released, I expect the same to happen to XINE, sooner... or... later...
(The timidity-el interface is awesome, by the way. It makes most vi fanatics screeaaaaammm.)

Where's the review? by Izang · 2003-01-24 05:20 · Score: 1

"Uh, no. I've seen the horror of Red Hat 8.0, and there's no fucking way I'm putting Gnome2 on any more of my machines for at least another six months, maybe a year."

What a jackass.

This isn't a review of video on Linux. It's a mindless rant written by someone that does not want to compile anything or upgrade.

I fully concur by GMFTatsujin · 2003-01-24 05:21 · Score: 4, Insightful

With his gripe about custome interfaces. Xine is a desktop nightmare. Ditto with most of the other multimedia players I've encountered. They sacrifice high-tech intuitive controls for some made-up high-tech LOOK.

I'd rather just be able to find the play button and get the damn thing out of the way.

When I set up a theme on my desktop, I expect it to be constant, even if it's just the default. I understand this means making an app work with KDE or Gnome or whatever, but it seems to me that that's less work that scraping a graphic interface together from scratch. Skins are for the desktop manager, not the apps themselves, IMHO.

Then there's the issue of the half-completed custom interface that jars from one look to another. For instance - why does the XMMS "browse/open" window look so awful? The rest of the app looks very nice, or is at least non-intrusive to my eyeballs. It's small, it's tight, and it looks like other players I'm familiar with. But when I try to open an MP3, I get this horrific, generic, huge freaking window to browse around in. Yuck. XMMS is the #1 recommended playing app, too, but it doesn't seem to fit in with any window manager beyond generic X.

If someone can recommend an MP3 player that just fits my desktop, I'd be ever so grateful.
GMFTatsujin

Re:I fully concur by mccalli · 2003-01-24 05:37 · Score: 3, Interesting

[I fully concur]...with his gripe about custom interfaces. Xine is a desktop nightmare. Ditto with most of the other multimedia players I've encountered. They sacrifice high-tech intuitive controls for some made-up high-tech LOOK.
Absolutely. Sadly, this follows you around by platform too. The Linux apps tend to have it, Windows apps certainly do (there are some terrible offenders bundled with sound cards), and Apple with its Quicktime player does as well.
Apple in particular ought to know better. Standards are standards for good reason, and a consistent user-interface is key. The writer of The Apple Human Interface Guidelines, which was written years ago for System 7 and which I still retain my copy of even though I'm no longer on a Mac, has many relevant things to say about such nonsense.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:I fully concur by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:46 · Score: 0

Check out rhythmbox...

http://www.rhythmbox.org/

It may not be finished yet, but it does NOT use some crappy skinned interface, and it has a lot of cool features.
Re:I fully concur by damiam · 2003-01-24 05:47 · Score: 1

Rhythmbox is built for GNOME 2 and gstreamer, and fits right in on a GNOME desktop (KDE too, if you're using Bluecurve or Keramik/Geramik). It takes a little effort to get working right now, but it should become a lot easier once GNOME 2.2 final is released in a month or so.

--
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Re:I fully concur by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:53 · Score: 0

> With his gripe about custome interfaces. Xine is a desktop nightmare. Ditto with most of the other multimedia players I've encountered. They sacrifice high-tech intuitive controls for some made-up high-tech LOOK.
> I'd rather just be able to find the play button and get the damn thing out of the way.

I can only suggest, "try Ogle". It has a normal-looking control panel, no special skinning.
Re:I fully concur by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:57 · Score: 0

I usually use freeamp instead of XMMS, and it works really well. The thing about mplayer, though, is that it also plays mp3s and .ogg files from a comand line, you don't even need X running, or you can just get another terminal open. And being able to use regular expression to make a quick playlist for mplayer is kind of fun.
Re:I fully concur by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · 2003-01-24 06:24 · Score: 1

Yeah, everybody makes a false start occasionally. The original QuickTime Player 4 UI was an experiment in making the program's UI resemble a physical device, with knobs and slide-out panels instead of more traditional controls. The experiment largely failed. Some of the aspects of it went into the Aqua UI design, but most were simply dropped. The current QuickTime Player UI-- now at version 6.1-- looks totally traditional: five standard round buttons with the standard cue-to-start, rewind, play/pause, fast-forward, cue-to-end icons found on every VCR/VTR, and a slider for the volume control.

--

I write in my journal
Re:I fully concur by WWWWolf · 2003-01-24 06:42 · Score: 1

Actually, I found XMMS user interface pretty... odd. The UI itself mimics Winamp in both good and bad - with a clean theme, it's usable. The default skin is horribly dark, though, they should have kept the old one or at least made the "GTK+" theme default.
Yeah, I'd prefer full native user interface more, because the custom GUIs have the tendency to infuriate. I found Rhythmbox, which looks pretty neat on GNOME2 and doesn't do its own theming (And behavior mimics iTunes rather than Winamp), but as it depends on gstreamer it's still somewhat buggy (No app that uses gstreamer can open files that have spaces in the pathname? What the hell? It is year 2003, folks...)
Re:I fully concur by Qzukk · 2003-01-24 08:31 · Score: 2, Insightful

When I set up a theme on my desktop, I expect it to be constant, even if it's just the default.

Hm, I'm having a hard time figuring out if you're talking about window decorations or something else. I agree, *every* program should have a way to force it to use the wm's current window decorations.

If you're talking about something else, like some kind of widget theme, its just not going to happen. Basically you would be asking for someone to write their program in everything at once, lest they slight a GTK+ theme user, a KDE theme user, a Gnome theme user, and so on. Heck, KDE/Qt is (primarialy) C++, GTK+ is (primarialy) C. I think I've seen it done before... figure out what environment you're in, then start using the proper widget set. But that has to be *evil* to code.

--
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Re:I fully concur by drinkypoo · 2003-01-24 10:03 · Score: 1

It's pretty funny, the best software player for ATI cards (software cineplayer) has approximately the worst interface I have ever seen in a software DVD player. (I never actually got to SEE the interface under linux, it wouldn't build with a GUI. Nice going, folks.) Some programmers have long ago figured out that if you make something evocative of a physical device it works out well, but if you try too hard to emulate the device completely it turns out to be a pain in the ass.
As far as I know the only software DVD player with a consistent windows interface is WiMP 9. You can also embed software DVD into various other applications (like zoomplayer) but zoomplayer is by no means a standard windows app in look and feel.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:I fully concur by Trepalium · 2003-01-24 11:21 · Score: 1

Standard ROUND buttons? I was under the impression that most buttons on computers were square or rectangular. Even for a Mac, which has rounded buttons, they're still not circles. Quicktime Player, 4, 5 or even 6 are still skinned applications that are a usability problem. You can't make Quicktime out of the OS supplied widgets without making custom bitmaps, therefore it's still skinned. Apple, in this case, ought to take some notes from Microsoft's Windows Media Player 6.4 (not 7 or later). Aside from the extraneous stuff that is removed in "compact" mode, and the hot tracking buttons, the UI is clear and easy to use. A few more hotkeys would be nice (cursor key seeking ala MPlayer, for example), but it uses virtually no custom widgets.
Now, I admit I don't use a Macintosh, but if I did, I still wouldn't like Quicktime Player.

--
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Re:I fully concur by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · 2003-01-25 05:15 · Score: 1

I was under the impression that most buttons on computers were square or rectangular. Even for a Mac, which has rounded buttons, they're still not circles.

Your impression is flawed. NSButtons can be rounded, rectangular, bezeled, or (ta-da) round.

Quicktime Player, 4, 5 or even 6 are still skinned applications that are a usability problem.

How do you define "skinned?" QuickTime Player is not NIB-based, if that's what you mean, but it uses standard controls.

Now, I admit I don't use a Macintosh

Oh, okay. That explains why you seem to be wrong about everything. Suggestion: go to an Apple Store or a friend's house and actually use QuickTime Player on a Mac. Then come back and share informed criticism.

--

I write in my journal
Re:I fully concur by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-27 10:58 · Score: 0

Your impression is flawed
ONLY at Slashdot could some egotisitcal asshole get away with typing something so remarkably stupid. This one sentence summarizes Slashdot more accurately than anything I have ever seen.
Re:I fully concur by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-27 16:11 · Score: 0

Actually, the remarkably stupid one was the guy who said that buttons can't be round. Twirlip was right on.

Oh, and of course you were remarkably stupid for criticizing Twirlip. You should know better.

This also applies to XMMS by Avumede · 2003-01-24 05:21 · Score: 5, Interesting

I've been saying the same things about skinnable interfaces for a while now. I've never found one that is acceptable. Look at xmms and winamp skins. I'd say 70% are just plain ugly, 30% are good to beautify, and 100% (as far as I've seen) are unusable. When they have text at all, they have tiny unreadable fonts. They have buttons that don't look like buttons, and they are bitmapped so you can't resize it like a normal app.

When I got a Mac and started using iTunes, I was a much happier person.

Re:This also applies to XMMS by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:36 · Score: 0

duh.. iTunes is just a skinned app.. its supposed to look like a radio or something, it doesn't use standard menu bar along the top of the screen like the rest of the Mac apps.
Re:This also applies to XMMS by Avumede · 2003-01-24 06:09 · Score: 1

What? Of course iTunes has a standard menubar at the top. It MIGHT not have one in it's collapsed mode, which is what you might be thinking of. I rarely run in that mode, so I can't say for sure.
Re:This also applies to XMMS by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 07:18 · Score: 0

Why wouldn't it have a standard menubar at the top?

That would be totally screwed, and unlike every other app on the Mac. So obviously, it does have the menu.

Of course, it's still a contextual menu, and *isn't* iTunes unless iTunes is the app that's focused. When iTunes is small, it's usually not the focused app...
Re:This also applies to XMMS by IamTheRealMike · 2003-01-24 07:43 · Score: 1

Wierd. I'm the exact opposite. I prefer the XMMS/WinAmp UI to iTunes any day.
I find iTunes to take up way too much space for what it does, it looks dumb (brushed metal? that's the kind of skin my little brother would make in photoshop) and it's boring as hell.
As it happens, I organize my own music, so having a simple playlist is what's best. I like being able to skin my player, because I can make it fit with whatever visual style looks good to me. Note, that doesn't make it harder to use. Skins like in XMMS don't actually change the UI at all, the buttons are in the same place, the windows are the same - in fact, everything is the same. Loads of my non-geek friends use WinAmp, often with different skins, and they never have problems using their mates computers.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder of course, but really no platform is completely consistant, because the human eye craves variety. Why do we decorate our walls, why are our houses all layed out differently? It's about being personal, which is why skins are so popular. If they suddenly made an app far harder to use, would anybody use skinned apps? Yet WinAmp is very popular.
Anyway, the idea that Windows or the Mac are consistant is rubbish. Both Microsoft and Apple have introduced new visual styles that they inconsistantly apply themselves, the .NET style on Windows and brushed-metal on MacOS. Yet somehow they survive.
Re:This also applies to XMMS by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 08:54 · Score: 0

maybe you didnt use the right skin...

i use the swank skin (Swankamp)... i've been using it since 2.11.
Re:This also applies to XMMS by meehawl · 2003-01-24 09:41 · Score: 1

When I got a Mac and started using iTunes, I was a much happier person.

That's probably because you never got to play with Media Jukebox. But yeah, most skins for most players seem to have been done by deranged schizophrenics on PCP.

--

Da Blog
Re:This also applies to XMMS by cobar · 2003-01-24 09:50 · Score: 1

But at least XMMS and esp. Winamp have mildly useable skins as their default. The simple default skin for Winamp never impeded me in using the program - the cd player paradigm they use is familiar. So even though most of the skins suck hard, users bring it on themselves when they install the crap skins.

MPlayer has skin issues regardless of which one you use, because you can't figure out what half the buttons do, regardless of which skin you choose (including the default). Not to mention that the gui itself doesn't work all that well - two different playlists, no way to play out of the playlist, issues with the volume control.

The important thing is that skin support not be a substitute for usability. But for non-production apps like media players and games, themes are perfectly fine. Just get the default right.
Re:This also applies to XMMS by bahwi · 2003-01-24 12:45 · Score: 1

"When I got a Mac and started using iTunes, I was a much happier person."

Yeah, but this is out of the question for JWZ because it doesn't have the "Super Easy To Use, Excellent GUI, No Difficult/Confusing Keyboard Controls/Can Learn in 2 Seconds XEmacs" yet.

Hmm, something about his rant and his other rant don't meet with each other.

He 110% rigth ! by denisbergeron · 2003-01-24 05:22 · Score: 2, Interesting

And you cna say the same thing about any apps under Linux. (except the K and G apps)
They never use any existing widget, and build new widget to build they app, the widget was crappy like the app. The Apps is never complete neider the widget.

And Even with K and G apps, you have to get the right version of the libs XYZ on your computer, and if you have a 2 days olds distribution, you just don't have the more recent libs, and the apps will never work.

Linux application and backward compatibility with recent distribution is just not here.

And even if you use and distribution with the apps comming with the distribution you have the problem. I install Suse or Mandrake, and I never manage to get a KDE media player to run.

-Denis B

--
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !

you read it by merbywerby · 2003-01-24 05:22 · Score: 1

" Whenever a programmer thinks, "Hey, skins, what a cool idea", their computer's speakers should create some sort of cock-shaped soundwave and plunge it repeatedly through their skulls.

I am fully in support of this proposed audio-cock technology. "

His big mistake.. by robbo · 2003-01-24 05:23 · Score: 1

Jamie, your mistake was that you tried to install prebuilt binaries. Granted, there are UI issues with all of these players, but I'll only trust beta software to function on my machine if I build it from source. Otherwise you can almost guarantee that those RH 7.2 rpms were actually built on a 6.2 box using libc5 and exporting to deb and then back to rpm, or some other such nonsense.

--
So long, and thanks for all the Phish

Don't use the MPlayer GUI by narfbot · 2003-01-24 05:23 · Score: 2, Informative

Using MPlayer as the command prompt is the way to go. It works beautifly. Here are some options:

-vo device
Selects video output device. Some output devices like sdl, dga, and vesa will automatically select resolutions to fit your video. No resizing required.

-fs
The fullscreen option. It centers the image, sizes to your resolution, keeping the aspect ratio.

-zoom number
Like -fs but number is the factor to change the x/y size.

Examples for full screen play/better resizing:
mplayer -vo vesa file.avi
mplayer -fs file.avi
mplayer -zoom 2 file.avi

Re:Don't use the MPlayer GUI by dnaumov · 2003-01-24 05:36 · Score: 1

Have you READ the actual article ?

Various people wrote:

You shouldn't even bother compiling the GUI into mplayer!

So I should solve the problem of ``crappy GUI'' by replacing it with ``no GUI at all?'' I should use the program only from the command line, or by memorizing magic keystrokes? Awesome idea.

In case you don't get it, that was sarcasm from the author and I tend to fully agree with him. Why do I have to specify a video output device in the first place ? Why can't it figure out the best one to use on it's own ? Fullscreen ? Oh great, so now I should watch videos in EITHER fullscreen OR not, but I can't switch back in forth without closing down the player and opening it again (when using the CLI). Welcome to 1990 !
Re:Don't use the MPlayer GUI by dnaumov · 2003-01-24 05:40 · Score: 1

Doh, I should correct myself, apparently you CAN go "back and forth" between a fullscreen and non-fullscreen modes by using the "f" button.
Re:Don't use the MPlayer GUI by damiam · 2003-01-24 05:49 · Score: 1

Why do I have to specify a video output device in the first place ? Why can't it figure out the best one to use on it's own ?
You don't, and it does. However, for those with buggy xv drivers (such as everyone with a R300 Radeon - you listening, ATI?), it can be nice to have that option.
Oh great, so now I should watch videos in EITHER fullscreen OR not, but I can't switch back in forth without closing down the player and opening it again
Sure you can. Push 'f'. It's all in the mplayer documentation.

--
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Re:Don't use the MPlayer GUI by Mr.Dippy · 2003-01-24 05:52 · Score: 0

I've been a casual user of Linux now for about 1.5 years. Although I haven't had to much trouble with it (installations, installing new apps, etc.) it still has a ways to go. If you guys want Linux to be in prime time, you have to start building a system and apps don't require the command prompt for 100% efficiency. What little old lady or freakin secretary or non-computer literate bimbo is going to choose Linux or windows? Hey look I can click on a executable file and install an app on XP. But hell if I want to install an app on my linux box I have to compile the program with a new library. Then if i want to make it run I have to type a bunch of commands. Don't get me wrong, I like the option of all this. I like how the system is open ended and with a little smarts and adventerous attitude you can do anything on Linux. But, JMZ's rant had a point. Windows Media Player, Real Player, etc. plays everything right out of the box. It's called user friendly.

--

-Dipster
Re:Don't use the MPlayer GUI by narfbot · 2003-01-24 06:04 · Score: 1

You don't have to specify an output device if you don't want to. In X, it will just default to xv, which is good enough for anything. It's just, you might like a different output device, but you gotta try it.

And where you almost forgot, you can use the f key in the player to switch between fullscreen or not.

That leaves -zoom, which does what he wants, but if you can't handle just this one command, then you can just remember the f key.

Seriously? What's so hard about remembering a few options to do what you want? I don't know all the options, just the ones I need. If you really don't want to type it in, just put them in .config/mplayer Heck, also just associate videos in your window manager with mplayer, that way you never have to see a prompt.

The MPlayer GUI, can do pretty much the same as the non-GUI, except the GUI doesn't work like people think it should. So... How hard is it to send in a patch for a simple scaling issue? If you GUI-attached people really want something like that, then do it.
Re:Don't use the MPlayer GUI by treat · 2003-01-24 06:12 · Score: 1

Sure you can. Push 'f'. It's all in the mplayer documentation.
f only switches into fullscreen mode. It does not switch out.
Re:Don't use the MPlayer GUI by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:12 · Score: 0

yepp he dosent even need mplayer gui he is probobly using kde way not let kde asosciate all movie files with mplayer.
just one klick att an movie to play f for fullscreen arowkeys for jumping in the file i dont understand whay that sems so hard for him
Re:Don't use the MPlayer GUI by narfbot · 2003-01-24 06:13 · Score: 1

MPlayer plays more than Real Player, or Windows Media Player. And it will work as a GUI just fine for the old ladies. KDE will automatically associate MPlayer (maybe the GUI I don't know). And the old lady wont even care about a simple scaling issue in the GUI (a patch would be ridicously easy), because she won't really even notice. If it's a skin problem, I'm sure there is a good one, or just make one already that works. I bet it's not hard. New ones come up all the time.
Re:Don't use the MPlayer GUI by 1967+Ferrari+312 · 2003-01-24 06:33 · Score: 1

It certainly does on my machine, and I have the "stock" RH7.3 RPMS installed.
Re:Don't use the MPlayer GUI by Dionysus · 2003-01-24 07:01 · Score: 1

Seriously? What's so hard about remembering a few options to do what you want? I don't know all the options, just the ones I need.
If you have to look up the manual to do basic operations of the application (in this case, play, rewind, fforward, fullscreen), then I would say there are some serious issues with the usability of the application.
It has nothing to do with memorizing some keystrokes.

--
Je ne parle pas francais.
Re:Don't use the MPlayer GUI by damiam · 2003-01-24 07:48 · Score: 1

It does switch out. Make sure the mplayer fullscreen "window" has focus by clicking on it.

--
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.

Brilliant by Idimmu+Xul · 2003-01-24 05:24 · Score: 1

JWZ is not just a comical genius, he says it like it is. For some video playback might be ok, say if you have Xine, MPlayer and GStreamer installed so you can cover all the different video formats, but even with them installed I found it hard to play dvds, often needing to specify which vob at a time to play, anyone who has dvds of concerts, e.g. Metallica S&M, will know how much of a pain that is.

3 media players that dont really work is never going to help Linux conquer the desktop. MS only has one, that does work!

--
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!

Re:Brilliant by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:45 · Score: 0

Yeah, I finally got aroud to wiping my home machine that was running win98 for games last night. I installed redhat 8, installed nvidia drivers, got mplayer, downloaded the font and codec files, hit compile, and every video I could get my hands on worked. Ok, this took me about 4 hours total (my cdrom drive sucks). I'm no expert, I'm just willing to RTFM and follow the instructions, its not black magic, and it worked first time around. I fail to see what is constructive about that review, much less see the "genius" you are talking about.
Re:Brilliant by dnaumov · 2003-01-24 06:02 · Score: 1

That's yet another problem. WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO RTFM ? In Windows, I can double-click the installer, "Next", "Next", "OK" adn it's done. Double-clicking the video will now open the file in the newly installed player. No downloading of fonts, no compiling and no RTFM'ing whatsoever.
Re:Brilliant by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:23 · Score: 0

whine whine.. why do I have to READ!!

just stick to windows xp, please. it doesn't make you less of man if you use windows.
Re:Brilliant by vadim_t · 2003-01-24 07:25 · Score: 1

Oh, sure, and when you use a car you expect that the car drives itself where you want to go?

If you don't want to RTFM, just use windows. I'll be happy to see one annoying person less in the Linux IRC channels.
Re:Brilliant by dnaumov · 2003-01-24 08:04 · Score: 1

If that's the attitude, don't claim Linux is for everyone.
Re:Brilliant by vadim_t · 2003-01-24 08:41 · Score: 1

When did I claim it was for everyone? In fact, I don't want it to be for everyone, I'm happy with how it is now.
Re:Brilliant by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 11:17 · Score: 0

People like you are the worst aspect of the linux community.
Re:Brilliant by vadim_t · 2003-01-24 12:05 · Score: 1

Why, because I don't think Linux should be more windows-like? I think you didn't understand me.

I like Linux because of the way it works, which is the same reason why I don't like Windows. I don't think it needs to be more user friendly, I like the command line.

If you want to have an OSS Windows-like system, that's fine by me. If you don't like that Linux is hard to use, don't whine. Do something! Join usability projects, email developers with your suggestions, build frontends. There are many things you can do even if you can't program.

Hurts when he's right, huh? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:24 · Score: 3, Insightful

I wonder how much effort was wasted on themes
that only make video players terribly hard to
use. I'v got good eyesight, and I can't even
make out what is what with those damn crapplets.

Absolutely Horrible Slashdot Story by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:24 · Score: 0

How in the world did this leak through? I didn't know Slashdot would "publish" this kind of ranting...

Typical Redhat User? by eean · 2003-01-24 05:24 · Score: 0, Troll

One thing this article does is confirm all my negative sterotypes of Redhat users. Does he even care about the formats these players can play? He only seems to care about the superficial things. All he mentions is that Ogle can only play DVD. Well, duh, its a DVD player. And of course he complains about installing stuff, well, gosh, then stop using Redhat. I used Mandrake until I got sick of RPM, now I'm a gentoo user.

I have found mplayer to be the best DivX player for Windows or Linux. It plays DivX's other players give up on, it has a lot of tolerance for bad DivX's. My windows-using friend had to come over to my room to watch an anime DivX that wouldn't even start on his computer. I havn't really used xine much, it could be just as good especially considering they use a lot of the same libraries. I agree, the interfaces aren't the best. It really annoys me that the mplayer-gui has a distracting scrolling marquee. But I just watch it in full-screen mode (push 'f' and then double click the video to make the gui disappear). But is that the most important thing? Especially considering that if you watch a lot of videos, its well worth it to pick up the keyboard commands, their easy to pick up unlike the Windows conterparts which have various odd key combinations to do something as simple as fullscreen.

So tell me this.... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:26 · Score: 0

....who the f*ck is JWZ, and why should I give a good g*dd*mn what he/she/it thinks?

The #1 problem is motion artifacts by bmidgley · 2003-01-24 05:26 · Score: 1

I have experimented with xine and mplayer and both of them have problems with motion artifacts. The bottom line is they don't observe the vertical blank period so the timing of frames matches up with the vertical scan of the viewer. If you project onto a large screen these artifacts really begin to be a drag.

I tried fbsync with xine, which is supposed to remove "cutting" artifacts in which a left/right pan results in the top half of the screen showing frame n and the bottom showing n+1. fbsync may reduce cutting but panning is still rough. I feel like I'm going to be seasick as a pan results in a wobbly feel. I'm not convinced it's better than cutting artifacts.

I tried mplayer with -double to do double buffering but I couldn't figure out how to sync with vertical blank. I tried vesa driver and xv drivers but still saw cutting.

I have my linux box plugged into an lcd projector. I want to use linux for it because I like having an open player that should integrate with stuff I do now (lirc remote) and want to do later (juke box, pvr). I am sticking with xine for now. I may try to set up one of the hardware mpeg2 decoders if the artifacts aren't addressed. I just hope, now that xine has dvdnav, that quality is the next big focus.

This guy is an idiot by Gordonjcp · 2003-01-24 05:26 · Score: 0, Troll

If you download something for free, and it doesn't do what you want, you have two choices. Fix it or don't use it.

JWZ should learn how to program and work on his own video player, if he's so unhappy. MPlayer works just great for me, although I don't like any of the skins either. No reason not to make one I do like, though.

Resizing the window changes the aspect ratio of the video! Yeah, I'm sure someone has ever wanted that.

Does anyone actually play video in a resized window? Surely only "normal" size and fullscreen are ever used? By the way, Windows Media Player up to version 6 at least did the same trick.

I should use the program only from the command line, or by memorizing magic keystrokes? Awesome idea.

Yeeeeeees... Because of course, mplayer is so hard to remember. Pretty much every media player I've seen can be configured to whatever control keys you want, although left and right for back and next, and space for pause seems pretty sensible.

In conclusion, this guy is a cretin. If he doesn't like what's available on Linux (and indeed other Unices) for free, both as in beer and as in speech, he should go and buy a copy of Windows XP.

Re:This guy is an idiot by banky · 2003-01-24 05:30 · Score: 3, Informative

>JWZ should learn how to program
Implementing Netscape on Unix, and working on Mozilla, doesn't count?

--
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
Re:This guy is an idiot by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:43 · Score: 0

It obviously doesn't prevent you from making an ass of yourself in public, does it?
Re:This guy is an idiot by Paulo · 2003-01-24 05:57 · Score: 1

JWZ should learn how to program

Bwhahahahahaha!!!!

Somebody give a "-1 Clueless" to this guy.
Re:This guy is an idiot by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:15 · Score: 0

JWZ should learn how to program

Yeah. Personally, I would suggest he starts by forking Emacs and calling it XEmacs. Then he can move onto a web browser for Unix. Maybe he can call it, I don't know, Netscape. Once he has done that, then he can get involved with an Open Source web browse. That one should be called Mozilla or something.

Kids this days have no idea and no respect. Why don't you do as much as JWZ has done, and then maybe you can call him and idiot. Until that happens, show some respect.
Re:This guy is an idiot by Senjutsu · 2003-01-24 06:17 · Score: 4, Informative

JWZ should learn how to program and work on his own video player, if he's so unhappy.

So, uh, yeah, JWZ wrote XEmacs (Lucid Emacs), the Unix version of Netscape, and was instrumental in getting the Mozilla project up and running. What the fuck have you done, again?

Does anyone actually play video in a resized window? Surely only "normal" size and fullscreen are ever used? By the way, Windows Media Player up to version 6 at least did the same trick.

Oh, I didn't realize that a shitty "feature" is ok, as long as some old version of windows software did the same thing. After all, the point of any free software project isn't to create an excellent program in its own right, its just to emulate the equivalent windows version, flaws and all, right?

Because of course, mplayer is so hard to remember.

He was responding to the "advice" that to make MPlayer truely usable, he should simply not compile in the UI. You've got to admit, thats a truly, painfully shitty comment on the state of MPlayer's interface. It doesn't matter how easy you think the damn keystrokes are to remember, its still a fucking usability nightmare when the best piece of advice you can get is "Don't even bother to compile the UI"
Re:This guy is an idiot by leviramsey · 2003-01-24 08:05 · Score: 1

JWZ should learn how to program

Somebody give a "-1 Clueless" to this guy.

I say someone should give "-1 Easily trolled" to Paulo.
Re:This guy is an idiot by Gordonjcp · 2003-01-24 09:19 · Score: 1

XEmacs and Netscape are hardly the poster children of good software, are they? XEmacs is such an entertainingly baroque heap of stuff, it defies belief.
Re:This guy is an idiot by Paulo · 2003-01-24 11:47 · Score: 1

After reading the majority of the comments in this story, I seriously doubt it. Unless Slashdot is in a much worse shape than what I thought. Which, hey...
Re:This guy is an idiot by Hurga · 2003-01-24 16:35 · Score: 1

So, uh, yeah, JWZ wrote XEmacs (Lucid Emacs)

I think I could say MUCH worse things about the UI of Emacs than what JWZ said in his article about video players.

Hurga
Re:This guy is an idiot by meringuoid · 2003-01-25 12:58 · Score: 1

Does anyone actually play video in a resized window? Surely only "normal" size and fullscreen are ever used? By the way, Windows Media Player up to version 6 at least did the same trick.
Oh, I didn't realize that a shitty "feature" is ok, as long as some old version of windows software did the same thing. After all, the point of any free software project isn't to create an excellent program in its own right, its just to emulate the equivalent windows version, flaws and all, right?
As a matter of fact, I _do_ play video in a resized window. I've got a bunch of videos in a wide variety of resolutions, most of which are too small on my 1600x1200 desktop. But I don't want fullscreen because I'm doing something else at the time. Solution? Resize the window. This has never actually been a problem - just click the corner and drag the thing - except for one South Park episode, which crashes mplayer when I do that. Odd.

--
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.

Audio-Cocks!!!! by h_thrilz · 2003-01-24 05:26 · Score: 1

Fucking brilliant!

Re:Audio-Cocks!!!! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:34 · Score: 1, Informative

You'll probably love the Paedophile-special episode of the UK satiral show "Brass-eye" then, from where the idea was taken.

The Problem is Just X by Spencerian · 2003-01-24 05:27 · Score: 1

X Window is a graphical interface with one big strength--it can be ported and used on many different UNIX operating systems and hardware. And that's its disadvantage, too.

X is really only the engine, not the chassis or dashboard. To get that, you need to select from a sordid number of window managers with various qualities in design. X doesn't suck. It's interfaces do.

Linux will continue to struggle to get good drivers and codecs because commercial groups have little to gain from making one unless they can get you to buy something of theirs for their trouble.

I would recommend a Mac--since he's not using a IRIX box, which is designed with strong graphic work in mind, other PC implementations will leave him cold. However, he's peeing up a flagpole with XEmacs, I think.

--
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.

Re:The Problem is Just X by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:44 · Score: 0

Macs sucks, Windows XP sucks, X sucks... it's all subjective. Most people just get used to the interface they have to use daily at work or at school and learn how to get stuff done. I happen to like GNOME. It lets me get my work done quick and easy.

Mplayer Rules all. :) by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:27 · Score: 0

If you can't RTFM, and I do mean fine manual, then that's your own problem. Mplayer has extensive documentation to overcome many of the problems that this inept review has encountered. And you can complain about the GUI all you want, but that's why it's optional. If the review new how to compile a package, then he would know that the GUI does not come default. The mplayer authors wrote there software with the idea that Linux users want a nice unix-like program that is fully configurable from the command prompt. If you want media player, go home and cry to mommy. As said above, some of the issues are window manager issues. I happen to want the ability to change the aspect ratio on the fly, but I am sure if you RTFM you can find a solution to that problem.I personally like mplayer, but xine is a very competant solution. And oogle does offer very nice DVD playback - another unix mentality - make tools/programs that do one thing very well. All in all, I don't like to see amatuer rant pages being posted on the front page of slashdot.

This is a review??? by justsomebody · 2003-01-24 05:27 · Score: 1

I finally found RPMs of mplayer

Or he could make his own by reading FAQ on compiling

Uh, no. I've seen the horror of Red Hat 8.0, and there's no fucking way I'm putting Gnome2 on any more of my machines for at least another six months, maybe a year.

Don't write reviews about desktop based movie players for at least another six months, maybe a year, CASE SOLVED

So I should solve the problem of ``crappy GUI'' by replacing it with ``no GUI at all?'' I should use the program only from the command line, or by memorizing magic keystrokes? Awesome idea.

Memorizing for exit

for pause and arrows is difficult I agree. People that are able to do that are also able to write a review

results in someone suggesting that you either A) patch your kernel or B) change distros

At least you can stay up-todate if you write a review (in other case I should write a review of Win3.1 movie players, THEY SUCK)

My best guess is that Jamie Zawinski just proved his (?)inteligence, which is strange if you look at his page

--
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition

JWZ has a point by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:28 · Score: 0

He has a valid point. The installation of many video players can be daunting to a newbie. You have to separately download and install Real, QuickTime and Windows Media codecs and recompile MPlayer from source in order to use them. Support for Real, QuickTime and Windows Media IS NOT ENABLED in the Mplayer binary packages, you have ti either compile yourself or make your own package. FUCK THAT. I want to be able to apt-get install mplayer and so that it automatically supports all the formats it can. And don't give me rants on patents, because WHY SHOULD I CARE ?

While the MPlayer GUI is prtyy much OK, it still needs major improvements and it's ridiculous that people suggest that you should use a goddamn VIDEO PLAYER from a CLI. WTF ?! I used to try Xine on my system, but I got rid of it and went back to MPlayer after 10 minutes. Why ? Because It took me 1 MINUTE to open a file, the UI is so unlogical and the default skin was so horrible that I couldn't figure out where to look for the "Open File" part.

Then again... by GMFTatsujin · 2003-01-24 05:28 · Score: 4, Funny

I just looked at his web page www.jwz.com. With an index page like that, who the hell is he to gripe?

Re:Then again... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 10:42 · Score: 0

Hey, it (his home page) made ME feel at home.
Maybe that's what its for, to let you know if this is your sort of place or not.

Wow by jandrese · 2003-01-24 05:28 · Score: 2, Insightful

Is he using the same mplayer I use? Lemme see. It does change aspect ratio when you resize, which is strange at best, so I'll give him that, however it does not change the aspect ratio when you go fullscreen. Most of my videos have little black bars at the top and bottom because my screen (1280x1024) isn't 4:3. No titlebars on windows? The main video window has a titlebar, the control panel doesn't. Because I use Windowmaker, I move windows around with an alt-click, but I can't give mplayer credit for that. Lousy skinned interface: yeah, but I hope he wasn't planning on using any media player for Windows, or Mac. Everybody does these stupid skins (if they havn't then it's because the product isn't finished yet it seems). The default skin is not too bad, my only major complaint being lack of DVD controls when in DVD mode. The mouse zoom thing doesn't happen for me, and mplayer rarely complains anyway.

As for complaining about the console, these program are still under development. A lot of that is debugging information. The 1.0 version will hopefully have no output unless you specify a command line switch.

--

I read the internet for the articles.

Re:Wow by swordgeek · 2003-01-24 05:41 · Score: 2, Insightful

these program are still under development...

Therein lies a major problem with Linux as a whole. It is always and continually under development. The kernel and most distros have official production-ready milestones, but most (almost all, in fact) of the apps out there are in a continual beta release cycle. Nothing ever gets finished. Nothing ever gets documented. Nothing turns into a 'final' release, with development moved onto the next version.

Nothing? OK, not quite nothing, but even Mozilla (one of the finest examples of recently complete software) is still being released 'for testing purposes only.'

--

"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Re:Wow by Rinikusu · 2003-01-24 06:46 · Score: 1

I dunno about that "every windows media player" being skinned... I know the new Mplayer is, but I still use the default one that comes with Win2k, it's a perfectly reasonable/usable player with no fluff, no glitz, no fuss.

Mplayer was odd to get used to, Xine crashed quite a bit for me. Not to mention that I had to compile Mplayer and jump what felt like a few dozen hoops to get it working, it DID eventually work. I'm with this guy, though: My time is better spent doing something else and I don't derive any pleasure fucking around with shit I don't think I should have to fuck around with. That seems to be Linux in a nutshell.
"Oh, but you really know your system when you use Linux!"
If I really wanted to "know" something that well, I'd get another girlfriend. The last thing I want is an intimate, deep relationship with a computer.

--
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Re:Wow by catenos · 2003-01-24 19:04 · Score: 1

Nothing? OK, not quite nothing, but even Mozilla (one of the finest examples of recently complete software) is still being released 'for testing purposes only.'

Ouch. One of the worst examples you could have chosen. Mozilla is not intended to be ever released as end user software. That they leave to others. Mozilla is a browser and also a toolkit to base other software on (like Netscape).

So yes, their releases will always be for testing purposes only, because that is their stated goal.
If they were a closed-source entity, they would never make public releases, the same as you don't see public releases of the general base your BIOS is specialized from.

--
Keep an eye on which arguments are silently dropped in replies. Not always, but often times it's very telling.
Re:Wow by swordgeek · 2003-01-26 05:37 · Score: 1

Hmm. This has been an interesting point about mozilla that I've always disliked.

It comes to this: What's the bloody POINT? I mean sure, you do the development, and then someone releases an official supported browser (netscape, etc.). That's fine, but it comes very close to playing in the sandbox again. The relationship between the mozilla developers and the Netscape folks seems somewhat nebulous, with netscape taking from the Mozilla project milestones when they feel like it. Ultimately without a closer (or perhaps more formal) tie to Netscape, then they're just making noise and hoping someone will record them.

That also doesn't take into account the fact that Mozilla is a damned fine browser, and Netscape hasn't done anything other than glue a few annoying ads onto it.

I guess my point is that most OSS projects seem to degenerate into a schedule-less series of perpetual betas. When someone comes along with a major project that has timelines, goals, targets, etc. (like Mozilla) they STILL aren't willing to create a final product. More succinctly, The Open Source Movement isn't producing any real software!

Mozilla needs to release an unsupported final product, and most other projects out there need to follow their example.

--

"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Re:Wow by J.+Random+Software · 2003-01-26 07:48 · Score: 1

Hasn't Netscape been signing paychecks for a lot of the Mozilla hackers?
I thought a portable distributed app framework was mozilla.org's goal. At least that seems to be why they ceded the browser war.

why does he bother.. by devious · 2003-01-24 05:28 · Score: 2, Insightful

indeed, he shouldn't. He should just get rid of his computer and go wacht tv ( or get a Mac, if he believes that will take him to utopia ).
That brainless ranting just shows his frustration.. of being a completely incapable to deal with computers.
I've had my share of problems with playing video on my linux box.. but nowadays mplayer does a better job than M$ mediaplayer here.

"mplayer -fs movie.mpg" my secret magical keystroke..

This guy is clueless by KeyserDK · 2003-01-24 05:28 · Score: 0

It's true that linux and video isnt perfect.
However this guy ... WHO is he?

They point you at an RPM that installs apt, the Debian package system!

After that sentence I stopped reading.
1) He doesnt know what he is talking about
2) Video on linux (for users) will never be good enough untill it just 'works' on a freshly installed distribution.

--
still reading?

Re:This guy is clueless by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:17 · Score: 0

He is the guy who wrote XEmacs, did Netscape for Unix, and started Mozilla within Netscape Corp.

So I guess the question is; WHO are you?

wtf by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:28 · Score: 0

WTF is this shit article doing on slashdot? Why would anyone care to read about what some loser and his troubles of not being able to use a few / all linux media players??

slashdot is gay.

LOL! The answer? mplayer from command line by Chuck+Messenger · 2003-01-24 05:29 · Score: 1

Just forget the GUI stuff. I use mplayer from the command line, and it's wonderful. Very flexible, handles lots of formats, does everything I want.

GUI's are generally a pain, and I avoid them whenever possible.

Tell me about it by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:29 · Score: 1, Insightful

I thought JWZ knew what he was doing.

Resizing the window changes the aspect ratio of the video!

You should have made sure to use the XVideo extension!

An obvious troll, but hey its by someone famous so it must be worth the read. I could have done without reading that crap.

NR

Re:Tell me about it by Xerithane · 2003-01-24 07:04 · Score: 1

An obvious troll, but hey its by someone famous so it must be worth the read. I could have done without reading that crap.

It's not a troll because he was just writing about what he found. His experiences. His experiences aren't a troll, it's what he experienced. It's slashdots fault for a) not explaining who JWZ is and b) posting this in the first place.

If I wrote something (granted, I'm not famous in any circle) and slashdot posted it and said I reviewed it I'd be pretty pissed off. It's no wonder he feels certain ways.

--
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Re:Tell me about it by orangesquid · 2003-01-24 09:44 · Score: 1

Actually, I really like changing the aspect ratios. A lot of amateur porn is recorded on crappy cameras, and my monitor isn't quite perfect, so sometimes it can make it more enjoyable to change the aspect ratio. Plus, sometimes sex looks really funny when the people look like they've been stretched out on mideival torture machines.

But you're right, he should've used the XVideo extension (I'm surprised the RPM didn't make that the default?).

--
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive

His comments are valid by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:31 · Score: 0

Yep. There will be a thousand people here saying "Don't like it? Code it yourself." If you want people to truly take linux seriously on the desktop, you'll have to stop saying that. He's right. It sucks. He is free to complain about it. He is a user and he can complain. In fact, I don't think he has delved deep enough into OS X. It pretty much DOES solve all his problems. Emacs (in the cvs) runs flawly IN GUI MODE ON AQUA!!!. Not the some hack solution on an X-server. Check out how to do this here: http://members.shaw.ca/akochoi-emacs/ This is the regular ol' emacs folks and it runs in aqua just fine. The cvs version is (usually) fairly stable at this point. Menus for modes appear in the menu bar. You can drag and drop to it. You can even have it be the default app for various filetypes. His wget problem? Get SimpleWget. Great GUI on wget. Yes Fetch sucks and some a-hole took it shareware. Fugu works better anyway. scp and sftp in a GUI!! You can even drop folders on it (something fetch ditched...yes, that makes me want to pay for Fetch all the more. cripes.). More and more of those things you miss from unix/X are showing up native in aqua with pretty GUIs. I couldn't imagine going back to linux. OS X is unix with usability done right.

two words by footility · 2003-01-24 05:32 · Score: 1

jwz rants that some developer thinks, "this program is pretty nice, but you know what it's missing? It's missing a lot of pointless chatter about what plugins and fonts have been loaded!" You'd think he'd know how to ">/dev/null 2&1" terminal output. sheesh! :-) b "happy with xine" v

--
What f*ing box!?!?

Re:two words by JoeBuck · 2003-01-24 06:19 · Score: 1

That's just stupid. Certainly you can direct the standard error to /dev/null, but then you won't see any error messages that you really need to see. If a program is ready to package and ship, then it's time to turn off the debug messages (or provide an option to turn them on, that is off by default).

Complaining without giving it a real try by korgull · 2003-01-24 05:32 · Score: 1

Hey, your bitching about problems without giving it a real try.

You didn't bother to compile the packages yourself and check the features of each package.
The review is very limited as you only look at playing some video and using the GUI.
To give you an example, I never use the xine GUI. I always use a remote control for that.

If you're not happy, get into the source and change it. It's open source you know.....

Name me any player on windows with the number of features that mplayer (or xine) has got and gives you that much freedom in its usage. I never found one, so might be interesting to hear that.

Re:Complaining without giving it a real try by ciupman · 2003-01-24 05:55 · Score: 1

He's not complaining, he's just assuming the role of a common user that is not used to linux .. and he does that perfectly... Sometimes, things to evolve need to get some bad feedback .. I agree with him 100%

--
I fuse with Mercer every single day...
Re:Complaining without giving it a real try by NineNine · 2003-01-24 07:12 · Score: 1

You didn't bother to compile the packages yourself and check the features of each package.

Whoa there. Already waaaay too complicated for a supposedly modern OS. I click on video, it plays. Period. If it doesn't do that, I'm not interested. That's the way it should be, since it's been done elsewhere (W2K, WXP, etc.)
Re:Complaining without giving it a real try by korgull · 2003-01-24 23:55 · Score: 1

In that case : Buy your software !

It really seems that windows users are lame.

mplayer rocks! by John+Zero · 2003-01-24 05:32 · Score: 3, Interesting

This is a fact: mplayer just rocks!

It can play just about ANY video file. And it does hell of a job playing! You can switch to fullscreen/back in an instant, even do panning-resizing on the fly (good for viewing 9:16 videos on 3:4 screen), adjust audio/video sync with a key, etc.

Ever tried using windows players? How about playing "bad" avi files, containing no indexes? Media Player, RealOne player all failed on those (well, they do play it, but you can't really seek, or if you can, it's fkkin slow).

Oh, and check that QuickTime player for Windows. It's slow, it's lame, it flickers, you can't resize it or do fullscreen.

I can't say much about mplayer's GUI, because I don't use it, but even that shouldn't be THAT bad. Just compare it to QuickTime or Media Player, which has all that unneccessary crap around the small movie.

Re:mplayer rocks! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:59 · Score: 0

No, it's not a fact.

It's an opinion.

The Author Should.... by Tsali · 2003-01-24 05:33 · Score: 1

... get a Windows PC for a commercial/slick/monitored/RIAA-enforced multimedia experience. ... or help a project out... ... or watch a DVD on something other than a computer... ... or just seek professional help for nonspecific combativeness.

--
This space for rent.

Re:LOL! The answer? mplayer from command line by dnaumov · 2003-01-24 05:33 · Score: 1

Have you READ the actual article ?

Various people wrote:

You shouldn't even bother compiling the GUI into mplayer!

So I should solve the problem of ``crappy GUI'' by replacing it with ``no GUI at all?'' I should use the program only from the command line, or by memorizing magic keystrokes? Awesome idea.

In case you don't get it, that was sarcasm from the author and I tend to fully agree with him.

Honestly, I like this review by Meowfaceman · 2003-01-24 05:34 · Score: 4, Insightful

I honestly think this is a good review.

Let me start by saying that I use Windows. I've tried Linux several times in the past. I have several thousand reasons why I think Linux is a decade or two from becoming a desktop OS. This review more or less demonstrates that.

There are seldom times when I feel like trying to get a program working for more than 10 or 20 minutes. Linux, while powerful, does not help much in this department. When I'm in a bad mood (much like JWZ is) there's no way I want to fuck around with Linux. Period.

My main problem with Linux, however, is the UIs of both the programs and the desktops. I will refuse to use a program because of the UI. Mplayer may be powerful, but as far as I'm concerned, if it doesn't have a UI, I won't use it. I don't care if there is a command line option, I didn't install KDE or Gnome to make the console look pretty.

I know a lot of you have said, "He can develop his own UI for it." Well, that's not why he installed Linux, and it's not why I did, either. I didn't try it expecting to have to write my own code to get things to run acceptably, I did it because it's an alternative to windows. One of the things that will keep (and has kept) Linux from being a desktop OS are things like this.

This is probably going to be an unpopular post, but oh well.

Re:Honestly, I like this review by korgull · 2003-01-24 05:58 · Score: 1

This is not about Linux being a desktop OS.
Linux is a desktop OS for me for over 5 years now and it does a nice job at that and at some points I would say it even much better than windows.
I use both windows and Linux a lot. I do have jobs that I can't do very well on Linux (yet) but I also have jobs that I can't handle well on windows. Is that a way to measure the usage of a desktop OS ? If so, windows fails that too in my case.

What you're describing is that you expect Linux to be equal to windows. If that's a goal, it defenately is the wrong goal. An alternative doesn't mean the same thing as a drop in replacement.

Needing to be able to write your own code on Linux is not correct. You can do perfect without it.
If you're not happy with something you always have the choice to let the developers of the packages know and you make a good chance that your idea is taken into account.
Bitching of developers doesn't bring the guy from this article any further though. I'll give him one advice : Stay with Windows and buy your software and try complain to MS or some other company if you're not happy.
Re:Honestly, I like this review by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:01 · Score: 0

> Mplayer may be powerful, but as far as I'm
> concerned, if it doesn't have a UI, I won't use
> it.

Now I understand why you use Windows: you don't even know what a UI is (Hint: All GUIs are UIs, but not all UIs are GUIs.) Thanks for providing a typical example of input from the ignorant, MS majority.
Re:Honestly, I like this review by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:24 · Score: 0

Learn the difference between a UI and GUI and people might take you seriously next time.

In the mean time, why don't you buy a Mac and shut the fuck up.
Re:Honestly, I like this review by demon · 2003-01-24 07:03 · Score: 1

Amen. Too many people want Linux to be "just like Windows, but cheap/free". Most of them won't admit it, but if you listen to them long enough, you'll quickly discover that's what they really want. I figure, if what you really want is Windows, why use Linux? Use Windows, be happy, and for cripes sake, don't whine to me, because I like Linux on my desktops just fine, thanks.

--

Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Re:Honestly, I like this review by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 10:03 · Score: 0

Too many people want Linux to be "just like Windows, but cheap/free"

And those people include a *large* number of developers and distributors.

Stop packaging Linux as a crappy Windows-clone (see Mandrake), and people will stop making the comparison.
Re:Honestly, I like this review by mchappee · 2003-01-24 11:48 · Score: 1

> I have several thousand reasons why I think Linux
> is a decade or two from becoming a desktop OS.

As a satisfied Linux user (desktop and server) I have to say that I'm extremely happy that Linux is not a "desktop OS". If you make an OS that any idiot can use, then that's exactly what will happen. The community would lose it's "brotherhood" appeal in the face of software that "just works". If you want to run MPlayer on Redhat then you have to earn it, dammit. If you can't get it to work then you A) Don't want it bad enough to actually read the INSTALL, or B) Feel that your time is too valuable to "waste" in such a manner (which is bullshit, I *know* what you're going to use MPlayer f0r) or C) Just aren't smart enough to figure stuff out. That's fine. Windows was created for the millions of people that fit into the above categories.

PS, If this post pissed you off, you're probably a "C".

Matthew

--
/. finds me to be 20% Troll, 80% Funny
Re:Honestly, I like this review by shurdeek · 2003-01-24 11:54 · Score: 1

Everything you said is true, until you realize there is a very natural user interface, the only one you should ever need for a media player: an infrared remote control. No windows, no mouse, no keyboard (only when debugging). If I want to navigate, I just grab the remote, don't even have to be looking at the tv to push the right button. Beat that. Desktop is dead, welcome linux.
Re:Honestly, I like this review by Malcontent · 2003-01-24 11:55 · Score: 1

"This is probably going to be an unpopular post, but oh well."

What? This is slashdot. Any post which critisizes linux or praises MS get modded up to 5. Like yours did.

--
War is necrophilia.
Re:Honestly, I like this review by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 12:18 · Score: 0

Really??

After using PowerDVD on my Win2000 box, my dvd remote seems like a real pain in the arse.

The next chapter buttons are in the wrong place, menus are hard to navigate, choosing language and subtitles is distracting.

I have to find the right controls on another remote to operate my amp. Another one to operate my tv to display that widescreen dvd on my widescreen tv the right way.
Re:Honestly, I like this review by gli · 2003-01-24 14:17 · Score: 1

oh how smarty you are!
Re:Honestly, I like this review by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 16:21 · Score: 0

You, sir, make Linux users look bad.
Re:Honestly, I like this review by catenos · 2003-01-24 18:42 · Score: 1

Stop packaging Linux as a crappy Windows-clone (see Mandrake), and people will stop making the comparison.

Huh? To stay a bit more on-topic, i.e. related to the article: Because they are already packaged, on Mandrake it is a matter of some mouse clicks to install any of the named players. Very crappy, yes. (the crappy GUIs of the players are a different story)

So the installation hurdle JWZ complained about does not exist in recent distros (I simply presume that RedHat, Debian and SuSE do as well, meahwhile). In other words: using an older distro to judge the current state of video on Linux is more than a bit strange.

--
Keep an eye on which arguments are silently dropped in replies. Not always, but often times it's very telling.
Re:Honestly, I like this review by shurdeek · 2003-01-25 12:59 · Score: 1

Well, I only have like 25 DVDs, but several thousand divx/mpeg/mp3/whatever, and with freevo+mplayer+remote I have a consistent interface for all that. I use my amp remote, which has extra buttons. I configured freevo/mplayer so that it automatically chooses language and subittles to how I like it so that I don't have to press ANY buttons.

I used powerdvd once, and found it too difficult to use, and totally user unfriendly. I also used a hardware dvd player once, and have to agree that those 1000s buttons on the remote are complicated as well.

Not Unless You're JWZ by waldoj · 2003-01-24 05:35 · Score: 0, Flamebait

Hell, can I write a review and get it posted?

No, what with none of us caring in the least about about what you think. JWZ, on the other hand, is a man to whom you should listen when he speaks.

"+5 Insightful" my ass,. Goddamn kids don't even respect their elders these days...

-Waldo Jaquith

Re:From the article... SUCKS. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:35 · Score: 0

Read his other articles on X11. He knows a thing or two about coding for X11, having written Xemacs and large parts of netscape. X11 is a complete abomination. It was designed to display a clock and an xterm over IP networks. All the other shit is krufted on.

No worse than windows by incom · 2003-01-24 05:36 · Score: 1

The default skin on xine is almost identical to "powerDVD" for windows, and mplayer has a "windows media 6" skin. So if linux can exactly resemble the two most popular windows video players, then he must not like the entire state of video on PC's regardless of OS.

--
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.

Re:No worse than windows by damiam · 2003-01-24 05:56 · Score: 1

So if linux can exactly resemble
skinned != exactly resemble

--
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.

You think playing video is bad... by rongage · 2003-01-24 05:37 · Score: 1

If you think playing video is bad under Linux, try setting up network printing in a usable manner.

Whoever thought that PostCrap was a good idea for a page defination language should be taken out back and shot - multiple times.

It's pretty bad when my network printer under Linux constantly is running out of page render memory, yet when I print the same document to the same printer using the same software (OpenOffice) under Windows, the document comes out looking fine (and is all there, not cut off at the bottom due to the printer running out of memory). And don't get me started on how slow printing is under Linux.

--
Ron Gage - Westland, MI

Re:You think playing video is bad... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:41 · Score: 0

try setting up network printing in a usable manner.

I have. It's simple.

Whoever thought that PostCrap was a good idea for a page defination language should be taken out back and shot - multiple times.

Yeah, god forbid someone should ever want to create a system independant, well thought-out system that WORKS. Unix should stop using stuff that's system independant, and move to the windows model, where every single different printer requires different software to use it.

Dumbass.
Re:You think playing video is bad... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 15:11 · Score: 0

Take a look at www.linuxprinting.org. They have an incredible amount of information there on setting up printing under Linux. For example, I'm using PDQ as my print spooler, and it simply does an incredible job. I'm guessing that the speed problems you're experiencing are due to a misconfiguration rather than any particular shortcoming of Linux print systems in general.

I've used PDQ for printing to a local printer and to a raw lpd print spool over a local network, both of which have worked nearly flawlessly for me. Even configuration of the printers couldn't be easier using xpdq, a print job status monitor and configurator that comes with PDQ. It's nearly as easy to set up as its windows counterpart, especially with the documentation at linuxprinting. I regularly print using the GIMP and OpenOffice, and it's a real joy to use.

You're completely right by Wee · 2003-01-24 05:37 · Score: 1

We had the same thoughts when reading that: He should most certainly either put up or shut up. I mean, he is, after all, getting what he's paying for. If he can't find a video player app that doesn't suck then he should write his own. Instead he whines about how bad every free app he's found is.

I admit that mplayer isn't the the most friendly install with the best UI, but if I cared enough to bitch about how it's laid out, I'd grab the source and effect some changes. It's easier to throw a fit than to fix things.

-B

--

Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.

Redhat is a server distro by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:38 · Score: 1, Insightful

One should not have high usability expectations for a distribution that doesn't emphesize the desktop. I would expect video playback to work out of the box on a Mandrake or SuSE system.

He's right about xine having an ugly UI, but I don't find it difficult to use relative to any other video player on any other platform.

As for apt, it just finds and downloads dependencies. Apt for RPM will use RPM to install them, just as the original apt uses dpkg. Mandrake's urpmi does a nice job of this too, but seems a bit less sophisticated than apt.

Welcome to the Real World by RatBastard · 2003-01-24 05:39 · Score: 4, Insightful

It's a mindless rant written by someone that does not want to compile anything or upgrade.

And guess what? Most people who try Linux don't want to compile or upgrade. They want it to work! This group is growing in size and will soon account for most of the Linux population (if it has not already happened). Most Linux users will be just that, "users" and developers need to start thinking in those terms if they want people to use thier programs and Linux in general.

--
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.

Re:Welcome to the Real World by arose · 2003-01-24 06:24 · Score: 1

And guess what? Most people who try Linux don't want to compile or upgrade. They want it to work! Ask your boss about playing videos while you should work...

--
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Re:Welcome to the Real World by FooBarWidget · 2003-01-24 10:53 · Score: 1

"And guess what? Most people who try Linux don't want to compile or upgrade. They want it to work!"

So?
1) JWZ is not "most people".
2) "Average users" download and install the MPlayer RPM or use Xine if that's already installed.
2.1) Yes yes I know "average users shouldn't have to search the net and download RPMs". But really, when you try to watch a DivX movie (I'm pretty sure 90% of the movies files people watch are pirated DivX movies), didn't you had to download the DivX codec too? Was it hard? Did you figured out how it worked?
Re:Welcome to the Real World by Malcontent · 2003-01-24 12:05 · Score: 1

If what you say is true then linux is dead. Those whiners will never contribute but are simply leeches who suck the life out of programmers by constantly bitching and demeaning the programmers. For example JWZ calls the open source programmers "fucktards" in his rant.

Who wants to program for people who call you a fucktard and are too stupid/lazy/cheap to help you out in any way?

--
War is necrophilia.
Re:Welcome to the Real World by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 13:18 · Score: 0

kind of odd for a user named "malcontent" to bitch about someone being cranky. I've written a little stage play:

Scene: Kitchen. The night is dark and stormy, with light flashing from various monitors as the bulletin boards flame into the night. Enter from stage right, two kitchen utensils- POT and KETTLE. POT and KETTLE are nearly indistinguishable, except that KETTLE has tourettes.

POT: Hi I'm pot. I'm this 133t shade of black. w00t.

KETTLE: You know there should be some changes to the way we look. I tire of bad black cast iron. It breaks to easily. Fucktard! I can't help myself. Sorry.

POT: AH! YOU BASTARD! YOU SELLOUT! BLACK! YOU ARE BLACK I SAY!

Curtain falls. Nerds everywhere rejoice. Fine

Re:Shouldn't rant about things you don't understan by siphoncolder · 2003-01-24 05:39 · Score: 5, Insightful

Why do people get off on putting other people's work down? Just because you made a quick buck in an IPO doesn't give you the right to rant about whatever you want and expect people to bow down.

1) People don't get off doing that. They're actually saying something about what they don't like. Progress, as you should remember, is not about sitting silently and taking whatever is handed to you. Progress is made by telling someone what's wrong with what they've done. So what if his tone is nasty? His words are what's important, and his words equate to: "Why is this so hard. Make it consistant, make it easy."

2) He has the right to say whatever he wants. Just like you. Besides, attacking his position or money doesn't invalidate or make less important anything he says unless he can be proven to be wrong. Opinions can be tough to validate or invalidate, but in this case, he makes some very specific points about what he thinks is good and what's not. At no point does he say "I have a lot of money, which makes my point more imporant." He has a WEBSITE which makes his voice simply HEARD.

--
i'm amazed that i survived - an airbag saved my life.

Best quote on JWZ.org is.. by Captain+Large+Face · 2003-01-24 05:40 · Score: 2, Interesting

Forget the linked article "rant" -- by far the most accurate text on JWZ.org is the following:

"I have yet to come across so much self-righteous bullshit as when I gaze upon the massive heap of crap that is the jwz web experience."

FYI, the above quote, which can be found here, is attributed to "an anonymous poster to slashdot.org". If there is any justice in this world, that comment was modded to "5, Insightful".

JWZ is what Bowie Poag WANTS to be... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:40 · Score: 0

it's so trendy being a jerk.

but Bowie doesn't have the credentials, language, content, manners, or intelligence that JWZ has.

Bowie Poag is a poor imitation.

Um by glwtta · 2003-01-24 05:41 · Score: 1, Insightful

Who is this person? All I see is a page and a half of semi-coherent rambling by someone I've never heard of. Who apparently doesn't like mplayer and Xine - just a fascinating read.

Google claims to have 3,083,324,652 pages indexed - surely there's something better in there than this?

--
sic transit gloria mundi

Re:Um by banky · 2003-01-24 05:58 · Score: 4, Informative

He's one of the implementors of the original Netscape on Unix/X11, part of the Mozilla team (IIRC he actually named it Mozilla), and part of the original XEmacs team.

Not to mention xscreensaver (which, I think, ships with every Linux distro out there), and a few other cool hacks.

--
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
Re:Um by Ageless · 2003-01-24 06:14 · Score: 1

Well, jwz is the guy that wrote Netscape for UNIX. You know, Netscape.
Then he wrote the Netscape Mail and News clients.
He also wrote a big pile of Mozilla and ran mozilla.org for a while.
He's also popular for writing the first version of XEmacs.
You also may have heard of xscreensaver, which he wrote.
Re:Um by glwtta · 2003-01-24 06:24 · Score: 1

Well then, his record clearly shows that he is a lot better at writing software than "reviewing" it.
Don't get me wrong, mplayer is a pain in the ass to use, but then we all arleady knew this. Though personally, I quite like Xine...

--
sic transit gloria mundi
Re:Um by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 08:48 · Score: 0

this is another reason to not like JWZ. Mozilla... ha ha ha, the Mosaic Killer. Because we all like to kill the ancestor right? We all like to kill public domain projects that defined and proved the market we are hoping to become billionaires with, right, right!? Kill Mosaic, Kill!!! Embrace and Extinguish!

but, I do like his screen savers.

Re:JWZ is an idiot-(+1) opinion expressed. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:41 · Score: 0

I want people to notice the +1 Flamebait on this post. Moderation is broken. Did ANYONE actually read the article? Is our school system so broken that people ability to reason is broken? There was a good point or two, but who wants to fish for diamonds in a pile of poo?

Hey, there is improvement! by Noryungi · 2003-01-24 05:41 · Score: 4, Funny

A few years ago, JWZ used to say that using Linux was OK "as long as your time was worthless"... It's on his web site, you can actually look for it and it's probably there.

So he has made progress! Now he even admits to using Linux! =)

--
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)

Re:Hey, there is improvement! by yppiz · 2003-01-24 06:09 · Score: 2, Funny

JWZ used to say that using Linux was OK "as long as your time was worthless" ... Now he even admits to using Linux!
No, he's just admitting that his time is worthless.
Ba-da-bing! Thank you, I'll be here all week.
--Pat
Re:Hey, there is improvement! by hawkestein · 2003-01-24 06:44 · Score: 3, Informative

I believe what you previously saw on his site was a quote from the Unix-Haters Handbook: "Linux is only free if your time has no value".

(Insert gratuituous comment of Unix-Haters handbook webpage on Microsoft's site here)

--
-- Will quantum computers run imaginary-time operating systems?
Re:Hey, there is improvement! by Raptor+CK · 2003-01-24 07:43 · Score: 1

Not quite...

It was more like "Linux is free only if your time has no value."

As an SGI user at the time, that probably made sense to him. And honestly, back when he said it, Linux wasn't even halfway usable on a workstation. It was a toy. A freely distributed model kit with half the parts missing, and garbled instructions for fabricating your own additional pieces.

So yes, Linux has improved, and he went back to it once it did. Hell, it works well on a lot of hardware now, and it's actually a usable workstation. I'm happy enough with my Linux box here at work, since I'm even less inclined to goof off anyway, as long as I ignore the fact that xkobo is installed... =)

--
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
Re:Hey, there is improvement! by zimbu · 2003-01-24 08:17 · Score: 1

The actual quote is ...Linux is only free if your time has no value.
I think his rant supports this position as some people don't want to read man pages to find obscure command line options, install new libraries, or jump through any other hoops just to play a video file.
Re:Hey, there is improvement! by moof1138 · 2003-01-24 09:27 · Score: 1

The quote is "Linux is only free if your time has no value," it is indeed on his site in the themes.org interview here:

http://www.jwz.org/doc/linux.html

--

Hyperbole is the worst thing ever.

In case of IDIOT elections by justsomebody · 2003-01-24 05:42 · Score: 1

I vote for JWZ

--
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition

Doing women...? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:42 · Score: 0

He did lots of women? Do tell more. Like how, and how you know.

Or are you one of them?

that poor bastard... by pb · 2003-01-24 05:42 · Score: 2, Insightful

Yeah, I'd be similarly distraught if I were installing RPM's on RedHat 7.2; therefore, I'm pretty happy that I made the switch to Gentoo.

mplayer is all I use for video playback, and this is all almost anyone needs to know... type mplayer followed by a space and the filename, and hit Enter.

What happens on my system? Glorious full-screen video with sound. Sure, there are other keys and options and GUIs and crap, but I don't want or need 99% of it... mostly I just want something that'll play video, and mplayer does a great job of that. (And mencoder looks pretty sweet too...)

As for video editing, I haven't done it, but if I wanted to, I'd probably start here -- ignore the gimpy-looking page, I've used some of this software in the past, and it struck me as being very usable and well-written; maybe not enough to please jwz, but what is? He bitches about Unix too. In fact, I propose that jwz bitching is just a fact of life. If he ever stops bitching, worry.

--
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Re:that poor bastard... by dnaumov · 2003-01-24 06:06 · Score: 2, Insightful

Gentoo is not for everyone.
Debian is not for everyone.

This goes on to prove that the Linux folk have to do lot of work in the standartisation department. "Hard to install apps ? Install Gentoo/Debian !" Riiight...nevermind the fact that a newbie will be scared shitless the moment he realises there is no hardware autoconfiguration whatsoever, he has to create his own XF86Config and compile stuff from source.
Re:that poor bastard... by demon · 2003-01-24 06:32 · Score: 2, Funny

Debian uses binary packages. (Though you can easily build things from source if you like.) And for hardware autoconfig? How about apt-get install discover hotplug usbutils? That should cover all the major bases. And there's a debconf interface for configuring XFree86 - choose the card, choose the highest resolution your monitor supports, and you're done.

Though its install may be a little harrowing, once you get Debian installed, you pretty much will never have to install it again. I last installed Debian on my home box about three years ago, and I can keep it up to date easily.

--

Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Re:that poor bastard... by XO · 2003-01-24 10:47 · Score: 1

Now why on earth would you need to tell the system what your card is and the monitor's maximum resolution? I believe since the late 80's, that shit's been easy to find automagicaly.

--
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/

what he wrote wasn't a review, it was a rant! by puck01 · 2003-01-24 05:43 · Score: 4, Insightful

I think slashdot did a good job of misleading readers. If you go to the page that lists this 'rant', it clearly states it is a rant. He never claims its an objective review. He posted it on his personal webpage. He likely did not submit this to slashdot to read. Michael accepted it. It was never meant to get posted on slashdot, and problable doesn't warrent being here.

That being said, I think JWZ is more realistic about the usability of Linux than most slashdot readers.

puck

Re:what he wrote wasn't a review, it was a rant! by frozencesium · 2003-01-24 13:40 · Score: 1

agreed!

personaly i love linux for many reasons...stability, free, the ability to tinker with the guts...etc.

that said, i use kde because it's pretty and is very user friendly. i can sit any of my windows friends that know crap all about computers down in front of kde and they can still use it. i use debian because package management is an absolute breaze. the open office and mozilla packages work great "out of the box". what is my one major gripe? multimedia apps suck.

after fighting with several players, trying to find the best x output driver, trying to get libcss to work right (which it only does for some packages), i have to agree that there is a problem in this area. hell, most of the players don't work all the way, don't support codecs that others do, etc. it's a fucking nightmare.

oh...and yes, to all those command line nazis:
i do know the power of (and use) my command line...i don't want to use it for multimedia. command lines are for software installation and other misc. administrative tasks...not for playing mp3s with nicely organized playlists or dvds.

-frozen

--
I'm not always the brightest pixel in the stream

Re:is this a first post? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:43 · Score: 0

Actually I saw Revolution OS on DVD. It was pretty good apart from half of it being in Finnish.

Are you kidding? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:43 · Score: 1, Insightful

You just validated everything he said.

He is trying to use it from a user perspective, not the "I have locked myself in the basement and never touched a girl" perspective that you seem all to familiar with.

If Linux is ever going to be accepted, you should not have to tweak it, and it should not matter what WM you are running, unless you are a skinning loser, which I think you might be.

Re:Are you kidding? by Maeryk · 2003-01-24 05:53 · Score: 1

He is trying to use it from a user perspective, not the "I have locked myself in the basement and never touched a girl" perspective that you seem all to familiar with.

Face it... most of what exists on Linux, aside from the morass of half assed standards that are built in Gnome and KDE apps, are basically beta software. You _have_ to be able to do some tweaking. Sure.. someday I may be able to download a pre-built RPM for my specific system..but part of what I love about Linux is I can use virtually any hardware I want.. rather than good old Windows inability to tell a PCI modem from a PCI video card. And no, I havent locked myself in the basement.. took me all of 10 minutes to read the README, get the files I needed, unzip em, stick em where they needed to be, browse the instructions for ./configure, which clearly stated what flags I needed to set for my system, and run the compiler. I launched the compiler, and read two emails till it finished. Then I ran make && make install and boogeyed off to enjoy a beer and some quality time with the wife, and when I came back it was there and rarin to go. yeah.. it took some work.. but at least I got a custom app that does EXACTLY what I want, rather than some prebuilt Windows app or RH app that crashes at every inopportune moment because it is enhanced for a Hercules card.

If Linux is ever going to be accepted, you should not have to tweak it, and it should not matter what WM you are running, unless you are a skinning loser, which I think you might be.
Not sure what you mean by "skinning loser" but I have it usually running from the command line, because It allows me to skip that whole stupid graphic end of the game. Unless im watching something HUGE and want the volume thingy and the slider bar, I just associated it from nautilus on the command line.

When I _do_ use the skin, its the default one, and while annoying at times, I can live with it fine. Im not a theme freak or skin junky anyway.. most of them suck, and im not enough of a grapchics person to make my own, so "default" is where most of my stuff is set.

Maeryk

--
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?

JWZ=Moron WITH No CLUE! I do video on Linux by MrJerryNormandinSir · 2003-01-24 05:45 · Score: 0, Flamebait

Here's the real story.
I've got a Compaq Presario 7110US running Linux.
Complete with WinTV Theatre, firewire, DVD Burner, etc. I've got vcr compiled and installed, the latest avilib support, transcode, and mpeg2enc.
Here's what I do. I use vcr to program the time and channel of the show I want to record. I can then choose any encoding format. For tv shows I use mpeg4 (DIVX). The show is saved on my server in the basement. I can play the movie on my Sharp Zaurus 5500-SL , developement computer (Presario 7110US) or my linux gaming computer connected to my TV. Also I create videos with a Samsung SDC-80 camcorder (firewire mini dv) and
Kino (Run on Linux). I then save to mpeg2 and
encode 9kbit video to dvd and play it on my DVD player. This is TOO simple.

Why did Slashdot give this idiot bandwidth to
begin with.

Re:JWZ=Moron WITH No CLUE! I do video on Linux by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:39 · Score: 0

Oooh... you bad ass!

1. You have no fucking idea what JWZ was talking about, do you?

2. Your bad-ass 9 kbps DVD's must really rock the house.

3. Nobody likes you. Not even your momma.
Re:JWZ=Moron WITH No CLUE! I do video on Linux by MrJerryNormandinSir · 2003-01-24 06:57 · Score: 0, Flamebait

You are the fucking coward that posts anonymously.
DVD has fucking everything to do with VIDEO.
JWZ has no fucking idea
Re:JWZ=Moron WITH No CLUE! I do video on Linux by markv242 · 2003-01-24 07:44 · Score: 5, Interesting

Couple of points, before you start feeling too good about yourself. (er, whoops, too late)
- First of all, Jamie was talking about just trying to play video. If he has to do any kind of configuration or compilation at all, he's done too much. Video playing is the easiest thing on the planet! Why is it so damned time-consuming under Linux?
For the rest of your self-praising argument,
- How long did it take you to compile and configure vcr, avilib support, transcode, mpeg2enc, and all the various patches that are required to get your video to record?
- "Also I create videos with a (...) camcorder (...) and Kino (...)"
Congratulations. Kino provides the same functionality that even the shittiest NLE, Adobe Premiere, had in version 1.0 (in... 1994?). Way to be on the cutting edge there.
From the Kino site: "It does not support multiple layers or tracks of video and audio." Huh? How can it be an NLE if it doesn't do more than one track? Have you ever sit in front of an Avid bay and done any kind of real video editing? Because I have news for you: Kino is to a NLE as a Kia is to a Ferrari.
- "I then save to mpeg2 and encode 9kbit video (...)"
I'm going to assume you meant 9Mbit video, because 9kbit video is like looking at an old, worn-out three-quarter-inch reel-to-reel tape from the 1950s. Still, though, let's review: you're shooting with a single-chip camera, importing as a lossy format, editing with a one-track editor, and exporting as a lossy format. Again, way to be on the cutting edge.
- "This is TOO simple."
I question your definition of simple. Check:
- Compile
- Find driver
- Compile
- Compile
- Install
- Try to find package
- Compile
- Install
- Cross fingers
- Compile
- Install
...all to do the most basic of tasks, record video from line in and encode to mpeg2?
What you're doing can be done by my eight-year-old cousin on his iMac, using iMovie and iDVD, which (last I checked) doesn't take any time to install, because they come with OS X. And I'd bet the quality of his resulting video is completely superlative to yours, because the tools he's using are actually modern software (where the engineers have spent more than five minutes on the interface).
Jamie needs to bite the bullet and spend the cash for a good Powerbook or G4 tower. Linux on the desktop is dead. It will never get to the level that OS X is currently at. Face the facts.
Re:JWZ=Moron WITH No CLUE! I do video on Linux by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · 2003-01-24 10:38 · Score: 1

You're my hero. Coupla points, though.

How can it be an NLE if it doesn't do more than one track?

To be fair, an editor with only a single track can still be an editor. I've used similar products for doing way-offlines in the field. They let you make cuts only, and spit out an EDL for later use back in house.

So technically, Kino is probably an NLE. It's just the worst one ever imagined. Picture a word processor that doesn't support the "backspace" or "delete" features, and you'll have some idea of how limiting a one-track editor would be.

9kbit video is like looking at an old, worn-out three-quarter-inch reel-to-reel tape from the 1950s.

That old 3/4" tape would, in fact, be considerably better than 9 kbit video.

--

I write in my journal
Re:JWZ=Moron WITH No CLUE! I do video on Linux by ukyoCE · 2003-01-25 10:52 · Score: 1

"Jamie needs to bite the bullet and spend the cash for a good Powerbook or G4 tower. Linux on the desktop is dead. It will never get to the level that OS X is currently at. Face the facts."

Your post was pretty good up until there. Linux on the desktop is *far* from dead. It's been getting better and better for years. How can it suddenly be dead when it's now available pre-installed on PCs at Wal-Mart? It's not like there's a company making linux that can just "die". As long as there are users and developers using linux, it will continue to improve. You could easily argue that it isn't improving as fast as commercial OSes, but that's an entirely different thing from claiming Linux suddenly keeled over and died.

Cruft by Animats · 2003-01-24 05:46 · Score: 3, Insightful

What Jamie is really complaining about is cruft. Playing a video isn't a big deal, yet all the apps for doing it carry with them excess baggage. This seems to be a generic problem with entertainment applications, regardless of platform. It's not enough just to open a window and do the job. The application has to look like a tacky consumer electronics product.

And no, you shouldn't have to rebuild from source just to run something. The Linux world needs to get that straight.

Re:From the article... SUCKS. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:46 · Score: 0

new public beta of X11 for OSX is awesome

It's "beta" for a reason. I tried running it here, and after the first run, it won't even start.

Maybe when it gets to 1.0 it'll be worth mentioning.

This is not a rant... by ciupman · 2003-01-24 05:48 · Score: 2, Interesting

This is an eye opener to the Linux comunity.. .As a matter of fact, i'm running Redhat 7.1 (at work) and i have mplayer running flawlessly in it .. even with GUI (the latest RC3 release).. but the point is that Linux doesn't need another MEDIA PLAYER .. it's just not scalable .. Linux needs a MULTIMEDIA FRAMEWORK upon any multimedia application could stand on (media player, video encoders, audio encoders, etc..)

--
I fuse with Mercer every single day...

Re:This is not a rant... by gimpimp · 2003-01-24 07:02 · Score: 1

The Xine project is doing a lot of work in terms of becoming a multimedia framework, however you need to check out the Gstreamer project. It has support for a lot of video formats, and can be used with a command line or gui. Gnome 2.2 will start to use this(released on Jan. 29th), for it's audio, and video needs.

Like Gnome in general, you can code Gstreamer based programs in different languages, including GTK# and even though it was origionally intended for the Gnome desktop, the main libraries aren't gui-lib specific, so you can write KDE based programs with it too(yes, there's an Arts interface in there)

--
i wish i was but oh well
Re:This is not a rant... by tempfile · 2003-01-24 23:41 · Score: 1

GStreamer has been under development for quite some time and looks quite promising.
Re:This is not a rant... by tempfile · 2003-01-24 23:43 · Score: 1

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

Re:Good info by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:48 · Score: 0

maybe some 'lunix-lovin-loosers' read a how-to in 5 minutes and learned how to watch videos without any hassle and don't write a stupid rant on their webpage.

I read the first paragraph and by licketyspit · 2003-01-24 05:48 · Score: 0, Flamebait

This guy is obviously not intelligent enough to be using linux in the first place. RPM's? c'mon, use use debs at least if you're not going to compile it yourself :-) This guy obviously didn't spend any time really working with MPlayer (which by the way is my favorite player). If he had, he might have gone to the website and found the w32 dlls that allow playback of even windows media files. I've often only been able to playback some wmv files on mplayer when they won't play in windows media player! So after the first paragraph I stopped reading. Some people just shouldn't use linux I suppose, and I think those people are called managers.

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2003-01-24 05:49 · Score: 1

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Total disagreement by gribbly · 2003-01-24 05:49 · Score: 1

JWZ should STFU

I totally disagree. Don't ever disregard valuable feedback from an end-user perspective.

Without wanting to get into the same old debate about what OSS is "for", I don't think it's outrageous to suggest that a tech-savvy user should be able to find, install and run a decent video player under Linux without encountering a million problems.

JWZ brings the added advantage of having some noteriety, so he can shine a spotlight on a particular area. Just or unjust, deserved or undeserved, that's how it works.

The same principle is as work when mainstream news sources report what Barbra Streisand or Goldie Hawn think of the War of Terrorism. I mean - who cares, right? But people tend to *listen* when people that they have heard of speak.

So I say embrace the criticism. Take a deep breath. It can only make Linux stronger and better in the long run.

grib.

--
maybe

Re:Total disagreement by Enahs · 2003-01-24 06:02 · Score: 4, Insightful

Don't ever disregard valuable feedback from an end-user perspective.

I agree, but there's no value to his criticism. No criticism that contains language like "fucktard" is valuable.

And JWZ, the Emacs nut, has the gall to criticize MPlayer for requiring users to remember a few keystrokes. I mean, c'mon, how many Emacs users chuckled when they read that? :-D

And really, how is criticising Ogle because it only plays physical DVDs, when it's stated purpose is simply to play physical DVDs, valuable feedback?

Honestly, I fail to see it. Being told to switch distributions as inevitable as Hitler? I mean, the list of complaints about Red Hat is long. Long, long, long.

And I read through his list of "problems" and didn't find anything that couldn't have been solved by simply asking someone, or reading the documentation.

Honestly, I don't think anyone who used to work at Netscape or had anything to do with XEmacs should have an opinion on usability. Honestly. :-D

--
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Re:Total disagreement by FreeUser · 2003-01-24 06:07 · Score: 1

So I say embrace the criticism. Take a deep breath. It can only make Linux stronger and better in the long run.

It would if the criticism were in the least constructive, and in the least relevant to the current state of the art.

It is neither, and speaking as one who both CREATES and WATCHES video on his computer using exclusively free software running under GNU/Linux, I can unequivocably say that whatever respect I had for this individual is gone and unlikely ever to return.

He insists on using an outdated distribution, gets upset when new software hasn't been backported to it, gets upset at the idea he might actually have to (gasp!) compile it himself, gets upset when people quite correctly point out that he needs to use a distrubition newer than the one he has clearly decided to stay married to, etc. etc.

It is like complaining that MS Office 2000 won't run under Windows 3.11 ... and he deserves all of the derision he is getting, here on slashdot and elsewhere.

Hint to the uninformed: run the current Red Hat, Suse, Mandrake, or what have you, or, if you really want good performance and the ability to painlessly run the current state of the art software, try Gentoo, an excellent source-based distro that automates the process of compiling (and recompiling) so much so that it is not only as easy as installing an RPM, it yields a much better, more optimized, and generally more compatible and useful result.

But do not expect to be running current, state of the art software on two-year old, obsolete binary distrubitions, and do not expect any sympathy, or respect for your rants, if you insist on doing so. Judging the current state of the art based on a dated distro's inability to cope with current code is neither accurate, nor fair, nor deserving of the sort of attention this particularly uninsightful rant posing as a review has gotten.

JWZ should have known better and has, instead, willfully and deliberately, chosen not to. Blaming others and looking gift horses in the mouth for his own stubborn incompetence is extraordinarilly disingenuous and contemptable ... which describes my newly formed opinion of the man, at least when he is speaking on this subject, to a T: contempt.

--
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Re:Total disagreement by arose · 2003-01-24 06:11 · Score: 1

I don't think it's outrageous to suggest that a tech-savvy user should be able to find, install and run a decent video player under Linux without encountering a million problems. I got the RPMs of mplayer. Run into exactly 1 problem. Installed it and run ever since. And I haven't programed on netscape.

--
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Re:Total disagreement by Craig+Davison · 2003-01-24 06:52 · Score: 1

I can unequivocably say that whatever respect I had for this individual is gone and unlikely ever to return.
Well, aren't you touchy.
He insists on using an outdated distribution, gets upset when new software hasn't been backported to it, gets upset at the idea he might actually have to (gasp!) compile it himself
The whole point of his rant is that he doesn't want to do things compile things for himself. Most of the rest of the world is like that too.
gets upset when people quite correctly point out that he needs to use a distrubition newer than the one he has clearly decided to stay married to, etc. etc.
Are you talking about requiring the GNOME 2 libraries? His main complaint there is that the libraries aren't mature.
It is like complaining that MS Office 2000 won't run under Windows 3.11 ... and he deserves all of the derision he is getting, here on slashdot and elsewhere.
Windows 3.11 came out in 1993 (TEN years ago), and is just 100% completely different than Windows 2000. Jamie's using RedHat 7.2, which is 95% the same as RedHat 8, and came out about a year and a half ago.
But do not expect to be running current, state of the art software on two-year old, obsolete binary distrubitions, and do not expect any sympathy, or respect for your rants, if you insist on doing so. Judging the current state of the art based on a dated distro's inability to cope with current code is neither accurate, nor fair, nor deserving of the sort of attention this particularly uninsightful rant posing as a review has gotten.
Video players are state of the art now?
And what's this talk of "coping with code"? That doesn't even make any sense. Are you even a developer at all, or are you just a 'make install' build-from-source kinda macho guy?
Blaming others and looking gift horses in the mouth for his own stubborn incompetence is extraordinarilly disingenuous and contemptable ...
Come on, he's not incompetent. He could get the gstreamer player to work if he wanted to, and he actually did get all of the players working as intended. But he's pointing out that it's not worth it because he doesn't want the GNOME 2 libs installed. And he rejected all the other players because the UI sucked so hard. He would still be having these problems regardless of the distribution he was running.

--
Hands in my pocket
Re:Total disagreement by XO · 2003-01-24 09:44 · Score: 1

But do not expect to be running current, state of the art software on two-year old, obsolete binary distrubitions, and do not expect any sympathy, or respect for your rants, if you insist on doing so.

Funny; Every day, I run current, state of the art software on much older, more "obsolete" binary distributions of, say, Windows, Xenix, IRIX, HP/UX, AIX, et al.

That it requires upgrading huge portions of your system to get any current software to run on Linux really sucks.

--
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Re:Total disagreement by WzDD · 2003-01-24 12:15 · Score: 1

how is criticising Ogle because it only plays physical DVDs, when it's stated purpose is simply to play physical DVDs, valuable feedback?

If you re-read the review you'll find that that wasn't a criticism, it was a caution. 'Ogle is quite good, provided you only want to play physical DVDs'. 'Swimming pools are fun, provided you don't mind getting wet'.
Re:Total disagreement by haggar · 2003-01-24 12:54 · Score: 1

I totally disagree with your remark regarding Emacs: I use vi on Linux, Solaris, HP-UX all day long for my work. I think I know vi rather well.

Yet, when I go home, when I want to relax, I DON*T want to fiddle with the command line to play a movie, and most decidedly don't want to find/grep through config files to enavble sound output through the soundcard's line out instead of the CD ROM's sound out. I just want it to work. Am I able to make it work? I guess so, infact, I did that on a couple of Linux installs, but I don't like to do it. I hope you understand.

And what the hell is with the double-space?

--
Sigged!
Re:Total disagreement by BinxBolling · 2003-01-24 12:58 · Score: 1

No criticism that contains language like "fucktard" is valuable.
This is simplistic crap.
And JWZ, the Emacs nut, has the gall to criticize MPlayer for requiring users to remember a few keystrokes. I mean, c'mon, how many Emacs users chuckled when they read that? :-D
Emacs, more than anything, is a programmer's editor. When programming as a task becomes as conceptually simple as watching a movie, you might have a point. You might be waiting a while, though.

Re:From the article... SUCKS. by DrXym · 2003-01-24 05:49 · Score: 1

X11 still sucks big time. It's bloated, the API sucks, the configuration is arcane, font support is arcane, pointer device & monitor configuration sucks, the drivers are poor, you need widgets and a window manager to get it be half usable etc. It's not hard to see why Linux desktops looks so odd and behave so poorly compared to XP or OS X. Remote networking is great, but Linux is being used more and more and more locally, so perhaps it is time to consider a lighter more modern replacement.

I'm being serious here. When apps are run through abstract layers like GTK and QT, it doesn't matter whether X11 is underneath or not, so why not write something that runs faster locally, has a modern multi-threaded event model, better font support, display postscript like qualities? It could add all kinds of cool features such as mapping windows into hardware textures etc. that the likes of Aqua enjoys.

And what about the people who want to run remote apps? Well they can run X11 as they already do or do what X11 does on OS X - run in rootless mode on top of the native WM. Apps would run either way so long as implementations of QT & GTK had the same binary interface.

Installing mplayer, ogle, xine in Gentoo by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:50 · Score: 1, Funny

I had similar problems installing these programs in Gentoo. It was so difficult to find and install them. I had to go into *gasp* an xterm, su to root, and type "emerge mplayer". Then I had to type "emerge ogle-gui". Then...this was the worst part..."emerge xine". I wasn't finished even after completing these complex steps...no, I had to "run" the programs by "clicking" on their names in the kde menu. It was so horrible...

Troll by MadFarmAnimalz · 2003-01-24 05:51 · Score: 1

That's what this review is.

You know, some people really shouldn't be using linux. Honest, not trying to be funny or sarcastic; linux is not for everyone.

I get the feeling jwz would have saved some karma if he'd stuck to a windows platform, or Mac.

Additionally, I read 'video on linux review' and thought we were going to get an informed analysis; codec support, any reverse engineering efforts underway, etc. None such luck. All we get is a poor misinformed troll spewing venom for page hits.

*sigh*

Oh, and mplayer absolutely rocks; particularly if compiled with site-specific optimisations. WITH the GUI.

--
Blearf. Blearf, I say.

Re:Troll by banky · 2003-01-24 06:03 · Score: 3, Funny

>You know, some people really shouldn't be using linux. Honest, not trying to be funny or sarcastic; linux is not for everyone.

I know! I mean, someone came to our local LUG meeting using an iBook running Mac OS X! As we were beating the shit out of him, we faintly heard that he uses Linux on his servers, but I think he was just a Commie plant, sent to weaken our resolve.

If we can't keep out the riff-raff, then what good is running Linux? Not trying to be funny or sarcastic, but what if the Dell kid bought a new Dell running Linux? That would be horrible. What if some random CS student somewhere used gcc instead of the free "Introductory" copy of Visual Studio that came in their textbook? Horrible. That person might not really "get it" and instead just be a user.

I'm so glad that Linux is done, and there is no longer any further need for attention on matters like usability. If regular users got a hold of it.. whew. They might be able to use it. We can't have that.

--
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK

Re:LOL! The answer? mplayer from command line by damiam · 2003-01-24 05:53 · Score: 1

Presumably there's some reason why a GUI is important for a movie program. I'm not quite sure what it is, though.

--
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.

The secret of JWZ's index page by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:54 · Score: 0

Look through the HTML for the comments and you see it is a secret there. And no, I don't know it either.

Mplayer keys by JollyTX · 2003-01-24 05:54 · Score: 1

This was stupid. At first, I thought the guy had pretty valid comments; they GUIs do suck. But the fact is, MPlayer's keyboard interface is insanely fast and convenient. I never wanna use a GUI movie player again.

--
Can you hear me, Major Tom? I'm not the man they think I am at home...

Situation not as bad as article by QuackQuack · 2003-01-24 05:54 · Score: 1

Sure the video on Linux situation isn't perfect, but it's not as bad as JWZ makes it out to be.

Xine is pretty easy to get working, the biggest pain there is getting the dvdnav stuff working, but you can blame the MPAA for that, not xine. Once running it is no more annoying, and often less so than Windows DVD players.

mplayer is a real pain to get working, but it has more features than xine, so it's worth it. I too use this in it's command-line form

As for theming, yes there are a bunch of crappy themes with hard to read fonts, but at least you should be able to find a theme with titlebars and large fonts.

I started using these tools about 18 months ago, and they've improved greatly in that time.

I agree with other posters that this article wasn't worthy of posting.

--
By reading this sig, you agree to the terms of my sig license.

Why did /. post this? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:55 · Score: 0

This article seems a little below the level of /. articles. "fucktards"? Please be a little more careful witht he stories. It might have been worthy of the title "state of linux video player guis and their instalation on RedHat". There was no mention of the codecs these players can play, the computer required to play them on each player, the output formats they support, the distros they work on. His entire tirade about the difficulties installing, about half of the article not including the word "fuck", apt-get install vlc xine gets me two video players... while I agree on some points about silly themes which make things less usable I do believe one could make a normal theme with a title bar etc...

Maybe he has the solution to the RIAA by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:55 · Score: 0

I am fully in support of this proposed audio-cock technology.

That surely would confuse the heck out of them!

Re:Brilliant-"Crutch" logic by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:56 · Score: 0

"3 media players that dont really work is never going to help Linux conquer the desktop. MS only has one, that does work!"

Oh! You mean like these?

Free clue:Microsoft's media player didn't help it conqueror anything.

Anyways.... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:57 · Score: 0

if u want to install an os and have everything shine right out of the box i suggest a little os called windows xp, or you can actually configure your system before complaining about it.

Re:From the article... SUCKS. by wunderhorn1 · 2003-01-24 05:57 · Score: 1

You, sir, are talking out of your ass. X11, as far as programming interfaces and debugging is concerned, is a disaster, and that is the context from which jwz is speaking, not editing or music or whatever it is you do.

It's really slashdot's fault for publishing a rant that was never intended for this kind of exposure, and for the "fucktard" who submitted it for misrepresenting its contents.

--
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2003-01-24 05:57 · Score: 1

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Get used to it. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 05:58 · Score: 0

If opensource wants to really break into the corporate/consumer environment then it will really need to get used to this form of criticism. Some of the comments state shit like "if you can't do better then shut up" or similar. Guess what, the vast majority of users aren't programmers, but they will still loudly complain. And when you're dealing with a company you'll live with it or you'll lose the last support contract holding your ass out of Chapter 11. Enjoy.

Speaking of fucktards by shren · 2003-01-24 05:59 · Score: 1

Nobody, and I mean nobody, who has a web page that looks like this gets to complain about usability. Ever. He bitches about form over function for video players, then has a web page that looks like *that*? Hey JWZ, doesn't look like you'd know usability if you saw it!

--
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)

Re:Speaking of fucktards by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 07:49 · Score: 0

Video players are intended to be used by the masses. If you want a successful operating system you need average people to be able to use it. A bad UI prevents that from happening.

In regard to his site, JWZ probably doesn't particular care about catering to the average dumbfuck who doesn't get the joke. If his rants are being put up on slashdot he has enough moron readers already.
Re:Speaking of fucktards by XO · 2003-01-24 11:27 · Score: 1

Let me summarize 99% of the comments to this story:

JWZ you're a fuckwad, if you could program in a hex Monitor, this'd all be simple!

Well, apparently he is capable of using a hex Monitor. Are you?

--
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/

Re:Shouldn't rant about things you don't understan by dinivin · 2003-01-24 05:59 · Score: 1

His words are what's important, and his words equate to: "Why is this so hard. Make it consistant, make it easy."

The words are only important if people listen to them. No one's going to listen to them (as demonstrated by the overwhelming amount of criticism he's received on Slashdot) if his tone is nasty. This is not a difficult concept to understand.

Dinivin

You have to admit... by bigdisk · 2003-01-24 06:00 · Score: 2, Insightful

You have to admin Linux is in a pretty sorry ass state for end users. I spent the better part of a week trying to get a wireless card running. You have to scour the net for HOWTOs and beg and grovel more experienced people for help.

And who was the brain surgeon that architected the kernel? Who decided you should have to recompile the goddamn thing every time you add a card or device to the goddamn computer?

Re:You have to admit... by demon · 2003-01-24 06:22 · Score: 1

You need wireless-tools and the kernel drivers. It's not that tough really.

And who says you need to rebuild your whole kernel to add some modules? I don't, and it never gives me a problem. Don't dramatize, you're starting to sound like JWZ.

--

Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"

switching distros by biostatman · 2003-01-24 06:00 · Score: 3, Interesting

I would normally agree that switching distributions just to get an app (or class of apps) to work is a little nutty, but if you *REALLY* want to play videos, the plf rpms for Mandrake make installing quite a bit of video software for linux super easy (though I imagine there are apt-get repositories that do the same). All you need to do is go here to configure and add a urpmi source from one of the plf mirror sites, and it is literally as easy as "urpmi.update -a && urpmi mplayer".

Side note on what a kick ass program mplayer is: plays DVDs, mpg, wmv, mov (sorenson!), divx, xvid, on and on and on. Moreover, the low CPU usage is really quite incredible and makes it possible to watch DivX movies on my laptop that absolutely crawl on winders. Good stuff.

It seems like the UI annoyances Jamie Zawinski complains about with Mplayer are really quite trivial when you consider the immense benefits. I'm sure that there is a skin out there that would conform to the UI principles he wants (if not, how hard could it be to roll your own mplayer skin, especially for someone with his skills?). Find it. Use it. Stop complaining.

(OT: can we please cut the "JWZ" crap? Though I admire the things he has done for Linux, I think he seems to take himself a little too seriously, so when I see "JWZ" I'll think shortcut for "gee wiz", not that whining diva)

--
For the love of $DEITY, loose != not win!!!!!

Re:switching distros by poot_rootbeer · 2003-01-24 08:50 · Score: 1

It seems like the UI annoyances Jamie Zawinski complains about with Mplayer are really quite trivial when you consider the immense benefits.

The thing is, they AREN'T trivial. If they were, JWZ wouldn't spend his time ranting and moaning about them.

If an application doesn't feel usable to me, it isn't usable to me. If I get frustrated every time I try to use a tool, I'm not going to use it.

"Don't like it, you can find or write something better, now shut up" is not a valid response to complaints, and the widespread embrace of attitudes like this within the Open Source community will keep OSS from every taking over on the desktop.

mod it up by ArmorFiend · 2003-01-24 06:01 · Score: 2, Funny

Moderators: Please mod the parent of this post up up up till it sticks at 5 forever. I don't hold out much hope that the makers of the current crop of themeable crud will undo the fucktardedness they've wrought, but when they get replaced by next generation programs, maybe its developers will read the above post and not make the same mistake again.

Learn to Use Criticism by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:02 · Score: 2, Insightful

What's with all the hostility? Okay, the guy has some pretty frank things to say, and the way he says them is none too polite, either.

But here's something to chew on... what he's saying is what a lot of Linux newcomers will be thinking. What's you're answer for them? "It's free, be glad you're getting any software at all." Or maybe: "The source code's available, fix it yourself." Or, perhaps, as mentioned towards the end of the article: "Try a different Linux distribution."

These kinds of attitudes, far more than any technical barriers, harm the mainstream adoption Linux (or GNU/Linux for the whiny among you). Okay, so the criticism of your favorite OS was harsh or rude. What about taking up the gauntlet and actually fixing this stuff for those folks who don't have the skills required to do it themselves? Why not take up the challenge and make Linux more usable?

Companies who ignore customers do so at their own peril; the open source community is no different. You want Linux to steal share from Microsoft? Listen to criticism, then fix what's wrong.

Criticism is your friend; learn to use it.

(Let's see now whether this message gets ignored, labeled as flamebait, or insightful. The result should say a lot.)

Right. Just what I had been saying. by WWWWolf · 2003-01-24 06:02 · Score: 1

Point 1: Themeing does suck. A while ago I was looking for a music player that would not have any of these idiotic theme things. I couldn't. Finally I found Rhythmbox, but that depends on gstreamer and is thus a little bit unstable. Finally, I settled on keeping XMMS but minimizing the freakin' window and using the "NeXTAMP" theme that doesn't suck as much as most other skins.

Another thing: XINE is excellent, but the GUI does, indeed, suck - thank God both Xine and mplayer have excellent keypress interfaces and Xine's support for LIRC is nice too. Hoping Sinek will improve, it has a better-working GUI with Xine internals, and uses bare GTK+ 2.

And this compares only players! How about the total and utter lack of video editing software? (No, cinelerra is still inadequeate for... um, anything. Either it doesn't work, or isn't documented, says whatever I'm doing is not Supported, or crashes.)

I have extremely high hopes for gstreamer but it's still at 0.5...

JWZ Emacs had its own movieplayer by Per+Abrahamsen · 2003-01-24 06:03 · Score: 2, Interesting

Meaning you could play movies from within an Emacs buffer for the Emacs version JWZ initiated (Lucid GNU Emacs).

I'm pretty sure that feature is broken in the current version (XEmac), and that nobody cares.

jwz is wrong about apt by JoeBuck · 2003-01-24 06:04 · Score: 1

Here's a letter that I sent to JWZ:

Jamie,

Good commentary about usability of Linux video apps, but you're off-base on one thing: you clearly don't understand what apt is.

apt is not the Debian packaging system, dpkg is. apt is a layer that sits above EITHER dpkg OR RPM, the latter thanks to work done by Connectiva. As a result, using apt on top of RPM is not the equivalent of using two packaging systems. Rather, the apt layer just figures out all the RPMs you need and downloads them, and then execs the rpm command to install everything in the right order.

The Connectiva folks also produced a reasonable but not ideal GUI, Synaptic, to sit on top of apt.

In a just world, apt would just take over; it is a better way to manage Red Hat systems. Unfortunately this would interfere with Red Hat's business model: they want to sell you a tool (Red Hat Network) that's not as good and that violates your privacy (the list of packages you have installed is stored on their end).

Using apt does not interfere with your ability to install an RPM direct with the rpm command, just as use of apt on Debian doesn't interfere with your ability to install a .deb with the dpkg command.

By installing apt, I was able to put the MP3 support and Ogle onto my Red Hat 8.0 system with a couple of commands, even though this required finding and downloading a dozen RPMs. Do you really prefer having to collect a bunch of random RPMs on your own from various sites on the net, only to find that the dependencies aren't quite right or that you're missing something?

Joe

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2003-01-24 06:04 · Score: 1

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Shouldn't rant about things you don't understan by Rayban · 2003-01-24 06:05 · Score: 1

You're right - I think my argument is weaker because of my little IPO rant.

I do firmly believe that mindless ranting about "this sucks" "that sucks" is not productive, though. As a developer, I would rather listen to a lucid argument than someone that seems to be foaming at the mouth. The nasty tone is what invalidates his argument - the first one to get angry in a discussion is the one whose points are usually forgotten.

You mention that his words boil down to "Why is this so hard. Make it consistant, make it easy." Now, what if the GStreamer people were trying to put a nice, consistant face on a media player by wrapping it with Gnome2 (which they are, BTW)? JWZ has dismissed this immediately by saying both Gnome2 and Red Hat 8.0 suck, without any sort of explaination. And then he goes off about not wanting to upgrade, even though the upgrade could give him exactly what he wants! :)

Unfortunately, because he's ranting, there's no way to know exactly what his point was. He seems to pursue an avenue and then stop and trash the application!

I'll admit my mistake with my IPO comment. This has nothing to do with this situation, but I will maintain that people still do get off on ranting. :)

--
æeee!

Newsflash: /. readers completely miss point!!! by swordgeek · 2003-01-24 06:06 · Score: 2, Insightful

OK, is this a wild, psychotic, venomous, incoherent, and possible drug-induced rant? Well of course it is!

But the problem he brings up is still a real one, and most of the invective directed at him competely misses it.

Video on Linux (and many MANY other aspects of Linux in general) sucks from the end user point of view. If I have to compile it to make it work properly, then Linux is nothing more than a hobbyist OS. If I have to write my own bloody software, then it's nothing better than a hardcore geek toy OS.

Why isn't Linux taking over the desktop market? It's not MS bullshit (of which there's certainly a lot), it's Linux bullshit. The fundamental problem is that it is not a useful generic-end-user capable OS, and telling people to go write their own software if they don't like it...DOESN'T HELP!!!

JWZ doesn't have to use Linux. I don't have to use Linux. Countering with confrontation (i.e. JWZ) with abuse isn't going to win any converts.

--

"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban

Re:Newsflash: /. readers completely miss point!!! by demon · 2003-01-24 06:17 · Score: 1

These players are still being very actively developed and extended. Saying that "I don't want to have to compile my player to play [obscure format X]" is just lame. I mean, hell, look at the new features that have gone into both Xine and mPlayer lately - they support just about any media format out there now. But it's all very new, and still in flux. If you want the Microsoft way of doing things (this is your media player, this is what you can do, don't expect a new one for awhile), you're looking in the wrong place.

--

Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Re:Newsflash: /. readers completely miss point!!! by swordgeek · 2003-01-24 06:27 · Score: 1

OK, I can live with stuff that's being 'actively developed.' At the same time as I've posted elsewhere in this thread, there has to be a point where a particular version of a product (defined mostly as a featureset and level of stability) has to be finished and cut free. Perpetual beta releases with no end to the added features in each release doesn't produce usable software. It just produces...perpetual beta releases.

Think of the Linux kernel itself: It comes out with a specific featureset, and (fairly) well debugged. Some things are simply not included in a given release. Development then works on the next featureset, and builds that to a releasable product. Discrete 'final products' like this MUST be part of a software development cycle, or you're not developing; you're just playing in the sandbox.

--

"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban

Re:From the article... SUCKS. by Melantha_Bacchae · 2003-01-24 06:07 · Score: 3, Informative

Not only is Apple's X server a thing of beauty and a joy forever, but there is also a Carbon version of Emacs for Jaguar. It has many packages including LaTeX, and is as simple to install as the Mac gets. "Enhanced Carbon Emacs" does not require an X server or the Terminal app, as it is a fully native Mac program.

You are not the only one who expected a video editing review. However, I do think the reviewer had some valid points. Some Linux application GUIs and themes can be very hard to use, even if they are cool looking. And Linux application installs still need work if Linux is to be on the desktop of ordinary people. Joe User wouldn't know the difference between apt and RPM.

Such issues need to be brought up and discussed if Linux is to move forward. They could be brought up much more professionally, though...

"The path of peace is yours to discover for eternity."
Japanese version of "Mothra" (1961)

Re:From the article... SUCKS. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:07 · Score: 0

umm.. are you still stuck in 1998?

Not everyone likes Aqua, freak.

An amusing appraisal, but.... by danzvash · 2003-01-24 06:09 · Score: 1

Fucktards? A little harsh, perhaps, as an assessment of capabilities of the creators of xine, one of the 2 best media players for Unix out there. Likewise, "fucking morons" is probably not an accurate description for A'rpi and the other mplayer devvers.

But I took his point! I too have felt mild irritation at a couple of *tiny* *tiny* issues with these players:

Xine:
- Such a nice player! But if only the file selection button was not an obscure :// icon, and the dialog itself was a little larger, and the button to access DVD menus was just "DVD" and not "NAV", then I could show my girlfriend/sister/Dad how to use it, and breathe a sigh of relief!

Mplayer
- Still no DVD menu support (sobs)!
- Interface is OK otherwise, really. Always open with the gui (or "gmplayer") and there should not really be an issue. Of course there is the occasional unnecessary pop-up, but hey.....

All in all, the "review" was amusing for a couple of minute's abusive rantings (always worth a chuckle ;) but did not really constitute the objective assessment of video on linux that I was expecting. (I am in the process of building an always-on multimedia hub with my Gentoo Linux box, with MythTV and DVD-playing extensions, so I am interested in all Linux video stories....)

It should be stated that I don't think it can be enough stated how damned IMPRESSIVE both xine and mplayer are - especially mplayer now, in light of the fact that, thanks to their recent hacking, IT WILL NOW PLAY ALL VIDEO/AUDIO formats that anybody sane is likely to chuck at it. DivX3/4/5? WMV9? Sorenson SVQ3? RealVideo9? Not a problem.
(Of course, a lot of the credit has to go to people like ffmpeg.org, avifile and the Wine project aswell) Which other media player has this kind of codec support? Windows Media Player? Real Player? Quicktime? I'm afraid not.

Remember also that the video and audio output drivers (especially Mplayer) are very diverse. You want to chuck the sound through alsa / arts / esd / sdl ? No problem. How about putting the video through vidix / directfb(!) / Xv / your own specialised video card frame buffer driver (matrox, 3dfx, radeon ...) ?
Again, Windows Media Player doesn't really compete in terms of flexibility.

OK, so maybe you don't want to spend a couple of hours reading and digesting the excellent mplayer documentation. So maybe what you should do is install Gentoo Linux, type

# emerge mplayer

and after a few minutes use the best media player on the planet. It actually is that simple (sigh).

Re:An amusing appraisal, but.... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-28 17:22 · Score: 0

mplayer has dvd support... Just because the fuckwits who are Gentoo devs (And I had a few flamefests with 'em while I used that distro) don't set it up to do so by default doesn't mean that you can't.

"Write it yourself" *is* all you should get by Per+Abrahamsen · 2003-01-24 06:09 · Score: 1

Very little free software is written for political reasons, so trying to say how the world "should" be is useless.

If you want new or better software there are two useful options: Write it yourself, or pay someone to write it for you. Bitching wont change a thing. Nobody is obliged to program for you for free, if you think so you have misunderstood what the free in free software means.

Re:"Write it yourself" *is* all you should get by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:27 · Score: 0

If you want new or better software there are two useful options: Write it yourself, or pay someone to write it for you.
Hey, you know what? There's a third option: provide feedback to the developers on stuff you'd like to see in future releases! And, guess what! That's what JWZ has done!

It's a miracle!
Re:"Write it yourself" *is* all you should get by BlackHawk-666 · 2003-01-24 06:54 · Score: 1

Bitching is user feedback, it's just that it's negative feedback instead of positive. It will help get a product changed, so it can have a positive effect, it's just likely to hurt the programmers feelings and they will get all defensive about their product.
Feedback is important to getting a product spit and polish finished - and I should know, I've been on the receiving end of enough of it.

--
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Re:"Write it yourself" *is* all you should get by binaryDigit · 2003-01-24 14:20 · Score: 1

Very little free software is written for political reasons

No it's not useless. How is talking about making computers a better tool useless. Is expecting better quality software somehow political. After all, isn't that the whole point. Isn't that why people are taking a hard look at Linux, because they expect "better"? If Windows was significantly better than it is now (and priced the same), nobody would be giving "free" Linux a second glance, so quality (not just measured in bugs, but also in usefulness) is important.

Write it yourself, or pay someone to write it for you

I assume you're talking about "free" software, because you seemed to have completely forgotten the old "provide feedback to your software vendors and talk with your pocketbook". And if those two options are the only viable ones for "free software", then "free software" is doomed (it'll never go away, but it will never become more than the sideshow to the big act).

Nobody is obliged to program for you for free, if you think so you have misunderstood what the free in free software means.

Actually "they" are if "they" are pushing "free software" as a viable alternative to "not-free" software. If you view "free software" as a tinkerers toy, then you are correct. Which do YOU think it should be?

You are the 'fucktard' by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:11 · Score: 0

You're the fucktard that wants it to work on RedHat. That's your own fault. I don't like to start distro wars, but unfortunetly people keep insisting on running inferior RedHat. All other distros are superior to RedHat, so take your pick.

gui support in mplayer is weak, most people don't run it because they would rather just type: "mplayer nakedhorseporn.mpeg" and have it go right into fullscreen.

If you were running gentoo you could've typed:
"emerge mplayer" .. and it would've installed everything necessary for you, optimized for your particular cpu. and enabled what video display support you happened to have (x11, fbdev, vesafb, whatever).

You're an idiot. by Wakko+Warner · 2003-01-24 06:12 · Score: 4, Interesting

So if I write a huge flame about the state of something in Linux, can I get it posted to Slashdot too?

Maybe, if you're jwz.

You seem to be slightly ignorant of the fact that this "article" is just a rant, one of many on jwz's rants page. When he's pissed off, he writes something there. He's pissed off about the state of multimedia players on linux, and he ought to be. They're a pain in the ass to install, configure, and use. This is a cold, hard fact; jwz just said it better than I could.

- A.P.

--
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"

Re:You're an idiot. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 07:54 · Score: 0

They're a pain in the ass to install, configure, and use.

Yup. I used to dual boot to Windows 2000 and Linux (I've used different releases of SuSE, Redhat, Debian and either Corel or Caldera, I forget which). But I recently formated the Linux partition and now dual boot to Windows 2000 and Windows XP. I just got sick of screwing with stuff trying to get it to work without success. It used to be fun but now I'm older and have real work to do. I gave Linux a try, used it for close to three years, learned Bash, Perl and a little bit of ANSI C to boot. But in the end it just wasn't worth it.

I wish the Linux community the best of luck. I plan on waiting until january 1, 2005 when I'll install the then most current distro to give it another chance. Hopefully things will have improved by then and I'll be able to ditch windows.
Re:You're an idiot. by motox · 2003-01-24 08:50 · Score: 1

Maybe he is right maybe not, nothing gives him right to call people "morons" or "fucktards".
He could contribute to improve the programs if he doesnt like them, or even criticize them but in a constructive way... maybe he said better than you could, the only point in his favor is that in your case nobody gives a shit of what you could or could not say.

Just my 2 cents.
Re:You're an idiot. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 10:18 · Score: 0

He's pissed off about the state of multimedia players on linux, and he ought to be. They're a pain in the ass to install, configure, and use.
The standard response to that is write a better one, or make this one better.
Of course, he could just install windoze and windoze media player...
Re:You're an idiot. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 11:01 · Score: 0

Whatever. He "ought" to be pissed off that people aren't writing software and giving it away for free (and some of them risking potential legal headaches)? Screw JWZ.

And FWIW, you actually said it better than he did. Your rant about linux video was one sentence long and just as informative as his page long diatribe about everything he could possibly hit (video, GNOME2, X, did I miss any?)
Re:You're an idiot. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 11:15 · Score: 0

nothing gives him right to call people "morons" or "fucktards".

You sir, are a fucktard. The first amendment gives him the right to call you that. Moron.
Re:You're an idiot. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 12:34 · Score: 0

Maybe he is right maybe not, nothing gives him right to call people "morons" or "fucktards".
It's called free speech, you whiny fucktard.
Re:You're an idiot. by Lee+Cremeans · 2003-01-27 10:09 · Score: 1

That's one of my pet peeves about certain programs, especially when 1) I know the program only needs GTK+, and will work fine without all of GNOME's baggage 2) the packaging system (in my case, APT, since I run Debian unstable on my Mac) defaults to installing the version with all the bells and whistles.

I don't use or like GNOME very much (I've preferred KDE in the past, and found myself gravitating toward XFCE recently since it's not as piggish), and I'd rather not install it unless a program I want (like gnucash) insists on having it around and won't work otherwise.

As for the state of Linux video...A.P. and jwz are mostly right. There's a whole myriad of different players that all behave differently and have their own quirks regarding what they will or will not play. In my experience, mplayer is the most complete, though I've run into a few things (the odd raw-YUV variant the old Apple Video Player spits out, for one) even the latest mplayer can't handle -- I have to use xanim to play that. (I've tried to get that working by dinking with the config file, but I guess I'll have to tell Arpad about it, since I can't figure it out.) Also, mplayer was distributed as source-only for a long time, which made configuring things difficult for non-techies. Ogle is great for playing DVDs (on x86, since my DVD-ROM drive is on my PC, and even with a G3/400 my Mac would still be too slow), but not much else. I never got Xine to work satisfactorily.

As for general video stuff, I usually do it in Windows 2000 on the PC. I know it goes against the conventional wisdom here, but I got kinda tired of fighting with Unix (in my case, FreeBSD) as a desktop, and I also wanted to play with Linux. I use my Mac (in MacOS 9.1, since fbtv and xawtv don't quite work right with PlanB just yet) for video capture.

Oh, and did I mention that VirtualDub rocks?

-lee

Garbage by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:13 · Score: 0

Good grief.

Of all the stories over all the years here at /., this is without a doubt the biggest pile of dung to ever make it to the front page. Worthless, worthless, worthless.

If you want to point to silly rants, fine. Just don't point to silly rants written by 'tards.

Re:Garbage by Compenguin · 2003-01-24 08:44 · Score: 1

"And I don't know what he's doing criticising others' code if he was responsible for the abomination that was Netscape 4. And how long did it take to get Mozilla to 1.0, hmm? Now it's there it's slow and bloated, and not only does it have skins but you can build whole fucking different applications in it (!?!??)"

Actually he didn't work on NS4 and when he was given mozilla , it was Netscape 5 - piles of code licesened from others, and he was told to turn it in't a working project, an IIRC, he resigned well before M12 which was the first really usable Milestone.

What a waste of bandwidth by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:13 · Score: 0

What a stupid review, and why would slashdot even waste time posting this?!?!

Has the quality of Slashdot gone down so far that they have to scrounge to find articles to post!?!

Must of been a slow news day.

Please, post articles that are intelligent and interesting, or nothing at all.

yeah this guy is such a troll..... by greymond · 2003-01-24 06:14 · Score: 1

Look the silly man wouldn't even take the time to "memorize complicated series of keystrokes" - every true nix fan knows every command by heart and resites the make, install, and modprobe prayers in their sleep.

He obviously doesn't know what he's talking about either - since I use and it plays just fine. All I had to do was reroute my plasma coils to xterminal and reconfigure kde to use emacs to parse the jabawakie through the starships manifold - easy as shit!

just in case some of "you" read this - I AM being SARCASTIC - it seems like a guy who knows linux enough to work in it and have fun with it and who points out REAL ISSUES with all the mentioned apps. Granted he does it in a rant sort of way and comes off as a Troll with such brilliant phrases as "fucking morons" when refuring to programmers, but the fact that a program is still crap for X reason still holds true.

--
Ave Molech Setting

Jamie's writing larger reflect my Linux experience by tungwaiyip · 2003-01-24 06:14 · Score: 3, Insightful

That Linux is flooded with low quality apps.

1. Many apps can't get basic thing done easily (or at all). E.g. Nautilus (a file manager) could crash when copying files.

2. Many GUI are badly designed. They have complex interaction and fail to guide new users to do basic things. Think how many steps are needed to use xcdroast to duplicate a CD. How intimidating it would be to a new user. And how many opportunities for user to do wrong things.

3. Many GUI apps look amateurish. And when some window doesn't fit in a 1024x768 screen this just drive you mad.

4. When an app exhaust my patience I go for a different app. Only to find it have its own set of problem or sucks even more. And then I still can't even get my basic work done.

The enthusiastic crowd of Linux would insist the app works would great if only you do this configure and/or use a different version and/or recompile from source code. We need to get real and have a objective evaluation on the state of art. If we oversold on Linux and it doesn't meet the quality standard for average user it would only damage Linux's image.

Note that after 2 months of frustrating experience and I still in a quixotic attempt to get Linux to work for me. It is only because I'm serious in finding an alternative to MS. If any windoze app give me this kind of crap it will be uninstalled and will never be seen again. (But I think my next machine is going to be a Mac).

Wai Yip Tung

My God NO! by wowbagger · 2003-01-24 06:15 · Score: 2, Offtopic

Please DON'T mod me up - I've already taken 2 "-1 Overrated"'s as it is!

It's just not fair - Overrated and Underrated are more like Metamoderations, but MY karma takes the hit! ;^)

Also, I don't believe Overrated and Underrated are ever meta-moderated, so they are abused by people as a means to mod-down those with whom the moderator disagrees without fear of metamoderation.

PLEASE! DON'T MOD ME PAST 3!

(Warning - this post contained humor. Those who are humor impaired should seek medical advice before consuming this post)

--
www.eFax.com are spammers

Linux users must hate themselves by Space+Coyote · 2003-01-24 06:16 · Score: 5, Insightful

If I brought home a hardware DV DVD player, set it up on top of my TV, plugged it in and turned it on to find a command prompt and no way to play movies without me going out on the Internet, finding the proper program, in the proper packaging format, compiled for the proper architecture, installing it, then realizing my video hardware isn't configured properly. Having to upgrade my X-windows, and subsequently patch my 'kernel' with some kind of library.. and so on and so on. Well, the girl I brought home to watch a movie with me will have gone off to find something more interesting to do long ago. And said video player would have been thrown out the window.

When I can buy a computer with linux on it and have stuff just work, I'll say it has a chance of being useful for someone rather than a giant time-sucking virus.

Until then, I'll use a Mac.

--
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.

Re:Linux users must hate themselves by diamondc · 2003-01-24 06:30 · Score: 2, Informative

You don't have to patch your kernel or upgrade X-windows to watch dvd's or videos using Linux. Just install a modern Linux distribution like RedHat or SuSe, download a couple rpms, install them and you're set. Many people have written guides to playing dvd's and videos from a freshly installed RedHat, I know theres a webpage on the RedHat website on how to play dvd's/mp3s. Just search for google for more information....

--
"I keep looking in the want-ads under 'revolutionary' but there don't seem to be any listings.. "
Re:Linux users must hate themselves by Space+Coyote · 2003-01-24 06:51 · Score: 1

You don't have to patch your kernel or upgrade X-windows to watch dvd's or videos using Linux. Just install a modern Linux distribution like RedHat or SuSe, download a couple rpms, install them and you're set. Many people have written guides to playing dvd's and videos from a freshly installed RedHat

Many of us own laptops that don't play nice with linux. Anyway, here's how you are supposed to play a DVD:

1. Insert disc.
2. Make sure you don't burn your popcorn.

--
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
Re:Linux users must hate themselves by TeknoHog · 2003-01-24 07:53 · Score: 1

Computers are pretty complex things, and they can do many more things besides playing DVDs. If you want simplicity, you get simplicity.
The illusion that certain predefined things "just work" comes from assumptions and decisions already made by someone else. Linux is all about deciding for yourself, that's why it doesn't come with everything preinstalled. It's meant to be flexible for many different uses, even those that don't include DVD playing.

--
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Re:Linux users must hate themselves by Cheesy+Fool · 2003-01-24 08:13 · Score: 0

Then get a fucking standalone dvd player.

--

Hail to the king, baby!
Re:Linux users must hate themselves by IamTheRealMike · 2003-01-24 08:22 · Score: 0, Flamebait

Until then, I'll use a Mac.
OK. As you have chosen to not help out, we'd appreciate it if you avoided posting useless rants on Slashdot. You may think the current situation with media players is a bad one, feel free to ignore it until it gets better.
In the same fashion, I will avoid pointing out that if buying a Mac didn't mean paying for massively overpriced and inflexible hardware, combined with an OS with an UI I can't stand (or change to something I can stand), being taken up the ass by a company that regularly screws over its customers AND losing the software freedom that is about the only chance we have of restoring some semblance of normality to the industry, if it didn't mean all of that I might buy one.
Because until then, I'll use a Linux PC.
See how pointless these posts are? They add nothing to the debate. There are plenty of people who are trying to improve multimedia in general, rants such as the above add nothing and don't help that effort.
Re:Linux users must hate themselves by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 08:59 · Score: 0

boot to movix2, eject cd, pop in dvd, autoplays.

4 steps. 1 minute. http://movix.sourceforge.net
Re:Linux users must hate themselves by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 09:58 · Score: 0

Or just use Windows, where even the "open source" video tools are very robust.
Re:Linux users must hate themselves by Malcontent · 2003-01-24 11:59 · Score: 1

" If I brought home a hardware DV DVD player, set it up on top of my TV, "

If you brought home a hardware DVD player you could not get on the internet with it. You could not download movies with it. You could not rip dvds or MP3s with it. Not only that but the damned clock would be flashing at 12:00 for the rest of it's life because you could not figure out how to set it using the remote control or reading the manual.

--
War is necrophilia.
Re:Linux users must hate themselves by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 12:48 · Score: 0

Lessee, not Linux per se, but close enough..

cd /usr/ports/www/apache13+ipv6
make install
cd /usr/ports/www/mod_php4
make install

It's useful for me. Hmm, along with many other people. Let's see, I guess I'm good to go. Maybe you have some usability issue like not using OS's for their purpose instead of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Multimedia isn't the realm of Linux, it's working on it, but right now, even side by side to Windows, I'd say Multimedia is the sole property of Macs. I use mplayer, no problem.
Re:Linux users must hate themselves by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 14:22 · Score: 0

Why would a DVD player have a clock?
Re:Linux users must hate themselves by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 16:24 · Score: 0

Hey, it works beautifully on a Mac.
Re:Linux users must hate themselves by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 16:31 · Score: 0

True, but my Mac does all those things just fine _and_ I can plug it into the TV to watch DVDs in 5 seconds.
Re:Linux users must hate themselves by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 18:58 · Score: 0

Flamebait? I *really* hope someone M2s that.

Credibility by neomuzic · 2003-01-24 06:16 · Score: 0

Credibility

Any creditability the author may have had prior to this article has been lost. I would like to question the amount of time and research spent on this experiment.

Just my opinion.

--
-NM

What is a good UI then ? by theefer · 2003-01-24 06:16 · Score: 1

The Playa crashes more often than I launch it, so let's not talk about it. WMP ? Yeah, I really miss a player that takes 30% of the screen with useless menus and stuff, even though I have to admin that Realplayer is the absolute winner on these grounds.

There exists a simple GUI for mplayer which can be "plugged in" for mouse-addicts; aviplay has a simple but nice UI too.

I'm not saying Linux video softwares have a better UI, but their UI is absolutely usable, functionnal. Too bad he didn't mention the great features included in mplayer or aviplay (changing sound & subtitles delay, multi-channel audio, etc). Most of the common video players on other OSes just don't have all these, sorry.

--
theefer

Re:What is a good UI then ? by generic-man · 2003-01-24 06:59 · Score: 1

Windows Media Player 6.4 (Start > Run > mplayer2 in Windows 2000/XP) plays just about everything out there, and has the only interface of the big three (QuickTime, Real, WMP) that actually looks like a Windows application. It's fast, lightweight, and doesn't try to build a library out of everything you play. On my Windows XP laptop, it's the only media player I use where possible.

--
For more information, click here.

Insightful or not, it is the fact by Per+Abrahamsen · 2003-01-24 06:17 · Score: 1

Of course people are bitching that they can't get others to fix their problems for free. As a programmer I find it hard to sympatise, I they expect me to fix their problems, they better expect to pay me for the priviledge. I don't expect them to work for free for me either.

I *do* distribute some software for free though, but that is just because it was fun to write, it solved problems for me, or (for most of it) other people paid me to write it, and there wasn't any reason not to distribute it for free.

If someone think I should write more free software, they better make sure one of these three motivations apply. Bitching isn't helping there.

Re:Insightful or not, it is the fact by MoneyT · 2003-01-24 06:24 · Score: 1

Wait, you mean charging money for software that you put time and effort into isn't evil? Holy shit! Stop the presses!!!

--
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984

Yep, Windows still has a place in this world by Mitchell+Mebane · 2003-01-24 06:18 · Score: 1

This is one of the few reasons I still dual-boot: video. Playing and encoding.

Windows has DirectShow. Like it or not, sometimes having standards foisted upon you is a good thing. I can install a codec (DivX, XviD, 3ivX, whatever) and know it will definately work in my video player. Oh, and it's hardware accelerated, too. Without any fuss.

To play videos, I use BSPlayer, with the OS X skin. Great interface. In spite of the skinning, it behaves like a normal Windows application. It has a title bar. I can click on it to focus the app and raise the window. Anything that can't be done through the main box can be done through two well layed-out menus, accessible by right-clicking on either the playing window or the control box. The OSD messages can be moved around. In fullscreen mode, there's nothing cluttering the screen, but all the controls are either a mouse-click away, or will spring up by moving to the bottom edge of the screen.

Oh, did I mention it has reconfigurable key bindings for almost all actions, not to mention a powerful command-line interface?

For DVD playing I still have to use a non-freeware app. But PowerDVD XP works extremely well. I must admit, I've never bothered trying to play DVDs in Linux. But I hear that Xine actually handles DVD menus, so I might have to try it sometime.

As for encoding, the same holds true for codecs as with playing. I can launch up any one of several apps (mainly VirtualDub) and I have all my encoders at my fingertips. I can configure everything through a GUI. If I'm not sure what something does, I just hover my mouse over it for a second.

Once Linux has a) a common codec interface, and b) *good* player and encoder apps, I'll have one less (major) reason to use Windows. But maybe BeOS will get there first.

--

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle

Re:Yep, Windows still has a place in this world by Junta · 2003-01-24 06:46 · Score: 1

Common codec interface? Well that is a hard thing to really define, any of he systems out there can be considered a 'standard' codec framework. Due to the nature of linux, it would be up to major distros to pick their favorite and run with it.

That said, if mplayer would separate the backend operations into a independent library (like xine does), I have no doubt that it would be rapidly adopted as the 'standard'. Within a week of work being done, I would bet that an application like totem would spring up for mplayer, providing the traditional movie playback application people expect (with a newbie-friendly interface). And mencoder kicks ass. Forget about anything under windows, mencoder does the job and does it damn well. I have *never* had a pleasant experience with video encoding with windows. I've done it, I've done video editing, but I hate it.

In terms of the 'guarantees' that directshow gives about enabling all media players to play all the content you want, what about QuickTime (Sorenson in particular), realmedia, vivo, fli, ogm, etc? Some can be forced to work with work, but mplayer can do all of this out of the box. MPlayer/MEncoder has the capability to be the core of the most robust and capable media framework of any platform, if they would only expose the functionality in a more programmer-friendly way than stdin and specifying window ids... By the same token, xine would take off more if the had mplayer's format and codec support, but I think that would take more work.

--
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Re:Yep, Windows still has a place in this world by demon · 2003-01-24 09:44 · Score: 1

Actually, the current Xine release supports all the formats you mentioned. It also plays SVQ3 video and QDM2 audio for Quicktime clips, and plays RealVideo with the Real binary codecs.

--

Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"

Perhaps you should read... by Pii · 2003-01-24 06:19 · Score: 3, Insightful

This.

I must admit, I'm a bit of a jwz fanboy. I enjoy a good rant, and he's got a certain gift for it.

Getting back on-topic, I don't know why everybody is so pissed about what he's written. As others have pointed out, it's not like he set out to write "A Comprehensive Review of Video on Linux." The linked "article" was written for his own amusement. Somebody else thought it would be a good idea to submit it to Slashdot. He's merely pointing out that the current state of affairs is pertty sad, and for those of you in the audience with the integrity to state the plain truth, he's correct.

There's not a single Linux video viewer (DVD/or otherwise) that approaches what you'd expect to find in so-called "Commercial software." (That's not to say that all commercial software is good either, but non-intuitive interfaces aside, they generally all work better than most of what's out there for Linux today.)

Other have also ridiculed the tendancy of the developers to make the applications look and feel like A/V equipment. Hard to argue with that. There's no reason a video player needs to look like a physical DVD player. A real DVD player looks the way it does because we operate it here, in the meatspace. It's design is simplistic and somewhat elegant because of the way we interact with it, in 3 dimensions. When this functionality sits on a 2 dimensional screen, it should look and feel like all of the other programs that we're used to using. That's a legitimate gripe.

--
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.

Re:Perhaps you should read... by nathanh · 2003-01-24 08:21 · Score: 1

There's not a single Linux video viewer (DVD/or otherwise) that approaches what you'd expect to find in so-called "Commercial software."

True, but I'm just happy I've got anything at all.
Two years ago I'd have been lucky to get a jumpy 320x240 MPEG-1 to work with xanim. Synchronised audio? Not a chance in hell.
Now I can play DivX AVI, Sorenson Quicktime, MPEG-2, DVD, VCD, at fullscreen (thanks to Xvideo), with no jumping, nearly no CPU usage, synchronised audio, and GUIs that at least work even if they aren't perfect.
I'm thankful that even though video on Linux isn't perfect it is progressing quickly. My hat is off to the developers who donate their time and skills to these projects. JWZ can go fuck himself for being such a selfish bastard. What a fucktard.
Re:Perhaps you should read... by Malcontent · 2003-01-24 11:52 · Score: 1

Nevertheless a guy with web pages that ugly and unusable has no right critizising anybody else.

--
War is necrophilia.
Re:Perhaps you should read... by Polo · 2003-01-24 14:41 · Score: 1

Best quote:

I once saw a page that said ``this page best viewed by coming over to my office and looking at it on my monitor.'' You don't often see honesty like that.
Re:Perhaps you should read... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-25 10:31 · Score: 0

Pardon me, but I'd like your permission to criticize application X for reason Y. Could you please look over records of my past and please give me the right to complain?

There is value in his rant by CAPSLOCK2000 · 2003-01-24 06:20 · Score: 0

First: I consider this rant by an experienced coder and long time unix user very childish.
HOWEVER
This is exactly the experience the average Windows will have.
eg: He complains about the sucky mplayer GUI. I know how to control it with the keyboard. To me (typical slashdot geek) mplayer is intuitive. But it isn't to inexperienced users. They depend on a perfectly working GUI, they probably don't even realize there are other ways (CLI).
What bothers me is that he does know Unix. Even without trying he can do more with it than most users ever will. If he doesn't like it, forget about your mom on Linux.

Your grandma by Per+Abrahamsen · 2003-01-24 06:20 · Score: 1

Tell your grandma to pay someone for software she can use. It may be Red Hat or Microsoft, whoever currently offer the best value for the money.

OSD by wowbagger · 2003-01-24 06:20 · Score: 1

No, I don't want a menu poping up over my app.

I REALLY don't want some dumb fake "control panel" poping up over my video when in full screen.

What I want is a simple menu bar across the top of the screen (which, for letterboxed videos, is unused anyway) that appears when I right-click, and disappears when I right-click again, or after a programmed timeout.

And if I directly use the hot-key to do something, then a brief, tasteful OSD to show that it happened is just perfect.

--
www.eFax.com are spammers

Re:Shouldn't rant about things you don't understan by jazman_777 · 2003-01-24 06:21 · Score: 3, Funny

So what if his tone is nasty? His words are what's important, and his words equate to: "Why is this so hard. Make it consistant, make it easy."

Because a nice tone makes for a more civilized world, you absolute idiot moron.

--
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.

Okay, jokes over.. where's the REAL post? by MicahEli · 2003-01-24 06:22 · Score: 1

Okay, I'm done reading that BS.. where is the REAL review. Done by people that know what they are doing/talking about? My brother (who found out what linux was last week) installed xine and had dvd/divx/wma/etc.. playing on his system all by himself in a day. Thats pretty impressive considering linux isn't exactly where is SHOULD be for newbies yet. I give props to the linux community as well as props to my little bro. This guy should be stoned to death. And speaking of rectal insertion, he should remove the hand of bill gates out of his rectum and quit the puppet show. What he said and and what bill would like to say are very similar. Coincidence?

--
"I know this... this is a unix system" -- Jurrasic Park

Proprietary codecs by captaineo · 2003-01-24 06:25 · Score: 1

JWZ didn't realize that the majority of video codecs are not available under a free license (all common ones except for MPEG-1/2 I think). There are ways to use some of these codecs on Linux, but they involve either downloading non-redistributable binaries, or using reverse-engineered/patent infringing code (whose legality is questionable in the U.S.). This is why a default Redhat install doesn't easily let you play anything other than MPEG-1 or 2...

Also, the crappiness of RPM-based distros isn't Linux's fault, it's the fault of careless distributors. Move to Debian and you'll see a huge improvement.

attention editors by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:25 · Score: 0

modding parent flamebait == hypocrisy.

Re:LOL! The answer? mplayer from command line by RatBastard · 2003-01-24 06:25 · Score: 1

GUI's are generally a pain, and I avoid them whenever possible.

Terrorists, er, Microsoft has already won. Too bad, they could have used the competition.

--
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.

Die RPM Die by Screaming+Lunatic · 2003-01-24 06:25 · Score: 2, Insightful

I don't know why people still put up with RPM.

# emerge -p mplayer These are the packages that I would merge, in order: Calculating dependencies ...done! [ebuild N ] media-libs/libdv-0.98 [ebuild N ] media-libs/win32codecs-0.90.1-r1 [ebuild N ] media-libs/divx4linux-20020418-r2 [ebuild N ] media-video/mplayer-0.90_rc3 # emerge -p gstreamer These are the packages that I would merge, in order: Calculating dependencies ...done! [ebuild N ] media-libs/gstreamer-0.4.2-r1

How difficult is that? Debian and Gentoo have installers that are more difficult than Redhat and Mandrake. But the reason Linux is not ready for the desktop is because of RPM.

DIE RPM DIE

Re:Die RPM Die by LinuxGeek8 · 2003-01-24 10:43 · Score: 1

If you have a fast connection and a fast computer, all will be installed in about an hour.
If you'd run Mandrake, you can simply use "urpmi mplayer" and "urpmi gstreamer" and all will be fine. If you have enough bandwidth it will be installed very soon.
You probably haven't touched an rpm based distro in 2 years. There are solutions for the dependency problems in rpm.
I never used Gentoo, but what I heard is that whenever you install a new version of a library or application, it still leaves the old versions installed. That's a way to "solve" dependencies, but to me that sounds like a Microsoft solution :-)
If you really think that a source based distro doesn't have dependencies, try removing /lib/libc6.so.0

--
Well, don't worry about that. We can get you back before you leave. (Dr. Who)

He just lost my respect... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:26 · Score: 0

From the page when someone suggests not installing a GUI for mplayer, and just using the commandline, he says "So I should solve the problem of ``crappy GUI'' by replacing it with ``no GUI at all?'' I should use the program only from the command line, or by memorizing magic keystrokes? Awesome idea. "

He goes on to say he's considering getting a mac(intelligent) but he won't because XEmacs doesn't run natively on it.... XEmacs? And he's bitching about command-line? Not a flame towards VI or XEMACS, but they both have complex keyboard commands. From the XEMACS Documentation:

"\C-c\C-c"

or the configuration of it:

"(add-menu-item '("File" "File Management") "Copy File" 'copy-file t)
(add-menu-item '("File" "File Management") "Delete File" 'delete-file t)
(add-menu-item '("File" "File Management") "Rename File" 'rename-file t)"

Wait until XEmacs is on Mac? Then bitch about having to memorize command line stuff?

One thing JWZ: Yo don't have to edit text files "by memorizing magic keystrokes" "Awesome idea."

His use of language " What are these fucktards thinking???" just leads me to believe him a professional. Yes, I know he worked on Netscape back in the day, XScreensaver. But Hitler hosted the Olympics. That doesn't mean I'd stop if he were crossing the street.

This guy just sounds pissed and thinks everything that comes out of his mouth is a blessing upon those who listen/read. I'm god damned sick and tired of these people.

Go back to Windows and shut up JWZ! That's my only request! If you can't communicate no one wants to hear you. If you think you're one of the only l33t Linux hackers, you're dead wrong. There's now many people out there working on Linux, and you're early contributions earned you a place of respect. You abused it with this, and now you've lost it. Shut up you damn script kiddie!

JWZ - What is wrong with redhat 8? by brsmith4 · 2003-01-24 06:28 · Score: 0, Flamebait

If you run redhat 8, that horrible horrible linux distro, i'm not even going to get into how horrible it is, you can get xine with DVD support installed in 3 cryptic commands (after downloading assloads of associated package(s)):

1: rpm -Uvh apt*.rpm
2: apt-get update && apt-get update
3: apt-get install xine

See, it sucks cuz you have to install like these *two* new package managers. What were these fuckwads thinking? Then, like, xine sucks because it has one of those borderless window thingies without a title bar.
Morons

Then, when its finally installed after the arduous installation process, you only get like mpg, divx, dvd, quicktime (w/plugin for sorenson), and all these other gay ass formats that no one ever uses.

I'm probably going to get a Mac because etc, etc, video for linux really sucks, etc, etc.

Good points, but JWZ invokes Goodwin's Law by Christopher+Whitt · 2003-01-24 06:29 · Score: 2, Funny

I thought his rant seemed somewhat insightful as to the state of media players on linux (not that I know anything about it). However, in his last paragraph, he makes a fatal error:

By the way, the suggestion to switch Linux distrubutions in order to get a single app to work might sound absurd at first. And that's because it is. But I've been saturated with Unix-peanut-gallery effluvia for so long that it no longer even surprises me when every question -- no matter how simple -- results in someone suggesting that you either A) patch your kernel or B) change distros. It's inevitable and inescapable, like Hitler.

He automatically triggers Goodwin's Law and therefore he must concede the debate and the discussion is closed.

Christopher
(yes, I'm just poking fun)

--
Mozilla

Re:Good points, but JWZ invokes Goodwin's Law by IntlHarvester · 2003-01-24 10:27 · Score: 2, Informative

Godwin's Law was originally an observation: "All Internet debates eventually end with a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis"

I think he's intentionally invoking it as a way of closing the discusion -- saying that he doesn't want you to write him and argue the point.

--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Re:Good points, but JWZ invokes Goodwin's Law by Paul+Crowley · 2003-01-24 11:02 · Score: 1

No, he's saying it's like Godwin's Law - the call to change distro is inevitable in the same way that the mention of Hitler is.

http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/Godwi n' s-Law.html

--
Xenu loves you!

My experience... by Junta · 2003-01-24 06:32 · Score: 1

Ok, mplayer is best in terms of format support. And it functions perfectly in fullscreen and, by extension, in a set-top box capcity (input.conf is a godsend).

Xine is ok.... But the interface, as he says, is a piece of crap. Now enter totem. Beautiful, standard interface for a pretty decent backend, based on gnome2. Of course, he says gnome2 is a piece of crap, but I have no idea why. I personally use mplay and WindowMaker most of the time, but think Gnome2 is decent. The whole rant about exra verbose stuff being printed to the terminal is stupid. The intent is that 'novice' users have it spawned from a file manager, and the output is therfore never seen. The output is important for debugging. His misunderstanding regarding libdvdcss and xine is also kinda annoying. You need an extra xine plugin to play encrypted dvds because the xine project is scared of legal issues with shipping css code.

As an aside, I *strongly* agree with Makali's included comment regarding audio-cock technology for people who think "Skins!!! kick ass, I'll use them". Ugh. Xmms/Winamp/etc skins arent so bad, they keep the interface consitent in terms of buttons and can provide a pleasing look that is just not possible with the standard toolkit widgets out there (they are designed with larger interface elements in mind than is necessary for such an app). But xine and mplayer, where buttons change position and functionality depending on which you use... That is just annoyin as hell.. I'm there to watch a *movie*, not the interface. MPlayer's gui is a piece of crap, but I use the command line.

Overall, I think he should first take xine and put dvdnav in (which I think picks up on dvdcss automatically, but can't reember for sure), then install totem (once gnome2 bigotry is put aside) and try that.

What I would love is for mplayer's excellent media processing core to be incorporated into a clean, spearate library so developers can more easily write decent, well working frontends. The use of feeding data to mplayer's stdin to control playback and specifying a window id to redirect the display is extremely klunky compared to a nice API, where a great deal more functionality can be exposed.

--
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.

I think he was drunk... by oiper · 2003-01-24 06:32 · Score: 1

Does he sound like he was drunk to anyone else?

--
What do I have to do to get a sig around here?! www.bearscanfly.org

The whiney little bitch is right by nrc · 2003-01-24 06:32 · Score: 3, Funny

Like it or not, the whiney little bitch is right. The state of Linux video is pretty dismal. Unfortunately when you rely on geeks scratching an itch to supply your applications you sometimes end up with software only suitble for use by itchy geeks.

I totally agree with your total disagreement by sulli · 2003-01-24 06:34 · Score: 1

Usability matters. A lot. Fix problems like this and you'll be amazed by the adoption of Linux on the desktop. Until then, Mac OS X and Windows continue to kick its ass.

(Of course, I'm still on Mac OS 9 and Windows 98, cuz I'm a lazy cheap fuck.)

--

sulli
RTFJ.

OF COURSE!!!! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:39 · Score: 0, Troll

Oh I see, of course, now I get it. I didn't really like using a GUI for anything, I've just been fooling myself all of this time. I've been brainwashed. I mean a CLI is the answer for absolutely every situation and I'm an brainwashed idiot for *ever* considering *anything* else. I mean why would I even want the option of a decent GUI? And who the fuck wants sliced bread or laundry machines? I mean when you're slicing your own bread you can get just the right thickness so you're a fucktard if you buy sliced bread. And the laundry machine thing - well hell if you're hand washing you have the option to pick out every fucking piece of dirt *by hand* - I mean only morons would just want to dump the whole thing in the laundry sometimes. And don't get me started on electricity - I mean shit why not just buy a bike with a generator, or my own coal fired generator I don't need those fucks at the power company making my power for me!

A real funny read by someone247356 · 2003-01-24 06:40 · Score: 2, Interesting

I'm glad I read that, I haven't had that good of a laugh in a while.

He's right on with the "theme mania" that is running ramped these days. If you have to have a themable GUI, please, please include a theme (the default) that mimics the platform that you are runing on. You know, rectangular windows, title bars, buttons, and never ever force my mouse to go anywhere, or force your window to be on top. I still hate that stupid Netscape 4.x (on windows) borderless window that insists on remaining on top while it attempts to load itself. At least mozilla's can get covered by something else while I'm waiting.

--
Just my $0.02 (Canadian, before taxes)

Explaining it to developers by yppiz · 2003-01-24 06:40 · Score: 1

I get his point. I agree with his point. Saying "you don't like it? write your own!" is missing the point.

If we want Linux to be an OS for everyone, it has to do basic things well, and it has to do them consistently.

UI is the first thing users see. If it's not done well enough (I was going to say "done right," but then remembered MS Windows) you will not become a mainstream OS.

Video is one of the killer applications. Good video player UIs are not hard to do, but the open source audio and video players look like they are designed by people who have basement music studios and think that patch panels are a good idea.

And I'm glad that they're developing video players, because they understand the technology.

But they don't understand users.

Users want a simple interface that does the Right Thing. Users want a simple install, or better, no install at all as the player is already there. Users do not expect surprise or novelty. They expect oatmeal. Always the same, always hot, no hidden jalapeno peppers.

When you build a house, you want a hammer that works. You do not expect that you will need to build your own hammer, or contribute to a hammer design project.

Video is similar - it's a basic application and it's not new. It's hard to do it right. And for people to use it, both the video technology and the end-user experience have to be nearly perfect. Get the basics right first, and you will win. Spend your limited resources on skins and widgets and you will lose.

--Pat

Here is all you need to know by FreeUser · 2003-01-24 06:41 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Congratulations.

So write up an FAQ. Tell us:

1) What WMs work with what video programs.
2) What libraries are required.
3) What version of gcc you used *G*
4) What flags are set, where to set them, and what's "right" for a wide range of systems, say, a few nVIDIA and ATI systems on AMD and Intel chips, and/or any specific motherboard-related issues.
5) All the other variables I've overlooked, but that you didn't, that make the difference between "It Works" and "It Doesn't".

You don't need to know all of that if you install Gentoo. While Gentoo isn't the only answer, nor is it for everyone, it is in my experience, for those wishing to do serious video work with the current state of the art software (read: most recent bug fixes and features) without comprimising other capabilities (e.g. open office, mozilla support, etc. etc) the easiest approach.

Others will doubtlessly offer or make available online FAQs and recipes for their favorite distributions, but I doubt any of them compare to the simplicity of a single, two word command typed at the command line.

The installation of Gentoo seems daunting to those who like to choose from menus and click 'yes', and it is a very fair criticism that the installation (mostly manual, but with excellent online, step-by-step documentation, and very easy to script up yourself as I have done where I work) lacks the aesthetics and ease of Mandrake, Suse, and Red Hat, but once that is done maintaining currency with the current state of the art is extraordinarilly simple.

Gentoo makes compiling and installing software trivial. In short, the answer to all of your questions above boils down to:

1) Install Gentoo
2) type, at the command line:

emerge mplayer

emerge, a portage command, will resolve all of the library and runtime dependencies for you, compile and install them all (and the specific versions you need, if any), and then download the current mplayer sources, compile and install them for you. Once the compile is done, you're ready to start watching movies.

It really doesn't get any simpler than that (attempts at making things like this simpler with other distros has resulted in very unreliable upgrade procedures, and, quite frankly, don't work well. This approach of getting the sources from the horses mouth, so to speak, compiling them as they were intended against the currently installed library base, optimized for the local hardware, is really ideal. Simplifying this procedure to a single two-word command was ingenious.)

I've done this on probably 50 machines, of varying architectures and hardware capabilities, ranging from hand-held, touch screen tablets to laptops, desktops, and servers, with everything from pentium mmx chips to dual athlon 2400+ MP systems (warning: the slower ships will take days to compile everything!) and it has always worked painlessly and flawlessly.

--
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy

Re:Here is all you need to know by rusty0101 · 2003-01-24 08:04 · Score: 1

Frankly I don't give a toot if it exists as something Gentoo can do or not. From the perspective of the Rant this chain is built on, Gentoo is just another installer/compiler tool. I honestly don't want to have compilers on user systems. Developer systems sure. Having a compiler on a system that the only reason for the compiler is to install an application is like having a factory in my back yard to install a car in my garage.

Furthermore with the realities of security mindedness that I, and a large population other people, expect of Joe Public User, I think having a compiler on a users workstation is more likely to be a hazard to general network security than a help.

I realize that pre-compiling code for a large variety of platforms is not an optimal solution for any one user, but just because you can install via Gentoo doesn't mean that everyone _Should_ install that way.

But that's just my opinion.

-Rusty

--
You never know...

Re: at least keep your analogies straight by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:42 · Score: 0

He insists on using an outdated distribution, gets upset when new software hasn't been backported to it ...

It is like complaining that MS Office 2000 won't run under Windows 3.11 ...

But do not expect to be running current, state of the art software on two-year old, obsolete binary distrubitions ...

A two year old system is hardly comparable to Windows 3.11 - even when Office 2000 became available. Office 2000 on Windows98 would be a better example. But since there's no problem with doing that, it would, of course, counter the point you were trying to make.

Nice way to overextend an analogy to dramatize your point.

Dammit yes. by sulli · 2003-01-24 06:44 · Score: 1

Skins are horrible. If you want your player to look like a stereo-rack, or a fuzzy teddy bear, or an acid trip, or a brand-new 1965 Ford Mustang, or the Mixing Bowl Interchange on the Capital Beltway, or engorged shaven genitals, FINE, but PLEASE let me TURN IT OFF and make it look like a computer program, thanks.

--

sulli
RTFJ.

Re:Dammit yes. by XO · 2003-01-24 09:50 · Score: 1

Wow.. What player has a skin that makes it look like "engorged shaven genitals"? Are they male or female genitals?

Please provide a URL!

--
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Re:Dammit yes. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 10:16 · Score: 0

http://goatse.cx/giver.jpg

Raven [nt] by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 06:48 · Score: 0

raven.

Re: at least keep your analogies straight by Rayban · 2003-01-24 06:50 · Score: 1

Maybe a better analogy would be:

It's like complaining that [a .NET applcation] won't run on Windows 98 because the .NET framework only runs on Windows 2000+.

--
æeee!

1280x1024 considered harmful by benwaggoner · 2003-01-24 06:58 · Score: 1

Assuming you're running a 4:3 aspect ratio monitor, your images on the screen are distorted at 1280x1024. 1280x960 is the proper square pixel resolution for a 4:3 monitor.

If you did that, you also wouldn't have those black bars.

--

My video compression blog

Deja Vu by GMFTatsujin · 2003-01-24 07:00 · Score: 1

I swear to God I have seen this exact same post, word for word before. I don't know where, I'm not griping, I'm just confused.

It's tripping me out.

That being said, good example. :)
GMFTatsujin

the new moron king by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 07:02 · Score: 0

i don't see how anyone this brain dead could have worked on the projects that are listed on his page.

are you certain this is not a forgery????

Did I claim that it was? by pb · 2003-01-24 07:02 · Score: 2, Funny

JWZ is perfectly capable of installing Gentoo, Debian, etc., etc., although he probably likes RedHat's ease of installation better. And he is by no means a newbie. Also, remember that "the newbie" in general never has to install an OS; newbies buy computers with pre-installed Operating Systems.

Now, I don't really count, since I've been installing the OS myself, starting with DOS. And I have to say that Gentoo was less painful than some other installations, just because it has excellent documentation.

Obviously Gentoo can be more work for the user initially, but in the end it's far less work. And if something breaks, you might have a chance in hell of fixing it yourself! Also, although Gentoo tends to compile stuff from source, I never have to do it by hand--the system does all the work!

I agree with you, though, in that a Gentoo-based distribution geared to newbies that has a friendly installer, does hardware autoconfiguration, helps with package selection, and perhaps has a nice selection of binary packages as well, would be a very nice thing for some people.

Or there's Debian, which I hear also has very sane package management. Or RedHat could get their act together and make their package management system handle dependencies properly -- because that's why RedHat is not for me.

--
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

He's got good points.... by otis+wildflower · 2003-01-24 07:02 · Score: 2, Insightful

... I tend to think the Helix client, alone or incorporated into a WM player, is the right way to go.. Or at least pick _ONE_ good framework and avoid massive effort duplication ... (and that was only up to the G's!)

It seems there's an awful lot of video players that come from a number of "itches" or "brushing up on linux multimedia programming" urges, with little attention paid to usability, and that really doesn't serve the USERS as well as a more focused app.

Re:He's got good points.... by Junta · 2003-01-24 08:34 · Score: 1

I wouldn't be too excited about the Helix project. It is still mostly vapor and even if and when it reaches maturity, it will only *possibly* support formats aside from realmedia. Not a good prospect for a framework.

Of the three links you supplied, only one even exemplifies a real 'framework', gstplayer is a gstreamer based player, the rest are standalone. I would say there are three projects out there with the makings of a good framework.

Gstreamer is the project that most directly addresses the need for a true framework, that is a framework that provides encoding, decoding, and playback functionality. The problem is that file format and codec support are dismal compared to the alternatives, and as such it doesn't attract developers. Also, alternatives are 'good enough', so there isn't enough interest in writing the plugins necessary to make gstremer an acceptable framework.

Xine abstracts the media playback functionality into a library, so it still could be considered kind of a framework. Problems are that it lacks the capability to create media and that the codec and format support is only 'pretty good.'

Now mplayer, it can play nearly every codec and format under the sun. It also has the capability to encode, decode, and play media. One problem is that it is very much a standalone application, so it can't be considered a framework, only an application that implements nearly everything a framework should have. If the backend were abstracted from the application and that backend made available through an API (probably only supporting SDL for video and audio output for the most cross-platform framework), then you are starting to get somewhere. Of course, it still lacks a good flexible plugin architecture that allows post-install/compile time drop-in support for new file formats and codecs (though I may be mistaken about this).

So between the three you could have an uber-framework. If I had time or was being paid to architect a framework for linux, I would extend mplayer's code to fit the purpose and provide some glue to SDL for a truly cross-platform framework.

--
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.

First I want to say... by Trolling4Dollars · 2003-01-24 07:05 · Score: 1

...that this is an OPINION piece. No matter how much you might violently disagree with what JZW said, none of what he uttered is fact. It's all his opinion.

I am a happy user of MPlayer as it is the best all around media player for Linux in my opinion. With one of the simpler skins, the program operates about 98% perfectly. And if you are one of the people (like me) who is stubborn enough to make use of RedHat 8, it works just fine. The part about not being able to bring the display window to the top may be his fault since he has more than likely chosen a crappy window manager. Metacity in Gnome 2.0 easily allows me to bring MPlayer to the front. The behavior doesn't seem any different than running Windows Media player in Windows and minimizing of maximizing.

As far as the comment about the "horror" of Gnome 2.0. The only thing I can think of that he is referring to is the tendency for certain apps to leak memory. There is a fix for that, and I wish RH would publish it quickly. But for those of you how LOVE Gnome 2.0 as I do and want to keep RH8 on their systems without the memory leak problems, go here:

Fix in RPM format

Grab the appropriate RPMs. To see the bug report, go here:

Bugzilla listing for 76219

The only thing I will agree with that I think he MIGHT have been trying to say, but said poorly was this: Joe user will have a hard time trying to get a video to play back on any distro of Linux at this time. That IS true and that is something that needs to be worked on. I kind of wish RedHat would choose a media player to bundle with their distro that handles all the standard audio and video formats. Hopefully, they will choose MPlayer as it seems to be the best player around at the moment.

However, these are all my opinions. I'm just more open to admitting that.

If you liked what I said then befriend me. If you do, I'll befreind you back.

Trolling4Dollars - Part time troll, part time arbiter of wisdom and taste. (Taking a hint from Rush "Blimpboy" Limbaugh's playbook. Brag with no justification)

--
Un-news

Re:LOL! The answer? mplayer from command line by demon · 2003-01-24 07:10 · Score: 1

Because, you know, the keyboard, that's not a sensible input device. Who'd want to use that, anyway? It's all about the mouse. :)

--

Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"

Apple's DVD Player by aftk2 · 2003-01-24 07:12 · Score: 2, Interesting

Completely agree. However, to me, the biggest problem with these devices isn't skinning necessarily, it's that they don't take full advantage of the fact that they're computer applications, rather than hardware ones - a point made rather well by Andy Ihnatko, back-page columnist at MacWorld. This was in his latest column, not yet available online, which I will re-post here, as a clear and flagrant violation of copyright:

Let's go back to DVD Player. In many ways, it's the weakest program Apple gives away...How about letting me insert my own bookmarks, so I can always zip straight to the line where Chief Marge tells Lou that she's not sure if she agrees with his police work? How about if every time I eject a disc, the program remembers where I left off and takes me right there the next time I insert it, even if that's months later?

How about if a single menu item took me to a Sherlock 3 DVD tool that assembled production information from the IMDB, reviews from RottenTomatoes.com, and related movies from the same filmmakers-all in one window? What if the player could silently extract subtitles during playback and index a time-coded transcript?

And it goes on like this...

--
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.

The point of GUI by tacocat · 2003-01-24 07:12 · Score: 1

OK, I'll forgo the 1,000 posts about how grumpy this guy comes off. I guess being abrasive and holier than though is what got him where he is today, where ever that may be.

But when it comes to GUI's you have to admit that he's right. I get kind of pissed when someone tries to come up with a "cool" interface to an application that sucks canal water. Reminds me of some MSFT marketing ploy, "Sure it's a Piece of Shit, but it's a Cool Looking Piece of Shit!"

I use mplayer and xine, but mostly just xine with command line options. Sure, who needs more than that they their favorite WM is WindowMaker? Yes, it works for me. But the interface for Xine is pretty lame. Far from intuitive or easy to use.

Re:The point of GUI by TeknoHog · 2003-01-24 07:38 · Score: 2, Insightful

GUIs may be convenient for some tasks, but certainly not all. When it comes to movies, I want them full-screen, and any GUI would only be in the way. Imagine going to a movie theatre and seeing flashy frames around the screen along with a huge "play" button!
The same goes for DVD players. They have control keys distinct from the screen, whether on the remote or on the front panel. Computers also have keys, so that you don't have to do everything by clicking around menus which also waste the precious screen space.
I sometimes have the feeling that once people got used to Mac and Windows GUIs, they forgot about the keyboard entirely. It's better when you know the strengths and weaknesses of different input devices, and use the one that's appropriate.

--
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.

mplayer by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 07:15 · Score: 0

"But, here's the best part, there's no way to raise the window to the top. So if another window ever gets on top of it, well, sorry, you're out of luck. And half of the themes always map the window at the very bottom of the screen -- conveniently under my panel where I can't reach it. "

This guy must be a newbie, all of this is controlled by the window manager! On mine, I can hold down alt while clicking on a window to raise-lower the window.

If you want to piss JWZ off... by quantum+bit · 2003-01-24 07:15 · Score: 1

If you run Windoze and want to piss JWZ off, go download this screensaver. He wasn't too happy when he found out about its existence.

NOT a remote control!! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 07:17 · Score: 1, Interesting

Dear god NO!!!!

Hasn't anybody /seen/ the Creative Labs DxR3 software (OK, so I guess that's not really a given, is it?) It used to be in the interface hall of shame at iarchitect.com, but that seems to be gone.

http://www.umlchina.com/GUI/ShameRecent.htm still seems to have it though. Search for "Creative Labs" on there.

Point being, the remote control has to be the worst possible computer UI in existence. And, not the best "real" interface for that matter.

jwz - no longer a geek, i'll out crank him! by Splork · 2003-01-24 07:20 · Score: 1

why the !)^&!^ is he using linux anyways? he should go buy that Mac and stop snivvling. he should stop expecting people to do things the way you'd like just because he coded part of last millenium's failed web browser.

most of the tools he describes are written by people who are real geeks and just wanted to be able to play/manipulate zillions of video formats on their linux or bsd box. they don't use RPMs, .debs or anything else. they write code, compile things them selves, and are perfectly fucking happy once the thing runs and plays the video files... ie: the command line works fine.

then along come the weenies who say "wow, cool, i can watch my pr0n videos on linux; but you know what it needs? a stupid looking penis shaped themed gui with nipples for buttons." -they- are responsible for the atrocities in ui-non-design. the geeks stopped caring long before this and are happy with their code that works for what they wanted.

there, how'd I do? did I sound at crotchety and cranky as jwz? ;^)

I have to agree . . . by scarolan · 2003-01-24 07:20 · Score: 1

with JWZ here. I recently built a home-theater type PC device for watching DivX movies, playing DVDs, VCDs, mp3 files, and also for playing console games with emulators.

I would have preferred to use a linux distro as the operating system but there just wasn't enough support for the video files, remote control, etc.

With Windows XP it was a snap to program the remote control and set up all the programs so that I have a multi-function entertainment system that I can control from the couch.

Why? by mao+che+minh · 2003-01-24 07:21 · Score: 1

Why is a novice computer user's rant about video software on the front page of Slashdot? This is the same kind of stuff that we IT people come here to get away from! The guy just needs to figure out how to use his computer box thingy better, that's all.

Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 07:56 · Score: 0

He's not a novice computer user. He was one of the original coders of Netscape. He is also wrote and maintains xscreensaver.

MPlayer's basic controls by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 07:22 · Score: 0

But Mplayer's basic controls play, fastfoward, rewind, fullscreen are mplayer, right arrow, left arrow, f key, (quit = q). That's already ridicously easy. It's just in a GUI, they make little pictures for you to click on, that represent the same thing. (Left/right arrows ... eject ...)

I see no problems with MPlayer here.

Not cool. What's with the tasteless jokes? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 07:23 · Score: 0

This person makes jokes about Hitler and about violating people with phalluses. Sorry, but there are differences between playing video in Linux, rape and World War II.

This person's article is not cool.

Pain in the ass? by roystgnr · 2003-01-24 07:23 · Score: 1

It's been a while, but I recall running three commands:

rpm -U http://ftp.freshrpms.net/pub/freshrpms/psyche/apt/ apt-0.5.4cnc9-fr1.i386.rpm
apt-get update
apt-get install mplayer

For the record, apt for Red Hat is not a separate packaging system, it is a tool that resolves dependencies, downloads packages, etc. for your existing packaging system. So, that covers "pain in the ass to install".

As for pain in the ass to use (I suppose "mplayer Futurama*.avi" counts as a fourth command), does anyone want to tell me:

How I get Windows Media Player 7 to stop trying to take up twice as much screen real estate on buttons I don't want as it does on the actual movie?

How I get it to be "always on top" while it's in a window, so I can watch video while working on something else?

Which Microsoft programmer decided that "Alt+P+R" and "Alt+P+A" were great shortcut keys for rewind and fast forward, but that the arrow keys shouldn't do anything?

Re:Pain in the ass? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 09:49 · Score: 0

My question is, when you press pause on media player 9, why does it have to check whats inside the cd rom first, causing it to pause several seconds after you pressed the button?
Re:Pain in the ass? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 10:40 · Score: 2, Insightful

It's been a while, but I recall running three commands:
rpm -U http://ftp.freshrpms.net/pub/freshrpms/psyche/apt/ apt-0.5.4cnc9-fr1.i386.rpm apt-get update apt-get install mplayer

Christ, and this doesn't look like a pain in the ass to you? How disconnected from reality are you?

Downside to GUI's -- loss of flexibility by Chuck+Messenger · 2003-01-24 07:23 · Score: 1

Yes, I read the article (which I loved). Unlike the author, however, I _love_ the shell.

From command line:

cd /movie
mplayer -vo x11 Ha

and the movie (which starts with the letters "Ha") starts playing. Why do I need a GUI for that? It could only be slower.

If I cared enough, I might make a quickie script to do the -vo x11 and cd /movie parts for me. But I don't care enough. What I might do, now that I'm thinking about it, is to add an alias to my .bashrc for mplayer, to add in the "-vo x11" part for me. That way, I don't have to remember some new script name -- I only have to remember "use mplayer for playing movies". It would take me less time than it takes me to write one sentence of this note.

Eventually, I'll set it up for my wife to use. She's not fond of the shell (like many people, she seems to have an irrational fear of it). Perhaps I'll set up the file associations appropriately (the file manager becomes the GUI -- click on the file and mplayer starts playing it). That would take me about one minute, I'd estimate.

More likely, I'll set up something a little fancier, like I did for our music files (the way that works is, I have a script which runs once a day, and generates a desktop link for each album. The purpose of this design is mostly is to associate a particular .jpg with an .mp3/.ogg -- e.g. "The White Album.jpg" goes with "The White Album.ogg"). That will take me about 10-30 minutes, but it will be oh so sweet.

What's my point? Within minutes, I can accomplish just about anything I want to, with the command line/scripting.

A GUI is like a jail. A pretty jail.

Re:Downside to GUI's -- loss of flexibility by lamont116 · 2003-01-24 08:30 · Score: 1

What I might do, now that I'm thinking about it, is to add an alias to my .bashrc for mplayer, to add in the "-vo x11" part for me.
Try ~/.mplayer/config

vo = x11

etc.
Re:Downside to GUI's -- loss of flexibility by sir99 · 2003-01-24 08:39 · Score: 1

What I might do, now that I'm thinking about it, is to add an alias to my .bashrc for mplayer, to add in the "-vo x11" part for me.
Or, you could just stick "vo=x11" in ~/.mplayer/config. Any option you pass on the command line can be put in the config file, if you want it to be always used. For example, my config file looks like this (along with some other garbage I don't feel like explaining ;-)
vo=xv vop=pp=de:a #filter output
Mplayer has a ton of options, especially for filtering. Unfortunately, not all of the -vop pp options seem to be documented anymore, for example pp=ci, which does cubic deinterlacing for watching interlaced videos (like TV shows).

--
The ocean parts and the meteors come down
Laid out in amber, baby.

overlapping windows suck...he is right by kitsch · 2003-01-24 07:25 · Score: 2, Interesting

I like mplayer. I love that is seems to take nearly every thing I throw at it codecwise. I don't really like there themse so much, but I've gotten to forgiving themes in general. jwz is fully right about the jumping mouse curser and the overlapping windows. numerous time have I needed to kill X just to stop meplayer when it freezes up on me in fullscreen mode. The funnything was... I was able to open windows and alt-tab to the few terminals I had open. ONLY they were covered by the full screen window. So I just got the little alt-tab lister window at the centre of the screen. I would select the terminal but I could not see them to interact with them. so down went X after a few minutes of trying to use gnome blindly.

I'm not a super proponent of windows, but at east I know taht when my aopp freezes and I hit ctrl-alt-del I will .......eventually get my process list so I can kill thinsg and it will be at the very top of all windows and take precidece like it should. I had the gnome process list open from the terminals, but I couldn't see it to interact with it. that was all just wrong. the mouse jumping didn't help... well at least until I lost the mouse, then I didn't care about that bug.

the running mplayer from a console is worse. it's pretty cool taht it works at all, but there is no way to stop it sometimes. esc works on small movies, but seems to not work on 2hr ones. so either I wait for the end ot I power off my machine.

otherwise now that I have the laitency hack inthe kernel work I have to say desktop linux is pretty cool =)

oh yeah... video playback suck in OSX too, I needed to install the OSX version of mplayer to get subtitles working in divX movies... ok sure not everyone uses that feature, but I do infact almost all the movies I watch use this feature. for me Widnows is thebvest experince. everything works, if is stops working you can kill it and generally the video is really fast.

too bad since mplayer is sooooo close to being perfect. maybe it's gnome and window handling. I have no idea. but one of them or both is not quite right.

Re:stupid by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 07:26 · Score: 0

I'm just visiting.

Uselessness. by Lemmy+Caution · 2003-01-24 07:27 · Score: 5, Insightful

I can figure out a command line. I can type "man foo" or "foo -h" and get a general sense of what I'm supposed to do, and if it's only a matter of a couple flags and args, it may only be twice as long as it would take for me to look at a page of prefs and checked settings.

JWZ is, I believe, somewhat smarter than I am, and far more technically sophisticated, and he's sick of having to do that. He *can*, of course, and if you knew jack shit, you'd know that he probably is much better at programming, unix, and the like than you are, but the point is that like everyone with better things to learn than command line switches if we have to do this with every command in a series of commands that are being piped into each other, we're going to get sick of it - especially with plenty of alternatives (MS, Apple, etc.) available.

A well-designed GUI will present far more information far more quickly than a CLI. Processing visual information is a parallel process - scanning text is a serial one. Looking at a single window, being able to check 6 or 7 checkboxes and hit the "enter" button is more efficient than trying to figure out which of 6 or 7 flags to use, their arguments if necessary, and then enter a string on a command line.

When the software at hand is a media playback software, where you may have to go back and rescan the text and edit the command string if things aren't right, the inefficiences of a CLI are even more striking.

Re:Uselessness. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 09:37 · Score: 0

Oh give up. JWZ proves with this article that he's mostly a hanger-on and a blowhard. His feats of technical prowess include: screensavers, a ripoff of emacs that is not better than the original, maintaining a Unix version of Netscape that he didn't write it, and quitting the Mozilla team in a huff. Even ESR can scrape together a better rant than this diatribe-- at least ESR would have made snide remarks about government involvement and demonstrated why firearms were essential to the proper enjoyment of Linux video.

Personally I find "xine <name-of-file>" a lot more intuitive than trying to figure out which little visual doodad does what on the skin. It's like telling someone "get that" is a lot more effective than pointing at "that" and grunting, then making grabbing gestures with one's hand. While I agree with JWZ that these skinned GUIs are problematic, at least I can express that opinion without sounding like some drunk on the bus.
Re:Uselessness. by Malcontent · 2003-01-24 11:11 · Score: 1

Andy yet you give up the ability to pipe that gui to the next application. In that case what you lose is more then what you gain.

--
War is necrophilia.
Re:Uselessness. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 11:33 · Score: 0

Depends on the app. For a program whose whole purpose is to simply display video in a window, there's damned little use in being able to pipe its standard output anywhere.
Re:Uselessness. by Lemmy+Caution · 2003-01-24 11:55 · Score: 1

Says who? A gui panel can say "output to..." and have another application or standard output as an option.
Re:Uselessness. by susano_otter · 2003-01-24 12:10 · Score: 1

There's no rule against providing both a sane checkbox interface for quick adjustments when you don't want to do serious scripting and whatnot, and a sensible command line (or at least command line accessibility) for when you do.

--
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Re:Uselessness. by egreB · 2003-01-24 12:19 · Score: 1

Looking at a single window, being able to check 6 or 7 checkboxes and hit the "enter" button is more efficient than trying to figure out which of 6 or 7 flags to use, their arguments if necessary, and then enter a string on a command line.
While I agree on the rest of you comment, this is I disagree on. It might take longer the first and second time you need to type a command (spending five minutes figuring out what flags to use is definitly less intuitive than checking 6 boxes), but the next 500 times you do it, you save time. A lot of time.

Processing visual information is a parallel process - scanning text is a serial one.
This is certainly correct, but text can be lined up quite neatly. I can scan well layoted text in a console quite fast - for example, read a man page or watch for unusual stuff in logs. With some color added, it's argubly faster than a GUI.

Needless to say, I'm a command-line kind of guy. I beleive in the CLI! (-8
Re:Uselessness. by Hurga · 2003-01-24 16:03 · Score: 2

A well-designed GUI will present far more information far more quickly than a CLI.

Hint: I don't want no fucking GUI cluttering up my screen when I want to watch a movie using that same screen.

Is the remote control of your TV based on GUI navigation or pressing of some keys?

Dude, you badly need to read Stephenson's "In the beginning was the command line".

Hurga
Re:Uselessness. by Lemmy+Caution · 2003-01-24 16:19 · Score: 1

It's based on my manipulation of a 3-dimensional object with an array of 3-dimensional objects on a 2-dimensional space. A TV remote is very much NOT a command-line interface. It is *not* typing a string of text into a console - it is mostly single-purpose buttons, most of which have intuitively understandable functions.
You need to read, well, a lot more. Edward Tufte could be a starting point. You could probably stand to read about cognition and useability.
Re:Uselessness. by Hurga · 2003-01-24 16:51 · Score: 1

[A TV remote] is mostly single-purpose buttons, most of which have intuitively understandable functions.

As soon as you're using mplayer, your keyboard is exactly this. Cursor keys for navigation, and "f" for fullscreen. How much more intuitive could it get?

And you still need to explain why you want a GUI on your screen when you need that same screen to watch a movie.

As a side note, there have been GUIs for TVs. You needed to point the remote control at the screen, press some button, and navigate by aiming the remote control around on the screen. Guess why they didn't prevail?

Hurga
Re:Uselessness. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 18:49 · Score: 0

How hard is it to right-click once and edit the filetype to use the application you want. I personally prefer xine, but you can play videos with mplayer, too. Then you just need to click the file to play it. It really is 2003 and the days of passing switches to mplayer are gone. How much easier can it be to click on a damn file? There is no way for it to get easier unless some distributor includes mplayer and sets the filetype for you. Personally, I'd rather not be that babied!

He's not complaining so much about video on Linux by gibber · 2003-01-24 07:30 · Score: 1

...as he is sub-par distributions.

Jamie's complaints would mostly go away if he did two things:

Installed Gentoo
Used --nogui

I think the key issue is his choice of distribution. If your patience is sapped by struggling to install the application in the first place you will be too pissed to take the time to (A) figure things out and (B) contribute where projects are lacking.

Of course, if he did that the rest of us would have to go without the wonderful entertainment that issues forth when Jamie is hot and bothered. Frankly, I don't want my jwz any other way.

Sheesh by Obiwan+Kenobi · 2003-01-24 07:31 · Score: 2, Insightful

Will you listen to yourself?

All you need to do is go here [zarb.org] to configure and add a urpmi source from one of the plf mirror sites, and it is literally as easy as "urpmi.update -a && urpmi mplayer".

How does a newbie or god forbid a grandmother who wants to watch the DVD of Steel Magnolia's on her computer just like her grandson does accomplish this?

UI is important. That's what JWZ rants about time and time again. UI is what the user interacts with. Only geeks care about what goes on under the hood. Everyone else in the world just wants it to work.

Every time I try to show the greatness of Linux, I usually end up apologizing for the archaic methods of installation, compiling programs, finding libraries, etc etc. The first thing 9/10 users I've tried to convert to Linux want to know is if their current programs they use in Windows can run in Linux. More apologies.

I love Linux, and I love the idea of it, but I don't use it on the desktop because most of the UI is crap, X Windows is a sad, lumbering giant of missed opportunity, and dependencies drive me up the wall. Why is apt always a command line utility? And why don't any apt interfaces not automatically update w/ package information? Or put that package information into an easily readable/understandable UI?

I don't want to mess with odd skins and strange UI problems with mplayer. What is so hard in making the thing work like its supposed to? Mozilla is the most friendly open source project every created to fruition (instead of dying a slow death in beta development) because users recognize the interface and, despite a few differences, can catch on pretty quickly and be adding their bookmarks and their AIM buddies in no time. Unfortunately little else can be said for myplayer, or any other open source video player.

But unfortunately, again, it all comes down to standards, compliance, and ego. Everyone wants their work to be their own, they don't need no steekin standards, and compliance within two seperate apps is still a myth at best. We still haven't gotten copy and paste (using ctrl + C & V, respectively) working correctly 100% of the time.

I'll run Linux servers all day, but I wouldn't trade my Windows XP desktop just yet. Linux still has miles to go.

Re:Sheesh by XO · 2003-01-24 10:54 · Score: 1

We still haven't gotten copy and paste (using ctrl + C & V, respectively) working correctly 100% of the time.

Ya know, I'm trying to find documentation on the Common User Architecture (CUA) that Microsoft, IBM, and several other companies designed from like 1988 to 1994.. and that included making the UNIVERSAL way to copy-and-paste using ctrl-insert and shift-insert rather than Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V. Microsoft apparently created Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V for use with Windows '95 (and many programs STILL used ONLY Ctrl-Insert and Shift-Insert through at least '98 or '99 when I last used a lot of Windows apps) because the rest of the industry had adopted Ctrl-Insert and Shift-Insert.

Unfortunatly, I can't find documentation for CUA89, CUA92, or CUA94 (the standards used by Windows 3.11 and OS/2 1.x, OS/2 2.x and 3.x, and OS/2 4.x respectively .. apparently Microsoft threw out CUA when designing '95, although it was their own standard!)

--
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/

Not that bad of a review by ChaosDiscord · 2003-01-24 07:37 · Score: 1

Actually, his review isn't that hostile. He basically says that Xine and mplayer (the two biggest and liveliest projects at the moment) are both very capable of displaying the video, but both have braindead interfaces that place bells and whistles over usability. True enough. This isn't a matter of failing to provide an interface, just of doing it wrong.

While I certainly hope the projects improve their interfaces, it's not like they're only ones. QuickTime has problems (and used to be much worse!). RealOne's interface is ghastly as well. And don't forget Windows Media Player (scroll down to see a screenshot, helpfully described as "gorgeous", but certainly not "useful").

Yes, media players on Linux have crappy interfaces. Most media players, regardless of platform, have crappy interfaces. Perhaps Linux is worse at the moment, but it's not the condemnation that the poster suggested it was.

--
Search 2010 Gen Con events

Mplayer, Xine by nicestepauthor · 2003-01-24 07:41 · Score: 1

I've been using mplayer for some time now and am happy with it. I too use the command line version only. The "magic keys" are very easy to remember and there is no gui to take up screen real estate that is better used for the movie. Using keys instead of mouse gestures works very well, and makes it easy to skip ahead and back a large distance (up and down arrows) or a small distance (left and right arrows). Space to pause, any key to start playing again, eacape to quit.

I agree with the assessment of xine, mostly. The function to open a movie is confusing. I find myself using xine from the command line to get around it. I also don't like the fact that it displays VCDs enlarged to 640 x 480 and there is no option to display them in their original size. VCDs generally don't look good enlarged. I only use xine because there are some movies with an MPEG audio stream (layer 1?) that xine can use but mplayer cannot.

Mplayer is more difficult to compile than most of us would like, but the developers have improved the process considerably; it used to be a lot worse.

Re:Mplayer, Xine by susano_otter · 2003-01-24 12:17 · Score: 1

The "magic keys" are very easy to remember...
See, I already have enough things to remember in my life. Why should I have to remember every application's "magic keys", anyway? Here's something that's even easier to remember:

For for all sensibly designed GUIs, there's a consistent menu bar across the top of each window that leads you intuitively to whatever function you're looking for, even if you've never even thought about it before, let alone read the man page and memorized a bunch of "magic keys".

--
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.

mplayer/kmplayer/xine by Satai · 2003-01-24 07:45 · Score: 1

I have to agree that the GUI interfaces, as given, in XINE and MPlayer are both unweildy. I don't like the use of the SHAPE extension or whatever, which makes them very slooooow when moved around the desktop. And yeah, most of the skins suck -- too glitzy and whatnot, and I can't tell which button does what (although there was a corner-skin that was rather nice for a while.) XINE is worse than MPlayer, imo, because it doesn't have the wide formats of MPlayer, plus it uses exclusively the skinned GUI.

Ogle was a bit better in my book because it used widget sets and didn't try to implement its own. Yeah, it was ugly, but at least it was quick and I could move the control window around easily.

Recently, however, I've taken to using KMPlayer. It's a quick-and-dirty GUI for MPlayer written for KDE. It has DVD sensing, so it'll list the languages available, as well as subtitle support for DVD, and it's got very simple, usable controls at the bottom of the window. I previously used konqueror to navigate around my filesystem and then play the video files in MPlayer with the -nogui option, but now I can open them directly from within KMPlayer. Best part is that it's easy to use, and a very quick system -- no lag between drag/draw, that sort of thing.

As far as I'm concerned, this is what we need -- more simple, usable GUIs, and less of the elaborately skinned [anime/stereo/usflag/quake/matrix]-themed GUIs.

J's Home Page Usability by lanner · 2003-01-24 07:52 · Score: 2, Funny

So, this guy is bitching about usability?

Let's take a little look at his website... http://www.jwz.org/

Holy shit, what is this supposed to be? It looks like he was trying to do some Matrix look with a bunch of green code and a black background in a hex editor mode kind of thing. I had to scroll down a page just to find the first link. Apparently he is putting presentation ahead of content in his web design.

I think he needs a little lesson in human interfaces and usability -- maybe he should read this;
http://developer.netscape.com/viewsource/in dex_fra me.html?cp=dev01mmgz&content=archive/archivelist.h tml#humaninterface

Now, having slandered this guy up and down the street, I thought his rant was great and he is completely right about these stupid interfaces. I like this guy, even if I think his home page sucks.

Re:J's Home Page Usability by lanner · 2003-01-24 07:54 · Score: 1

Darn Slashdot, breaking up my links
http://developer.netscape.com/viewsource/index_fra me.html?cp=dev01mmgz&content=archive/archivelist.h tml#humaninterface
Re:J's Home Page Usability by Fritzed · 2003-01-24 16:13 · Score: 1

Hmm, maybe it requires IE to look at his webpage and have it make sense. Oh, nope, that didn't help. I guess having it look cool (I assume he THINKS it looks cool) is more important than having it useful.
-> Fritz

"They map this stupid shaped window with no titlebar (oh, sorry, your choice of a dozen stupidly-shaped windows without titlebars) all of which use fonts that are way too small to read."

--
Spooooon!!!!!

We need more Open Source QA like this by xagon7 · 2003-01-24 07:54 · Score: 1

" What are these fucktards thinking???" ..and no I am not kidding. Honest and open, forget about being PC or hurting anyones feelings, get out some good software.

Linux & Free Software progress very rapidly by FreeUser · 2003-01-24 07:55 · Score: 1

I've said it before, some of the Linux aficionados suffer from severe Versionitis.

Free software developers and users are much farther up the Exponential Technology Curve than proprietary vendors and their customers are.

A two year change in GNU/Linux is roughly equivelent to a 10 year change in Windows, for example, so expecting a two year old distribution with outdated libraries and an outdated kernel to be able to run the most current software, that relies on cutting edge kernel features and support, and newer, less buggy libraries is akin to expecting the current crop of MS software to run on the operating system they were selling ten years ago (Windows 3.11 I believe, though I may be off by a year or two).

Why can't he use 7.2 if it works for him?

Because 7.2 doesn't support the software he wants to run. The versions of the libraries are too old and either lack support completely, or are too rudimentary in their support, to do what he wants, hell, even the very kernel is quite possibly too old to do what he wants.

If you want to keep up with such changes in a reasonably painless manner, run Source Mage or Gentoo and do your updates incrementally once a week or so ... or accept that you'll need to upgrade your system every six months or so (in a signficant way), or decide you are going to stick with something tried, true, but staid, and stop complaining when the current state of the art has moved beyond your personal technological horizon. How you leapfrog your technology and your updates is up to you, but insisting on running a hopelessly outdated version of a binary distribution because you don't want to upgrade, and then vilifying the developers because your outdated system won't run the shiny new programs you want to play with defys logic and rationality, not to mention even a semblance of social grace.

--
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy

Re:Linux & Free Software progress very rapidly by root+66 · 2003-01-24 08:24 · Score: 1

Just my EUR 0.02...

Not having to completely reinstall the entire system every couple months should be one of the strengths of linux, shouldn't it?

Providing a save upgrade path is what could win the battle at home and especially in companies.

FreeBSD does a great job at this. Gentoo I guess, too. (But you cannot expect Joe Anyone to upgrade an entire system from sources, just think of the time needed)

I hope the binary Linux distributions will improve more in this regard.

--
-- I love the smell of Blue Screens in the morning.
Re:Linux & Free Software progress very rapidly by swordgeek · 2003-01-24 08:28 · Score: 1

Ironically, you're defending the very point that the parent poster made, from exactly the opposite direction.

Development speed doesn't matter that much in this context. Progress curve is mostly irrelevant. If I have to do a minor OS upgrade once a week, or a complete rebuild once every six months, then it's not a viable stable desktop environment. I wouldn't do that in a server environment, and I don't want to do it at home either.

RH 7.2 was released at the end of October, 2001. At slightly over a year old, it's now being called completely antiquated and outdated. That's a real problem for a user.

--

"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Re:Linux & Free Software progress very rapidly by FreeUser · 2003-01-24 09:32 · Score: 1

FreeBSD does a great job at this. Gentoo I guess, too.

Yes, Gentoo portage is based on the FreeBSD ports system. Another FreeBSD user called portage "ports the way it should have been." The ports system was one of the truly impressive things about FreeBSD when I used it last, and portage is quite good in its own right ... sufficiently so that preference is probably more a question of personal taste than technical merit at this point.

Both make keeping up to date trivially easy (though I do clone my working partition onto a spare set just in case I munge something up ... think of it as an instantly accessible backup)

(But you cannot expect Joe Anyone to upgrade an entire system from sources, just think of the time needed)

Two minor points

1) one can install Gentoo from a 'stage 3' (precompiled) tarball, optimized for most common hardware platforms. Then only additional packages need to be compiled (using the extremely simple 'emerge' command, or a GUI frontend thereto).

2) systems can come preinstalled (with compilation done at the factory as part of a 1 or 2 day burn-in).

Frankly, I think a user could be persuaded to install from source, if the install program does all the interactive questioning at the beginning and end, and lets a user walk away from the system for a day while it works. Ideally with an "estimated time left" clock somewhere on the display (as a console screen saver perhaps) letting a quick glance tell them what is left.

In the scripts I've written for where I work, this is how it is done. All of the questions about network addresses and other configuration issues are asked upfront, while messages and final interactive tasks (editing /etc/rc.conf, setting the root password) are done at the very end. I routinely walk away from machines that will be compiling for a day or more, because I prefer not to install from precompiled stage 3 tarballs, but rather from stage 1 tarballs, bootstrapping the system myself and insuring all of the compilation takes place on the target system.

But not everyone is required to be as pedantic about it as I typically am, so the install from binary and maintain via source option is available.

We MUST have easy and quick upgradability, because as we progress further along the exponential curve of technological change, we will be more and more inclined to upgrade more and more frequently, until it becomes a morning ritual, or perhaps at some point even an hourly cron job. Ports under FreeBSD, and portage under Gentoo, are big steps in this direction.

--
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy

Ah yes, Jamie... by snofla · 2003-01-24 07:55 · Score: 1

Jamie misinterpreting an RFC and getting flamed; I think he misses programming.

--
i don't like style guides

Re: at least keep your analogies straight by FreeUser · 2003-01-24 08:05 · Score: 1

A two year old system is hardly comparable to Windows 3.11 - even when Office 2000 became available.

Actually, it is more comparable than you think. Free software developers and users reside much further along the exponential technological curve than proprietary system vendors and their customers. I can (and have been known to) upgrade my Gentoo system every day if I wish, and get signficantly new and better software each time.

This isn't to say you have to remain completely current to run reasonably current and capable software ... running Red Hat 8.0 from a few months ago would have probably sufficed (and been analogous to your Windows 98 example), but he wasn't willing to do that either.

Of course, to those who do keep current (and do so very painlessly if they're running Source Mage or Gentoo) go the rewards of having the most current and capable software. In an environment where progress is so rapid that a week, or even a day, can make a big difference, that is nothing to sneeze at.

A couple of years in the GNU/Linux world is easily similiar to 10 years in the Microsoft world, perhaps even longer. A two year old binary distribution such as Red Hat 7.2 is hopelessly out of date when it comes to running the current crop of demanding video applications, and JWZ should have been competent enough to recognize and deal with that simple fact. Instead he chose to vilify and insult those who had graciously given him their software, with nary a constructive criticism to be found anywhere within the rant. He is an ass, pure and simple (even if I happen to agree with his opinion of theming).

--
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy

I hate skins by diakka · 2003-01-24 08:10 · Score: 1

At first I thought they were kinda neat. But then I realized beauty of a consistent UI and how much time was being wasted on coming up with these silly looking and useless things.

--
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley

Re:Jamie's writing larger reflect my Linux experie by Cheesy+Fool · 2003-01-24 08:10 · Score: 0

What are you gonna do it about it? Are you gonna fix it yourself? are you gonna file bug reports so the developers can fix it? or are you just gonna come to slashdot and whine?

Your rant isn't going to help anyone because none of the developers are going to see it, so they won't be able to do anything about it.

--

Hail to the king, baby!

Double the size of XMMS by Gerry+Gleason · 2003-01-24 08:12 · Score: 1

I finally got around to getting sound to work on this ancient Dell I'm using, and initially I was pretty pissed off about how small everything was. I searched for some way to deal with this, looking for a function to zoom, or something, but I couldn't find it. Finally the option to double the display size popped out at me, and I find it to be much more usable. Only now I need a better output device than the built in speaker on my 17" KDS LCD monitor.

I agree that the skins thing is at best a distraction. The default skin just needs to be clear and usable. Some are at least usable once I double the size.

*** Haters - Don't you Hate them?? by Lodragandraoidh · 2003-01-24 08:13 · Score: 1

Reminds me of my grandparents bemoaning the loss of the horse and buggy. In this case, its a petulent graphics guru upset because the open source community hasn't made something (yet) to his liking - all is lost and irretrievable. Have a little patience - or do it yourself.

Change is constant, before, during and after all is said and done. That is why I hate critics (which is kind of ironic when you think about my post being a criticism) - they catch opening day and pronounce the project a loss, *missing* the very next day when things clicked and an awsome performance occurred.

--

Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain

Mind Reader by Jonny+Balls · 2003-01-24 08:19 · Score: 1

He is saying what we are all thinking.

--
--JonnyBlog

JWZ quotes: by SimHacker · 2003-01-24 08:21 · Score: 2, Insightful

"Using these toolkits is like trying to make a bookshelf out of mashed potatoes."

"Consider whether chewing on glass might have more of a payoff than what you're about to go through."

- Jamie Zawinski, quoted in The X-Windows Disaster

--
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com

Re:JWZ quotes: by WWWWolf · 2003-01-24 23:57 · Score: 1

...and both quotes are conviniently irrelevant in this case. =) (And don't know if they are even relevant these days. The ICCCM may or may not be garbage, but at least that is the headache of toolkit developers these days, not the app developers. The second quote is about compiling extensions to the X server; Don't know what's so difficult about it from the user point of view, at least XF86 4.x supports dynamic loading of modules that provide extensions...)

What am amusing debacle by A+nonymous+Coward · 2003-01-24 08:23 · Score: 1

JWZ, who has credentials, criticizes the state of video players.

Many comments criticize JWZ. The best of them say he should stop criticizing and go to work on the problem. Nowhere do any of these criticizers present their credentials or xplain why they can criticize a criticism JWZ is not allowed to.

Other criticisms are nothing but flamebait.

If some of the criticisms of JWZ had explained why his criticism is wrong, I might be impressed. As it is, nope.

See how I am halfway between. I offer constructive criticism of the criticizers, but offer no credentials myself.

--
Infuriate left and right

This guy is a moron by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 08:24 · Score: 0

You think we'd at least post reviews with insightful comments written by people who know something about Linux.

Oh wait, this is Slashdot.

Anyhow, from what useful info I can gather from the guy, he thinks Xine is the best of the players (except that he can't get it to play DVDs because he wanted it to work magically with a library he installed for OGLE - try xine-dcss dumbass). He doesn't like the crap it spews on the command line (but why is he running it from the command line if he hates using the command line for MPlayer, and why doesn't he try reading the messages to figure out what is wrong - again a dumbass).

What this guy needs to do is download a different UI for xine, such as the ones done for GNOME or KDE, and run it by clicking from his nice little menu or by clicking on his nice file in his GUI file manager. Then it would meet all of his needs. If this guy had done any research at all, he would've found a media player that works just great for even a whiney bitch like himself. If someone can find the names of the packages he needs for Xine to get DeCss and a KDE or GNOME UI for Red Hat 7.2, then maybe we can get him to write a less bitchy article. Not that it would be "stuff that matters" even then.

At least we were warned in the dep't bit - "JWZ Reviews Video on Linux: from the using-the-term-loosely dept."

Garbage by Doug+Neal · 2003-01-24 08:25 · Score: 1

Am I the only one who thinks that this little rant of his is quite an insult to all the people who have worked so hard on MPlayer, Xine, Ogle etc to get video on Linux as far as it is today? Most of his criticisms are nonsense anyway, and I think it's pretty amazing that we now have the ability to play so many formats including codecs from Windows binaries, it's hardly a small feat.

Reading /usr/local/etc/mplayer/codecs.conf: 49 audio & 123 video codecs

Tell me that's not impressive. Even the mighty Windows *cough* doesn't support that many codecs in one player, straight out of the box.

And I don't know what he's doing criticising others' code if he was responsible for the abomination that was Netscape 4. And how long did it take to get Mozilla to 1.0, hmm? Now it's there it's slow and bloated, and not only does it have skins but you can build whole fucking different applications in it (!?!??)

would say he should quit bitching and start coding, but I'd rather MPlayer didn't turn out as "good" as Netscape, thanks :P

Uhh what? by greygent · 2003-01-24 08:25 · Score: 1

Just because you made a quick buck in an IPO doesn't give you the right to rant about whatever you want and expect people to bow down.

Actually, he's done a hell of a lot more than that: Netscape Navigator, Lucid Emacs/XEmacs, and XScreensaver, to name just a few.

What have YOU done?

I think you should take your own advice and not rant about people you have little clue about. He's probably done a hell of a lot more for "open source" than you have.

Re:Uhh what? by Narchie+Troll · 2003-01-24 10:04 · Score: 1

No, actually, that's pretty much it right there, not "just a few."

really guys... by acm5fan · 2003-01-24 08:28 · Score: 1

This is one of a few compelling reasons to buy a pre-packaged distro. for what it's worth mac os x has nearly all those crappy players. not to mention quicktime plays and encodes divx, w/ a plug in. there's also windows media and real. and when it doesn't work, there is someone to bitch out with real engineering prowess that gets paid to make that shit for the better good of their company. a just spend the dough and get a true consumer-grade os guys.

eat this by fdawg · 2003-01-24 08:34 · Score: 1

Mr Zawinski,
I read your article on the useablity of Linux and your experiences with
various video players. It seems you have a sly comment thrashing all the
major playes but I have 1 questions to ask you; Why are you using Linux when
you are obviously incapable of using a system specifically developed its
stability and versatility. You repeatedly pointed to RPMs as if compiling
from source is taboo. You do realize *nix is built on code that SOMEONE far
intelligent than yourself has compiled. If you are incapable of using
applications that someone else has written, the linux mantra encourages you
to WRITE YOUR OWN.
My advice to you and anyone else like you is to stick to Windows. Linux was
not developed while keeping the user in mind. It was meant for the
Developer/Hobbyist who couldnt afford a real Unix install. Lucky us, Linux
has surpassed Unix in technology and popularity. Fads come and go but it
seems you have gotten stuck in the "fad current" and dont really know what
you are doing or why you are doing it.

Linux is not for morons.

Re:eat this by dcuny · 2003-01-24 09:37 · Score: 2, Interesting

His credentials show that he's certainly capable of using Linux. The point was that he shouldn't have to enter Guru Mode in order to do it.
I'm not knocking the difficulty of writing stuff like Xine - I just don't see why I should have to read the manual in order to use it. I mean, is there really a compelling reason for inventing Yet Another User Interface? Having already been trained on how to use GUIs, I can operate MS' Media Player without having to take a special class. Is Xine compellingly different?
GUIs have been around for a long time now, and the whole User Interface stuff pretty well worked out and understood. There's not really any reason for people to "roll their own".
I wouldn't think people would encourage applications to be victims of fashion. Friends don't let friends wear mullets. Why should Linux be any different?
...linux mantra encourages you to WRITE YOUR OWN.
Does it? Why?
Real programmers are lazy. They don't reinvent the wheel unless it's fun.
Part of the frustration here is that these applications are so freaking close to being usable, and suddenly we're confronted with a mullet.
For example, Xine pops up this weird VCR-style player. What the heck is that? Is it so difficult to use an existing toolkit? It puts being cool before usable, and there's really no reason for it.
As another poster pointed out, there's Kxine. All the goodness of Xine, but with a standard user interface. Why didn't Xine provide this in the first place?
Friends don't let friends wear mullets.

Bah by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 08:47 · Score: 0

Windows Media Player works fine for me. No RPMs to bother with either.

NOTE: this is not meant as flame-bait... just meant to show people that there ARE alternatives to Linux out there that work (and sometimes even with positive results).

Outdated distro? WTF?! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 08:59 · Score: 0

He is not only incompetent (staying married to an outdated distro and complaining he can't get current software to run seemlessly with it with no effort, something akin to complaining about the lack of support for MS Office 2000 on his old Windows 3.11 machine) [...]

Outdated distro? Hey, this is RedHat 7.2, which is what, about one and a half years old (don't care to look up the exact release date but that seems about right). Guess what: some people actually don't want to "upgrade" their OS every 6 months to stay on a recent version. I like it sweet and stable, thanks.

My personal upgrade cycle used to be on the Redhat x.2 releases. Went from 4.2 to 5.2 to 6.2. I don't remember the exact reason but I had to install 7.1 for some obscure program to run (don't recall exact reason but it was along these lines). Guess what. My next upgrade will be to 8.2 (if that ever comes out). I simply don't have the time to go through the hassles of upgrading everything including all custom-installed 3rd party programs just because I feel like it. Even if nowadays, this mostly boils down to "pop in cd, skip the stupid GUI installer, hit ENTER a couple of times and zoom".

My Solution by SomeOtherGuy · 2003-01-24 09:02 · Score: 1

So I would not be inclined to produce such rants as this, I made myself a promise a few years back. I would not be dissapointed with the lack of Video/DVD support on Linux (the only operating system in my home -- then and now) if I followed this 1 rule:

If I find myself wanting to watch movies in front of my computer screen -- then I am spending way to much time in front of a computer screen. Go for a bike ride, smell the flowers, and if I get home and still have the urge to watch movies -- I will do it the old fashioned way.

It has served me well.

--
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.

It misses the point by Gerry+Gleason · 2003-01-24 09:02 · Score: 2, Informative

Or any useful one, anyway. If you're talking about just making it work for all formats, that seems to be more or less handled. The UI stuff, well, that's a matter of taste. First, let's make everything work, then bitch about UI. The part about mplayer being stuck at the bottom of the layering, just doesn't seem right; wouldn't this more likely be a window manager issue (or compatibility with)?

The real issue is that this should work with all formats out of the box without a lot of messing around or special configuration. It is much more of an integration issue for the distribution vendors than anything else. Ok, the hardware vendors have a role here too.

I read the LWCE stuff from Roblimo about his talk with the Dell reps. If they want to cred from us, they would do a better job of supporting their old hardware, then I might be more likely to actually buy a Dell if I ever get to buy a new computer. I had to open my box and guess which was the audio chip and read the numbers off it to figure out how to correctly configure my audio. I should be able to just get that information by just going to their support area and typing in my model number. I tried this and their site was remarkable unhelpful.

I managed to get some of the video functions to work, but mplayer seems to be a loss (my video hardware appears to be too old, and the system too slow to emulate everything). My browser plugin configuration just sucks, though. Plugger is installed and somewhat configured, and some media types will cause xine to fire up, but it just dies with no simple information about why. Maybe someday I will load a newer distribution (I'm RH7.3) on new hardware and everything will just work.

Oh, that brings up another stupidity in the JWZ review. His complaints about stuff dumped to the console. If you don't want it, how hard is it to direct to /dev/null? Sometimes, the only indication that you get of why things aren't functioning is a message dumped to the console. Often, I start up galeon from a console (because if you start if from a menu, the messages go to /dev/null, yet another way to easily ignore them) when something is breaking to see if the browser spits out some indication of what is wrong.

My biggest complaint is that there is no place to go for definitive information about all of this. People seem to imply that Xine will handle all formats, but it failed miserably when I tried in on an avi file (maybe I have to tell it the format? I thought it should figure it out ...). That's why I was installing mplaying in the first place, I thought I needed it for windows formats. If I really cared, I'm sure I could find the information, but who has time to root around for this kind of information all the time.

Re:It misses the point by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 09:34 · Score: 0

His complaints about stuff dumped to the console. ... Sometimes, the only indication that you get of why things aren't functioning is a message dumped to the console. Often, I start up galeon from a console when something is breaking to see if the browser spits out some indication of what is wrong.

And this doesn't seem completely half-assed to you?

Attention K-Mart Shoppers -- If you use Linux please refrain from saying ANYTHING about UI design.
Re:It misses the point by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 12:53 · Score: 0

I should be able to just get that information by just going to their support area and typing in my model number. I tried this and their site was remarkable unhelpful.
Complete tangent: Shit like this is why I like IBM. A couple of days ago, I wanted to upgrade the memory in my Thinkpad, which was being discontinued when I bought it 2 years ago. I couldn't dig up the manuals I'd gotten with the thing, so I went to the IBM website, and within 5 minutes or so had a PDF of the hardware maintenance manual, which included detailed diagrams for getting to the DIMM slot.
Re:It misses the point by coaxial · 2003-01-24 16:20 · Score: 1

aybe someday I will load a newer distribution (I'm RH7.3) on new hardware and everything will just work.

No it won't. New hardware is never supported. Hell, hardwarae is never fully supported.

Trust me. I know. I've been running linux since 94 and I have never had a system where all my hardware was fully supported.
Re:It misses the point by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 19:35 · Score: 0

Stop buying closed hardware. Vendors should have no right to decide what you can and can't do with your own property.

Silly little reviewer. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 09:10 · Score: 0

Sure, moaning often generates a few results, but seriously. Since when did the mplayer team consentrate on RPM stuff? Their primary concern is the software, not how it is packaged. I personally use GNU/Linux slackware, and I have never ever had any serious problems with mplayer (or xine). Gnome2? What? I have no idea what he's talking about. I haven't read the entire review since I'm at work, but I sure don't agree with this (sorry, but) wanker. The source is free. If he thinks he can do much better, I urge him to give it a shot. I'm a programmer, but I sure can't do anything nearly as good as mplayer/xine. I'm very happy with both players, and I seriously doubt that'll change any time soon. Have a nice weekend, folks.

What I don't understand... by Fizzlewhiff · 2003-01-24 09:11 · Score: 2, Funny

With the number of apps trying so hard to look like their Windows or OS X counterparts, why hasn't someone done a GUI for these video players to make them look like Media Player or Quicktime?

I guess once the developers get their players to where it will play their latest pr0n downloads it becomes too hard to code using one hand?

--

'Same speed C but faster'

Re:What I don't understand... by TeknoHog · 2003-01-24 10:30 · Score: 1

There's a WiMP skin for MPlayer. Scroll down this page.

--
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.

windows is not unstable by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 09:13 · Score: 0

windows 2000 has been rock solid stable for me. never had a problem.

linux on the other hand is a piece of shit.

struggling with 8.0, what moron at Red Hat with cranial rectalitis decided to make the X configuration program run UNDER X WINDOWS!!?? if X isn't working you can't use the configuration program!! AHHHHHRRRRGGGGHHH!

Re: at least keep your analogies straight by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 09:20 · Score: 0

The .NET runtimes work in 98.

The .NET SDK doesn't.

Can't WRITE .NET apps on 98, true.
Can't RUN .NET apps on 98, false.

Though the 'run' statement is somewhat of a blanket statement, because there's nothing stopping a .NET developer from including external DLLs that DO only run on 2K/XP - but being .NET alone doesn't disqualify it.

For all those complaining about the GUIs by haloscan · 2003-01-24 09:21 · Score: 1

Take a look at Kxine for an example. This is the beauty of GPL/OSS software--if you don't like it, extend/modify it to your liking and even go one step further and share it with others, unlike this JWZ/flamebait character.

Screenshot here.

This program gives Xine a QT based (unskinned) GUI for Xine. Attractive and functional.

Free Software is not about end user freedom by Ilan+Volow · 2003-01-24 09:24 · Score: 1

The GPL is a programmer's idea of freedom, not an end-user's.

GUI-driven desktop software aimed at end-users is about Freedom: the freedom to get stuff done with a minimum of fuss. "Free Software" advocates have repeatedly shown that they do not value this freedom in any kind of way. Anyone who petitions Free Software developers to give end-users the freedom they need (including usability professionals with years of experience in making interfaces easy to use) are met with the utmost hostility and are told "Free Software does not entitle you to a usable interface".

If Free Software people choose to conduct themselves in this manner and do nothing but oppress end-users on Free Software platforms like GNU/Linux, that is their perogative. But when one considers that these very same people who are oppressing end users and denying them the freedom to get things done with their computers are the very same people who are who are clamoring for this very same software to be used in schools and governments to replace proprietary platforms that give end-users the freedom to get work done easily, this situation becomes inexcusable.

--
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!

RedHat 7.2 by Error27 · 2003-01-24 09:32 · Score: 1

RedHat 7.2 is pretty old... I said rude things about it myself when it was released.

But 8.0 is rather nice.

I'm not sure if the video situation is any better but the rest of the operating system is a lot more pleasant.

Linux Usability and Gronk! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 09:34 · Score: 0

Howabout a survey of Gronk!(http://www.jwz.org/gronk) usability and install-ability.

Although the creator asserts "it works for him" I couldn't seem to get it to play with my RedHat install.

Perhaps I missed a stop about a kernel patch or distro change :-) /AC

Re:Shouldn't rant about things you don't understan by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 09:43 · Score: 0

Uh no. He posts flamebait to his personal page (which only a few friends normally check). Then Slashdot publizes it and he has an audience in the tens of thousands. Y'All "listened" to him and Y'AHBT.

That's different from agreement. (And it's not like people here even rationallly disagree. Most the of the comments are 100% knee-jerk, which indicates the lack of capacity which indicates subhuman status.)

Re:Shouldn't rant about things you don't understan by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 09:47 · Score: 0

How frequently do we have a rational conversation about (say) the indadequacies of Windows 98? Never!

It's "This Fucking Sucks" and "Get Rid Of It!". Sometimes that really is the most intelligent thing to say.

Who is going to sit there and say "You really should change your UI in the following 10,000 ways"? It's much better to tell them to their faces to give the fuck up because they aren't making the cut. People released the software, they're entitled to everyone's opinion.

Mplayer works for me under RH8.0 by hughk · 2003-01-24 09:51 · Score: 1

I installed the latest Mplayer under RH8.0, using the rpms and it works fine apart from some minor stuff. For example, full-screen was 'fixed' after the last release and I can flip between a window and full screen. Unfortunately after being in full screen, the display window can no longr be moved.

Apart from that, yes the interface is a little clunky, but it works and some of the skins make things easier. My biggest UI complaint is that although it is possible to rebind the keys, there is no way to see the current bindings. It is a little complex to run and to optimise, but this is something that is easily fixable.

I use the latest, GATOS XV drivers and frankly, the performance on my 500MHz Dell Notebook is better than WMP on a 1GHz machine un der Win2K. I use the low latency stuff, of course, but this is just setting an option in proc to enable under an RH 8.0 kernel.

Ok, if I want the DVD menus, there is always Ogle (also performs well). Ogle doesn't seem quite as stable but I can't complain about mplayer.

--
See my journal, I write things there

Re:Shouldn't rant about things you don't understan by drinkypoo · 2003-01-24 09:58 · Score: 1

Because a nice tone makes for a more civilized world

The brits have been speaking in a more civilized manner since before they were called brits, but they still managed to run around and exploit most of the non-white-skinned world at one time.

The words are still what's important in the end. How you say it just determines whether you look good commiting atrocities.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"

Re:Shouldn't rant about things you don't understan by XO · 2003-01-24 10:01 · Score: 1

JWZ has dismissed this immediately by saying both Gnome2 and Red Hat 8.0 suck, without any sort of explaination.

Actually, his explanation is that Red Hat 8.0 sucks because it uses Gnome2 - which does suck.

I'm not going to have much to back that up with, except that it's virtually impossible to get G2 up and running on anything unless you isntall your whole damn system from source, or use RH 8 or another distribution that already has it.

--
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/

Debunking JWZ by fw3 · 2003-01-24 10:04 · Score: 2, Interesting

He has some points, however:

Aside from throwing a tantrum and jumping Netscape to go run a nightclub he's perhaps best known for having written 'xscreensaver'. On his blog he brags at length about it's elegant / modular design whilst bashing the design of X11, and declaiming any possibility that his vaunted code could ever be responsible for problems.

Now I've used xlock for a freaking decade on Unix/Linux/BSD and I've yet to have an x-session crash because of it. By comparison I've never run a video card/Xserver version which some module of xscreensaver wouldn't crash. Now I'm accustomed to running my x-sessions for upwards of 6 months. Yes, this has always been marginally more stable on vendor-Unix than Linux.

So along comes jwz armed with his superior(sic) screensaver which has a couple of modules that will happily crash every linux X-server I've ever used -- what's up with this? My best guess is he's got a hair across his butt about not liking the X architecture and he's stuck in code that he knows will hit on known bugs.

Now this just antisocial imo. GUI's are the achilles heel of every os I've ever run, they do lots of memory copies, pointer ops and try to deal with async input from multiple sources.

And then go look at his Linux gripes on his blog -- 2weeks to get X to display at bettter than 640x480??! I'm sorry but this just indicate the brightest bulb on the tree. Neither am I and I managed to get linux +x up in '96 in a couple of days, and since then I've run linux or *BSD on a dozen different systems. I agree with him that vendor-unix is more stable and better behaved as a gui -- big surprise -- the vendor has complete control of devices and has a reasonable shot at doing solid regression testing. Obviously OSS can't achieve that.

--
Linux is Linux, if One need clarify their dist: <Dist>/GNU Linux
bsds are of course just BSD

Re:Debunking JWZ by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-27 10:50 · Score: 0

"Neither am I and I managed to get linux +x up in '96 in a couple of days"
Windows 2000: three hours. Enjoy your self-imposed stone age.
Re:Debunking JWZ by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-03 19:32 · Score: 0

win2k in 1996 wow I'm deeply impressed, you must be a true wizard. A couple of days for linux in '96 included downloading the entire thing at 19.2kbps, and compiling X from source.
Of course you're running an os that's based on and backward compatible with DOS which was a copy of CP/M which in turn borrowed it's design from DEC's rsx/11 (ca 1975?). And the egregiously bloated cruft that have been used to maintain that are directly related to the frequency of BSOD's on NT and the less than stellar security history of W2k
By the time w2k finaly hit release (4 years late) anyone with 80 or better iq points to rub together could knock off a complete linux or bsd install in under an hour. Today I can download and locally compile all the software for a server directly from source in a few hours, *BSD or Linux.
w2k has it's uses but as a server it isn't even vaguely better, more modern, as scalable or reliable as any of the variants of unix. For me that extends to the desktop because I know the tools and they continue to work better / faster / more reliably than the average win32 app.
So you may by all means label me stoneage or stonehenge or whatever and yerself elite or something. I haven't lost data to a system failure in any unix in a dozen years, I don't know too many win32 users who can say that.

I think he has a good point by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 10:07 · Score: 0

Why alot of people complain about him? He has very good points. If my product get his bless like that, I would be thankful for it.

As a user, I know from his post that the day of video on linux is not there yet, or at least not anytime soon for a good quality version.

Yes, he curse some, but I think the people who created those software, should spend about half an hour more to think about their software, and read his post.

By the way, maybe someday I'll release a Java GUI for those command lines people complain about.

primA donna by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 10:10 · Score: 1, Informative

First lady (or akin to that)

In Italian -- as well as in my mother tongue, Portuguese -- the adjective (prima) must agree with the object it qualifies (donna).

For a man, you would say "primo uomo".

Keep in mind I can't speak Italian, but I guess gramatical structure is similar.

And, yes, English is somewhat simpler in that respect.

apt on RH by hughk · 2003-01-24 10:13 · Score: 1

I really like apt4rpm because as you say, it sorts out the dependencies very nicely. It has worked for me since RH 6.something and has helped me a lot.

Ocassionally I hit a library dependancy problem under RH8.0, then I have to get and build the source RPM. Overall, I haven't had a big problem running apps built for Gnome 1.4 or 2 under RH8.0. I understand about where jwz is coming from, nobody really like a major version upgrade, but the payback with 8.0 is great and compensates for the inconvenience.

--
See my journal, I write things there

Re:THIS IS NOT FLAMEBAIT by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 10:14 · Score: 0

Dude...don't reply to your own fucking post (twice!) disputing moderation. You can mock them or laugh at them, but don't pretend to be some concerned third party trying to set the moderation world straight.

Which guy is an idiot? by YottaMatt · 2003-01-24 10:20 · Score: 1

I don't think anyone understands how stupid the words "should learn how to program" are.

Forget for a minute JWZ has rolled some of the most widely-used Open source over the last decase.

Its like saying you should learn how to be a mechanic if your car broke down, or you should be a physician if you got sick.

Consumers have every right to be consumers, and every right to complain when what they consume isn't up to their expectations.

Re:Which guy is an idiot? by Gordonjcp · 2003-01-24 10:32 · Score: 1

But he's not paying for it. The authors of MPlayer don't owe him anything.

JWZ may well have written some widely used OSS but have you actually looked at the code?
Re:Which guy is an idiot? by gli · 2003-01-24 14:14 · Score: 1

Giving something for free doesn't mean the giver owns the getter. It may be an asshole to be ungrateful but anybody can be one if he chooses. If you can't tolerate negative feedback, then don't give out stuff for free in the first place.
Re:Which guy is an idiot? by Gordonjcp · 2003-01-25 01:36 · Score: 1

I disagree. Instead of making a prat of himself whining about things like the aspect ratio going funny when you resize, surely someone of JWZ's obvious talents (yes, I'm well aware he wrote XEmacs and substantial bits of Netscape - doensn't mean I think they're good code though) could modify them to be more suitable for his needs? A simple mod along the lines of "if (resizing) { window.height=window.width / (video.width/video.height)) };" would do the job. *If* it really bothered him that much.

No, if someone is writing code and *giving it away for free* we do owe the author something - we owe it to them not act like total wankers if it doesn't work as expected. If you don't like the pie, either eat it anyway and shut up or make your own.

The rant has points.. but.. by eniu!uine · 2003-01-24 10:21 · Score: 1

I'm sure I'm probably much closer to an end user than JWZ is.. I've never written anything useful.. I used Windows/DOS for years.. I don't even understand the layering that goes on with the XWindow system. I know I'm running KDE, but I couldn't tell you what 'window manager' I'm using, or what that means. I can tell you that I like Mplayer much better than Windows Media Player. I installed it from RPM, because that seems to be easier, even though sometimes I don't have the necessary libraries for them, but in the case of MPlayer it just worked. It plays all my movies in whatever format.. including Divx(which I had to install separately on Windows) and Real(which I wouldn't install on Windows because it put too much crap on my computer). I had two movies that wouldn't work on windows(one just didn't work and the other didn't have sound), but worked fine with MPlayer. I'm not a technical wizard, but I found the UI very easy to use. Overall, since I've switched to Linux I haven't had many useability problems. It was just as easy to install, a lot of the software I use was already pre-installed. Now the only challenge for me is getting games to work... even thinking about setting up Quake gives me a headache. My NVidia driver is installed as far as I can tell since now it says "NVidia" with the logo when I start up, but for some reason Tux Racer says that I don't have 3d support or it's not configured. It works anyway, don't ask me why. I have no idea, even after reading exhaustively through the nvidia troubleshooting guide, why it says this. I don't know what needs to be done to 'configure' 3d support. So in short I think that's where we have some useability problems. In windows you put the driver CD in and the autorun.inf starts working...before you know it you have a driver. The games just run. I've installed my driver and still it doesn't work. But, as they say.. Linux isn't a desktop system..yet.

--
My Blog

Linux is bad, Mac/Windows are worse by g4dget · 2003-01-24 10:41 · Score: 1

But it's a total pain in the ass to use due to rampant "themeing." Why do people do this?

Easy: Apple does it and Microsoft does it, and it sucks worse on those platforms. An even worse problem with the Mac and Windows players are that they are (in my experience) much less reliable than the Linux players.

So, yes, the UI on the Linux players sucks, but it does as well on most of the others. And in terms of functionality, Linux players are generally better.

Worse is better by xv4n · 2003-01-24 10:42 · Score: 1

It's ironic though that at the end of his page there is a link to famous worse is better paper. And I agree with JWZ that everyone should read it.

the value of freedom by David+Jao · 2003-01-24 10:53 · Score: 1

Look, I'm not gonna sit here and say video work on linux is easy (it's not) or cutting edge (it's not). Everyone here knows that jwz despite the harsh ranting is basically right.

But I still use linux for manipulating videos. Why? Because freedom is priceless.

You rave about your eight year old cousin doing wonderful things on his iMac. But I bet your eight year old cousin would be stopped dead in his tracks the moment he has to play an out-of-region DVD.

Playing out of region DVDs is not just a theoretical problem for me: I have almost as many region 2 DVDs (forty) as region 1 DVDs (fifty). As great as the iMac is, I can't use it because it restricts me to one region.

Now, it is true that there probably exist underground firmware flashes to circumvent the region restrictions, but the principle at stake goes way beyond this simple technical problem. I want a computer that does what I want, not what Hollywood wants, and to achieve this goal I have to use free software.

I want to be able to:

copy commercial DVDs for fair use purposes
in particular, add my own subtitles to DVDs for my own private viewing pleasure, and store copies of the results
do so on any DVD without regard to what region it was sold in
override fast-forward lockouts and menu button lockouts

and to do all that, I need free software.

Re:the value of freedom by markv242 · 2003-01-24 13:28 · Score: 1

"Because freedom is priceless."
I have news for you: you aren't editing (or "manipulating" as you call it) video. You're manipulating DVD VOB files. There is a huge difference.
"But I bet your eight year old cousin would be stopped dead in his tracks the moment he has to play an out-of-region DVD."
Similarly, my eight-year-old cousin would get "stopped dead in his tracks" the moment he had to apt-get or rpm get any kind of package or driver required to even play a Quicktime movie. Get it through your head: LINUX USABILITY IS AN UTTER SHAM.
"Now, it is true that there probably exist underground firmware flashes to circumvent the region restrictions,"
You're absolutely correct. There are all sorts of DVD-duplicating, region-switching, etc software for the Mac, all of which will happily do what you want to do, in about one tenth the time that it takes for you to do the same thing on Linux, because you don't have to read a 50k README and compile ten different packages in order to get them to work!
"I want a computer that does what I want, not what Hollywood wants, and to achieve this goal I have to use free software."
You're deluding yourself, and your blindness is only making your work/hobby/whatever miserable for you. Everything you listed can even be done on Windows, with the correct software installed. I imagine it would take about 5 minutes to download and install and use the correct utilities under OS X.
Taking this back to the jwz rant, like everything else in desktop Linux, video manipulation has a huge learning curve because of the lack of standardization on the part of interface designers, driver coders, and overall system-management-utilities.
Mac OS X is so amazingly superior to Linux in all of these fashions, I am constantly astounded when I encounter people such as yourselves who so blindly follow the belief "Linux equals freedom, and everything else is a tool of oppression." Get off your high horses and join the 21st century.
"Free software" exists on more than one platform, for your information. OS X isn't just a collection of ten applications from Apple, you know-- it's a bad argument, but "anything you can do I can do better."
Re:the value of freedom by David+Jao · 2003-01-24 14:08 · Score: 1
I would have preferred to have kept it at the level of a civilized discussion instead of descending into base insults, as you have done.
Linux usability is terrible (I agree with this point, I will agree a thousand times over), but MacOS isn't such a usability paradise either. Just to name one thing: redhat gives me four virtual desktops out of the box; why oh why doesn't MacOS do that? I find one desktop unusable.
You're deluding yourself, and your blindness is only making your work/hobby/whatever miserable for you. Everything you listed can even be done on Windows, with the correct software installed.
Windows is even worse than MacOS. Please don't go there.
If "miserable" means having the full source code to everything I use, then I'll take misery any day. I could write a thesis on how many times having the source code has made my work easier, except that I already have another thesis that I have to write first.
Mac OS X is so amazingly superior to Linux in all of these fashions, I am constantly astounded when I encounter people such as yourselves who so blindly follow the belief "Linux equals freedom, and everything else is a tool of oppression." Get off your high horses and join the 21st century.
You think I'm blind? Wait until Stallman's right to read comes true (we're halfway there already), and then we'll see who's blind.
I am astounded that you would be so venomously antagonistic towards someone else who chooses to use Linux. It's not like I'm forcing you to use it. It's not like I'm saying it has no flaws. I simply have a different set of priorities that cause me to prefer Linux over MacOS.
"Free software" exists on more than one platform, for your information.
A platform such as MacOS where the OS is not free software does not do what I want.
To tell the truth, the issue goes beyond DVD editing. I'm not a stellar programmer by any means, but I do want the source code, so that I can do things like
- patch my kerne to use IPsec encryption with the AES cipher
- write an input plugin for transcode to handle subsonic format anime scripts
- use glame for timing dialogue, exporting the resulting script directly into a mysql database
All of which are things that I have done, and that have required the source code.
Most people are better off with Mac OS than Linux, but there are some people for which it is the reverse, and I am one of them. I want the freedom to use Linux, and I certainly hope you're not suggesting I shouldn't have that freedom, because I'll defend it to the death.
Re:the value of freedom by WWWWolf · 2003-01-25 00:17 · Score: 1

But I still use linux for manipulating videos. Why? Because freedom is priceless.

But freedom to do anything is nothing without tools to actually do something. =) Linux is nice for a lot of things, but video tools Just Aren't There Yet!
Personally, I use VirtualDub in Windows 98 to capture and edit crap. Not the fanciest program, but perfect for the job and also GPLed. I just wish I had a proper NLE...
Same goes for most of the apps: I value more the fact that I get things actually done than the freedom. Free apps are nice when they actually work (Mozilla, XEmacs, GIMP, GnuCash, ...), but, for instance, before Blender was GPLed I still used Blender because the open-source 3D apps just weren't as nice.
Re:the value of freedom by David+Jao · 2003-01-25 05:50 · Score: 1

But freedom to do anything is nothing without tools to actually do something... video tools Just Aren't There Yet!
Part of what I mean by freedom is having the ability to easily create your tools where none existed before.
For most people, I agree, video tools in Linux are inadequate. In my case, for what I want to do (anime fansubbing), the existing tools are barely inadequate, and I have patched them up to be adequate.
I can do wav timing in Linux using an SQL database for script storage, giving me much more flexibility in script manipulation than any Windows or MacOS program I know. I can render arbitrarily many subtitle streams in transcode, with smooth scrolling, fades, and even color deltas. I can get almost perfect inverse pulldown (perfect is impossible, because of the way different sprites have different pulldown patterns) in transcode using custom distance metrics for frame decimation.
Everything I describe above required having access to the source code. The last two could be done in VirtualDub if you have a C compiler, but I don't know any Windows way to achieve the first short of writing a new program from scratch.
Did all of this take a lot of time? Sure it did. But anime fansubbing is a time consuming endeavor anyway. The time spent patching the tools is a drop in the bucket compared to the time spent subtitling. I'm glad I took the time to get it right.
Re:the value of freedom by WWWWolf · 2003-01-25 06:04 · Score: 1

In my case, for what I want to do (anime fansubbing), the existing tools are barely inadequate, and I have patched them up to be adequate.

Ah! I'm not an anime fansubber, but I sometimes wish to subtitle weird Finnish TV programs so that foreigners can make sense of them. =)
So far, I've been perfectly happy with SubStationAlpha wav timing, and VirtualDub's subtitler plugin, OggMux, and one Perl script I wrote to convert .ssa to .srt for OggMux (no idea how well .ogm subtitles actually work, WMP seems to not care and Xine crashes...)
Are there really any tolerable programs for Linux that'd do wav-based subtitling? I know BakaSub, but that didn't work at all last time I tried it and the development seemed to have stopped...
If no one's acting, perhaps I really do get annoyed enough to write my own wav subtitler =)

Review (& i suspect the writer) is Fing WORTHL by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 10:58 · Score: 1, Insightful

This article is a piece of shit. Obvious from the first sentence that the author has a bone to pick. Now that is really not a problem, people put up rants all the time on the net. BUT IT's listed on slashdot, seeming to be a comprehensive review of video programs on linux. HOW BULLSHIT IS THAT? (to use the kind of language present in the article). While the writer is inane,

SLASHDOT IS POSTING BULLSHIT (which i guess is better than redundant bullshit)

How do you know? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 11:03 · Score: 0

Unless someone who has a reasonable end-user perspective tells you what they think, even if what they think is "this is a complete piece of crap", how will you, the glorious beneficent coder, know?

Be content that your code is shared among those who truely know your worth, don't worry about stupid users who can't even re-write the driver.

Just don't start spewing off when people are talking about whether Linux will work for the average desktop user. You aren't in that game.

Re:From the article... SUCKS. by XO · 2003-01-24 11:14 · Score: 1

I'd just like to add that XFree86 fonts suck. X as a whole fonts do not suck, however. In fact, way back in the day, the only reason I wanted to run X was because X's fonts DIDN'T suck, and Microsoft's DID. (this day was around Windows 3.11 era)

Then, the world got XFree86. It's fonts suck.
I used a lot of other implementations of X before XFree. I know.

X as a whole's handling of fonts really sucks. After ... 15 ? years... of dealing with X, I still haven't got the slightest clue what the fuck the font definitions are doing.

--
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/

Re:From the article... SUCKS. by XO · 2003-01-24 11:17 · Score: 1

JWZ also states that he understands he can install X11 under OS/X, but why would he want to do that?

*Thinks you stopped reading halfway through once you got pissed off*

--
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/

Graphics still hamstrung? by Kazoo+the+Clown · 2003-01-24 11:20 · Score: 1

Excuse my ignorance, but is Linux graphics still hamstrung by the insistence of its developers on jamming every bit of bitmapped data through X's tcp/ip bottleneck? I'm not expecting them to switch to SVGALIB for performance, but it's certainly been my experience that X is great when you want networked non-bitmapped graphics, but when it comes to lightning speed manipulation of display pixels, it wasn't at all designed for that. I tried to install an OpenGL library and it ran at least 10 times slower than the same machine did when booted as a Windows 98 machine. I consequently had to develop my graphic application where it had usable graphics APIs and a lame OS, rather than where it had a real OS but graphics APIs that stood in the way of useful framebuffer performance.

Has or is there any progress being made in that
regard?

Re:Graphics still hamstrung? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 18:39 · Score: 0

No, they have DRI now.
Re:Graphics still hamstrung? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 19:02 · Score: 0

Just to add to my above comment, aside from drivers there's no problem being as fast or slightly faster than windows 98/2k.

The most popular card is nVidia and getting accelerated nVidia support is difficult for most people. It requires recompiling the kernel and other guff.

Driver support sucks, but if you buy an ATI you're usually OK.
Re:Graphics still hamstrung? by ChaoticLimbs · 2003-01-26 13:26 · Score: 1

I have a Geforce2TI. I run accelerated with NVIDIA's mandrake 9.0 tar.gz's. no kernel recompile. It took three minutes. Plus, I get a cool splash screen with the NVIDIA logo when X starts. Did I miss some "guff"? Am I not getting the most from my configs?

Re:Shouldn't rant about things you don't understan by Malcontent · 2003-01-24 11:22 · Score: 1

So you consider calling the guy who wrote an application and gave it to you for free a "fucktard" civilized behavior?

JWZ is the fucktard here. A rude whining bastard.

--

War is necrophilia.

There's an underlying theme here with... by Dolemite_the_Wiz · 2003-01-24 11:30 · Score: 1

...this article and everyone's posted comments.

Lost of people (sometimes it's over 75%) that read posts here are dying to have Linux become more mainstream. However, when someone posts their impressions of trying to do a specific task from THEIR (not your) perspective (granted, the article was written in a non-professional manner), everyone gets their panites in a bunch.

The panty bunching is usually is followed by; a tantrum (probably from too much Mountain Dew or Coffee), posts about their technical superiority over the author of the web page, and eventually a nap (for being too crabby or sugar crashing from said Mountain Dew sugar high).

Most non-open source companies that release operating systems would call JWZ's comments 'customer usability feedback' and improve on those comments (again, the tone of AWZ's piece is anything but professional) for future releases of a given product.

Linux IMO has the worst record for standardiztion of an operating system I've ever seen.

Here's two reaons why:

1) A quote from JWZ's page:

Of course, all of the software I write runs on Linux; that's the beauty of standards, and of cross-platform code. I don't have to run your OS (he uses SGI's), and you don't have to run mine, and we can use the same applications anyway!

I think Linux is a great thing, in the big picture. It's a great hacker's tool, and it has a lot of potential to become something more. I hope that some day it will have evolved to the point where my mom can take home a Linux box, turn it on, and get on with her life without having to become a Unix sysadmin first, and without having to give up on all the ease of use she's come to expect from allegedly less powerful operating systems. (Is everyone listening here to where he's coming from?)

Because, you see, what I want to do is to commoditize the OS. I want to have access to all the applications that I need to do the things that I need to do, regardless. Why should someone have to retrain themselves to use a new application that does the same basic thing as the old application, just because something as trivial as the operating system changed out from under them?

This is totally right on.

Way back when MIT released their Kerberos package (server, client, etc) they pretty much distributed the packages as they were created to the public. At this time could you straight out and install this package on a Red Hat Server? (Please note: This is before Red Hat started including Kerberos packages in their distributions)

No, you could not.

Why not?

Because the source from MIT was written in Free BSD. To port (Read: re-engineer) the kerberos Package to Red Hat you had to 1) Be familiar with all aspects of Kerberos. 2) You needed to have a familiarity of the commands (and associated tags of said commands) in Free BSD to run the Kerberos Commands. 3) You need to have familiarity of the commands in Red Hat and all related Tags that are needed to run Kerberos. Long story short, you basically have to know Free BSD before you could port Kerberos to Red Hat. Needless to say, this is a major undertaking. Especially if you had multiple flavors of Unix in your office.

Secondly, at one of my former jobs I started a side project of seeing if I could port a web application from Solaris to Red Hat. Theoretically, it could be done but the additional programs needed to run this app on Red Hat needed to be located. I needed to find an install of Apache (no prob) with a few rarely used modules (ASP..no prob, a specific SSL module and a Java related module that solaris uses). Tracking down developers for mod's (especially the rarely used ones) or other related questions was a nightmare because they no longer worked on a given initative. On Solaris, the engineers for these mods where in house. After three days of trying, I gave up because I came to the conclustion that no one else was trying to do what I was doing and that finding experts in non-common areas was practically non-existent. Since this was a project on my own at work, I had to give it up for more pressing issues.

IMO both these examples show unecessary re-training and time spent on projects Unix users defined in the first paragraph shouldn't have to worry about.

2) Another quote from JWZ's initial article:

By the way, the suggestion to switch Linux distrubutions in order to get a single app to work might sound absurd at first. And that's because it is.

I don't know how many times I've tried to transfer a program on an older Red Hat system that runs well with no issues to a new Red Hat Server. Unfortunately, the same program can't be installed on a newer OS version of a Red Hat system because Red Hat thought it would be neat to change some of the new version of the Operating system around. Said changes would make the program, inoperable. Most companies and home users (the non-technical type) dont have the time or money to spend on working on initatives such as this. They need a solution and they need it yesterday. Users should not have to go back to a previous distribution, or re-engineer a solution because an operating system developer made system changes that adversely effect the running of a simple program.

What JWZ is stating are suggestions to make things better. Unfortunately, the initial reaction of the Unix Bigots, after reading and replying to articles like this, is to knock people down without understanding where he's coming from.

Dolemite

Note to JWZ there are Mac alternatives for Emacs it's not X but it works. I've been using the NT Emacs for a while now (5+ years). The (Unix) developer has put some serious work into this version of Emacs.

--
Save the World! Use a Quote!

I'll tell you who wanted it.... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 11:41 · Score: 0

Believe me, some of us on the WMP team fought tooth-and-nail against skinning the player and adding all that cruft. We hated it more than the users. The PMs and management overruled us, since, at the time, the Quicktime player and Winamp skins were the latest fads. Of course, the other big reason was skins allowed content providers to "customize the end user's experience" (i.e. force the player to look like the latest Britney Spears album cover when you listened to her music). Bleh. Somehow, it wasn't fucking obvious to management that users might not want their player to change skins without their intervention.

I still stick with the win2k mplayer. WMP is a freakin pig now...

Re:I'll tell you who wanted it.... by seanellis · 2003-01-24 20:06 · Score: 1

Ahh, marketing. Welcome to the Dilbert zone...

--
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.

TROLL by litewoheat · 2003-01-24 11:57 · Score: 1

Is it me or if someone ELSE posted that on Shashdot, he's but modded down as a TROLL but because its the Over-rated/hyped/worshiped JWZ it becomes a full Shashdot article...

Why does anyone care about such a whiny brat anyway?

Woo wooo! The cluetrain has arrived... by edunbar93 · 2003-01-24 12:05 · Score: 3, Interesting

"What a grumpy asshole" is the exact phrase used by everyone that recieves complaints about a product, about which they have their heads so far up their asses as to believe that it's perfect in every way.

THIS IS A CUSTOMER COMPLAINT! The louder, noisier, and more obnoxious the complaint, the more the person wants it fixed. If he wanted the product to please die quietly, he wouldn't even bother to complain. He would merely go away. He would let the product die in its own feces like he thinks it ought to. He wouldn't complain, because he doesn't want the product to improve and heave itself out of the pool of shit that it currently sleeps in.

And you know what? In order for this to happen, especially when the producers of said product honestly believe there's nothing wrong, the people making the product in question need to have their egos adjusted, probably in a brutal manner which will leave them lying on the floor in a fetal position, crying for their mommy. I have personally been through this before, so shut up, take the man's advice, and do it right. Stop fucking complaining that he's a mean old man, because believe it or not, he IS helping. He DOES give a damn. And if you're too weak minded to see this and adjust your own damn attitude, you deserve to die by choking on your own shit.

--
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert

Re:Woo wooo! The cluetrain has arrived... by Hard_Code · 2003-01-24 17:00 · Score: 1

"you deserve to die by choking on your own shit."

Glad we are keeping things civilized here ;)

--

It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Re:Woo wooo! The cluetrain has arrived... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 20:17 · Score: 0

"What a grumpy asshole" is the exact phrase used by everyone that recieves complaints about a product, about which they have their heads so far up their asses as to believe that it's perfect in every way.

I'm not sure I completely understand what this is attempting to communicate, but the MPlayer developers certainly don't think that their "product" is perfect. If they did they wouldn't still be developing it, or responding to bug reports.

THIS IS A CUSTOMER COMPLAINT! The louder, noisier, and more obnoxious the complaint, the more the person wants it fixed.
etc.

First of all, jwz is not a customer of the MPlayer developers. Secondly, I don't think your other statements are true at all. In my experience people that are loud, noisy, and obnoxious complain because they feel that it is a reasonable substitute for actually doing something useful. They also seem to derive some sort of satisfaction from demeaning others. As far as jwz is concerned, I think it is telling that a significant portion of his website is devoted to his "gruntles".

Re: at least keep your analogies straight by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 12:19 · Score: 0

A couple of years in the GNU/Linux world is easily similiar to 10 years in the Microsoft world,

Hahah. And "GNU"/Linux GUIs still don't have the integration or functionality of even Windows 98, yet by your assertion we should have a better, more usable OS than Windows XP right now. I don't think so. Not even close.

In his defense... by nemeosis · 2003-01-24 12:28 · Score: 1

In his defense.

He's not a Linux basher. Actually, if you take some time to check out his website, you'll notice that he's created and implemented a lot of (impressive?) technology for his night club.
http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/src/kiosk

He has a network of a bunch of Linux boxes, all diskless, and boots off NFS. It allows the people who visit his nightclub to check the internet, chat on AIM, IRC, ICQ, and it does it in a pretty secure manner (according to him). I read the article he published on his project, and it seems quite impressive. He might run or own the nightclub, and yet, he's got time to build together a fully Linux network that safe and secure for his visitors to use.

Reading the article, anyone who knows anything about computers and about Linux, knows that he's right. I'm a Linux/Unix advocate, but yet, I am fully aware that Linux works well, but it only works well for a set of predefined criteria. Like, its a great file server, web server, dns server, etc server. And that's basically all that I use it for, just for servers. Although I did use Linux for 2 years on my Laptop computer, since I hated Windows 98. But MS Windows finally became very stable with Windows 2000, so I switched over to that.

But in reality, Linux is Linux. Most of the software available is free and open source. There are commercial versions of software available for it. Unix sofware shops have been around for decades. You can buy these software, but most people nowadays don't believe in buying software. Who can blame them, software is so damn expensive.

Remember, there's the old saying, you get what you pay for.

You can also.. write your own software. Emacs anyone?

you know.. by boulat · 2003-01-24 12:29 · Score: 0

finally someone put the last nail in linux's coffin.
ive been having these issues for over a year now
everytime i install linux - its either 2 hours struggle (literally) with X window, or some networking issue, or USB issues, or (this is the best part) - kernel panics and segfaults.

i have a xp2200 (1.8ghz) / 1gb ddr pc2100 box, which by all means doesnt _suck_ and in no way asks to be 'slow' on a bootup, but linux slackware 8.1, gentoo, and various other flavors (fbsd 4.2, redhat 7) have a tendency of startin up sendmail, probing dhcpcd client (and getting timed out eventually) and not detecting USB

not to mention - USB _is_ a bitch on slackware - i tried changing kernels, 2.4.18, 2.4.20, 2.5.59 (!!!) - the last one (and dont get me wrong, i know how to compile kernel) - after all setups and make deps and make cleans and make installs and make bzImages and make bzlilos and cp'ing bzImage to /boot/vmlinuz and pointing at it on liloconfig - no matter what i did - on a boot up it didnt detect half the mods and then i couldnt even detect my ethernet card (by some miracle, i could do it on 2.4.18)

maybe this post is misleading or 'noobish' - call it whatever you want - but my linux experience either ended up on 'no screens found' on X start (and trust me, i added screens in XF86COnfig) to segfaults and 2 hour-long installations that ended up in undetectable devices, etc.

screw this. im installing fbsd 4.3 at the moment and it better work

Re:Jamie's writing larger reflect my Linux experie by entrigant · 2003-01-24 12:37 · Score: 1

Umm... call me simplistic but wouldn't the solution to problems using low quality apps be to um... use high quality ones?

Wanna copy a CD? OK start up k3b, click on the Tools menu, and click on Copy CD... Gee that was hard. It's not as if other platforms *cough*windows*cough* don't have their fair share of low quality apps, and it's not as if low quality apps are the only ones available for any platform.

Liunux may have it's complexities, but that is part of what makes it great. My only problem is when people turn these complexities into some sort of failing and/or overstate them (Copying a CD in Linux is not one of those complex things). I use Linux because of its complexity... if you want simple click 'n go use Windows.

I never understood part of the "communities" goal to "spread the linux gospel" to the windows based "heathens." I find Jehovas Witnesses annoying enough as it is... Linux is what it is, don't give any heed to those who think it's the second coming. It's not for everyone, and never will be.

One question by JWhitlock · 2003-01-24 12:51 · Score: 1

Who is JMZ, and why should I care what he thinks?

Followup question - if it isn't an editor's job to explain technical terms and abbeviations, and to correct mis-spellings, what is an editor's job?

F0AD:42494C4C by Yakko · 2003-01-24 13:11 · Score: 1

Perhaps it is "my own damn fault" for buying the crappy USB media reader that has buggy drivers and blue-screens XP at random. Or my fault that I keep up with the updates, yet the random disappearance of devices on USB still fails to amaze me. Or that I have to reboot my win2k box 10 times to get all the updates installed...

For the amount of hate I hold towards win32, I can say that stability is not at the top of the gripe list (it certainly was when I was dealing with win3x and win9x/ME). The 2 win32 boxes I have at home don't crash often; they're annoying in other ways. Most of my vitriol stems from having to navigate the registry to do some config tasks and (worse!) not being able to get useful diagnostics out of an errant program when I need them. Windows Update is a unique frustration, especially pre-XP.

Sure, hide the details, but at least give the user an option to show them! AAPL is just as guilty of this, tho with MacOS X, I have the possibility of tracing the damned program...

--

-- Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.

You're all scared to admit it by chegosaurus · 2003-01-24 13:14 · Score: 1

But this guy is right. All the time. In a language some of you might understand, he r0X0r5.

Bitter..... by Querty · 2003-01-24 13:18 · Score: 1

Deary me, this guy is sooooooo bitter. He sounds like the old guys in the park complaining and whining all the time. He is also wrong. Some examples:

apt4rpm is to RPM's what apt is to DEB's. There are no competing systems. Do your research.
If you think RedHat 8 sucks, go have a beer with Mosfet, I bet you'd get along like a house on fire. Don't use it as an excuse to diss GStreamer.
Oh, by the way, GStreamer is coming along great.
From the homepage of Xine: if you want a native Gnome2 media player, use totem. I use and love that player.
Being able to change the aspect ratio is obviously something I never wanted on an anamorphic display
Calling people "fuctards" and "Fucking Morons" is a great way to make your point
Ogle plays DVD's. You are complaining it plays DVD's fairly well. Exactly what part of that do you not understand? No, it doesn't do the dishes

Oh, and you know why video on Linux is hard? Talk to Jon Lech Johansen about it, if he doesn't get sent to jail for the rest of his life.

Ok, that's about the content of the main article. Time for some cheap shots:

Mozilla started to become usable around the time you left. Go figure. Judging by your negativity, I'm starting to understand why.
Gee I want to use a Mac. Gee, there's no Emacs. Gee there is Emacs if I install X. Gee I have an dogmatic hatred of X. Gee I guess I can't switch to Mac. You sound like one of those, "I'd like switch to Linux, but there is no Word for Linux so I can't switch". Pffffff, boring....

Man, stop whining and get a life......

You're missing the point. by edunbar93 · 2003-01-24 13:26 · Score: 2, Insightful

mplayer -- doesn't like the UI

No, he says the UI is completely inconsistent with, well, everything else. This goes against everything he knows about creating user interfaces. And he knows a couple things about that.

gstreamer -- doesn't want to install the required libs

You know what? *I* don't want to install the required libs. For anything. Usually because there's a litany of them for a fairly large number of programs. "Oh, there. I've got dependency A fulfilled. Now it should compile. Oops. No, it needs dependency B too. Oh damn. Dependency B also requires packages X, Y, and Z. And then there's dependency C, which wasn't actually mentioned in any documentation." For this reason I use FreeBSD, which at the very least, will automatically install any depenency needed. And if it starts installing X windows or some other huge bit of stupidity, I can cancel the install.

Apparently, I'm not alone in not wanting to bother with this because that's why the ports collection was created oh, 10 years ago.

xine -- doesn't know how to use a file browser (or pass args on the CL)

Correction: "doesn't know how to use a completely brain damaged, non-intuitive file browser for which there aren't any docs, and gave up in frustration."

Note: JWZ knows how to make a user interface, which might explain why he's so frustrated by people who can't.

ogle -- doesn't do what he wants, even though it makes no claims that it does

Well, you're right. But perhaps he's desperate.

--
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert

Re:You're missing the point. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 17:38 · Score: 0

No, he says the UI is completely inconsistent with, well, everything else. This goes against everything he knows about creating user interfaces. And he knows a couple things about that.

Have you ever actually used XEmacs?

Were you even around for all of the builds for Unix Netscape?

If jwz knows anything about UI design, he's sure never demonstrated it in any of his steaming piles of shit.
Re:You're missing the point. by edunbar93 · 2003-01-25 07:04 · Score: 1

Have you ever actually used XEmacs?

Well, no. I'm one of those sick bastards that knows and uses various versions of vi. And while it's user interface isn't the greatest in the world, it's at least consistent with other things in the unix world, like regular expressions.

Were you even around for all of the builds for Unix Netscape?

Yes, actually. I remember using an early, early version of Netscape (probably 1.0 or 1.1 or therabouts) on a unix box years ago. And I've even used it on my own boxen throughout the years. I'd admit that it had its quirks and irritations, but otherwise it was an okay interface, and not completely unusable. It's worth noting though that nowhere were there completely non-intuitive buttons, or stupidly shaped windows with no title bars, and most of all, you had no trouble at all bringing windows to the top.

I'm not saying JWZ is a guru on GUI design or anything, and I'm willing to bet (just judging by his frustration) that he know's he's not a guru on GUI design, and thus knowing that he doesn't know a lot, when he finds people that know less than he does he gets pretty annoyed with their lack of knowledge. One of the few great things about windows is its (almost, with the exception of stupid, skinnable interfaces like winamp) total consistency of interface. Once you learn to use one program, you've pretty much set to use any other program. It makes learning how to use new programs easier. Perhaps all JWZ knows about making GUIs he learned by copying other programs, but you know, that's NOT a bad thing.

--
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert

Is the interface what the Xine project is about? by Chuck+Chunder · 2003-01-24 14:27 · Score: 1

It seems to me that the important part of the Xine project is it's ability to play video and the fact that you can put whatever interface you want on the front of it. The Xine project has a GTK front end of their own (which I've not seen). And then there's KXine for KDE and Totem for GNOME2 both of which have (or appear to have in the case of KXine which I have not used) an extremely sane user interface.

Just because the core Xine team might not be particularly interested in building such an interface themselves doesn't make them "fucktards". It just means they work on what interests them and are happy to leave it to others to fill in the gaps.

--
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park

He _has_ the source... geesh. by jelle · 2003-01-24 14:56 · Score: 1

He _has_ the source... So why is he spending so much time making websites, instead of fixing the features he's complaining about?

I guess the best programmers "program" html...

--
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.

it's "apt" to be easier by zogger · 2003-01-24 15:23 · Score: 1

--I'm a linux noob, but have found apt not that hard to get going on redhat using rpm's and it's great! Put enough repositories in your list and just go for it. I use synaptic for the gui front end part, really, you can update release versions all at once or in stages like I am doing right this second on a slow dialup, and you can find and get applications that aren't installed already. What's not to like?

As to dvds, no idea, don't own one and near as I can see there's no agreed on standard for them so as far as I am concerned I will "struggle" with cds until that changes. The mplayer I have has played everything I've thrown at it so far, again, all the packages and dependecies found and installed using apt. I entered linux knowing in advance that doing things might be difficult at times, and also knowing maybe apps weren't as polished, but the tradeoffs of customizability and the sheer volume of available 'stuff' and the enthusiasm of open source makes it pleasant. Sure, if I had the spare loot for a 3 grand titanium powerbook maxed out running jaguar, ya, no probs, but that's a lot of "spare" loot I don't have. And as soon as there is a check-off list micropayments service for open source developers I'll contribute more cash to help them with their volunteer efforts. The complaints of this or that app not being flawless have some merit, but really, the rent and beer got to be paid as well. If there's a service made some time where I can send in a 20 and check the apps I want to see be worked on more and that money gets proportionally divvied up to those people it would be a "good thing" and maybe help with all these projects. There's a lot of us non-coders out here who still like to help, it's just hard when you want to help 1000 different projects and you are a "dozenaire". Maybe if this jamie guy spent some time actually helping the mplayer folks somehow? I am ass-uming he's a coder, yes/no? Maybe if the xmms and mplayer guys joined forces to make an integrated product?

Grumpy and right... by thebigmacd · 2003-01-24 15:38 · Score: 1

...just like Simon Cowell! :)

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2003-01-24 15:58 · Score: 1

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re: X still sucks!! by BHearsum · 2003-01-24 15:58 · Score: 1

Well, I have no more moderator points left, but this one would definently be rated 'Troll'.

More media players by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 16:09 · Score: 0

http://www.linuxorbit.com/modules.php?op=modload&n ame=Reviews&file=index&req=showcontent&id= 27

Shows several video players that use a standard interface some of them use the same backend as Xine.

The only problem is the availability of packages for JVW's system.... Hopefully these will come bundled with future versions of your linux distro.

Personally I quite like themes... But I am a visual type guy who is not analy retentive about having matching things... Different colour socks -- who cares... Having differences is stimulating.

Anyways I set up DVD playback a couple of nights ago and it took me about 15 minutes to figure out
how the UI works and about 15 to get the libraries installed to watch "The Fellowship of the Ring"... I found the cloudy theme a bit easier on the eye and much easier to read.

JWZ has lots of errors by 0x0d0a · 2003-01-24 17:12 · Score: 2, Interesting

No, he made a lot of errors.

I'm not saying that the state of video on Linux is perfect (ease of use ain't what it is on Windows), but it's a hell of a lot better than he makes out. Let's break it down:

I finally found RPMs of mplayer that would consent to install themselves on a Red Hat 7.2 machine, and actually got it to play some videos. Amazing.

Yup. The mplayer guys also complain about binary distribution, because mplayer really isn't meant to be distributed in binary form. There's a reason.

But it's a total pain in the ass to use due to rampant "themeing." Why do people do this? They map this stupid shaped window with no titlebar (oh, sorry, your choice of a dozen stupidly-shaped windows without titlebars) all of which use fonts that are way too small to read. But, here's the best part, there's no way to raise the window to the top. So if another window ever gets on top of it, well, sorry, you're out of luck. And half of the themes always map the window at the very bottom of the screen -- conveniently under my panel where I can't reach it.

Yup. *Exactly* like most Windows media players. I don't like it either. Which is why I use the non-GUI mplayer (granted, then you don't get a draggable progress bar).

It moves the mouse to the upper left corner of every dialog box it creates! Which is great, because that means that when it gets into this cute little state of popping up a blank dialog that says "Error" five times a second, you can't even move the mouse over to another window to kill the program, you have to log in from another machine.

This is new to me. I've never seen a program do this.

Fucking morons.

Yeah...I was thinking the same thing about JWZ.

So I gave up on that, and tried to install gstreamer. Get this. Their propose ``solution'' for distributing binaries on Red Hat systems? They point you at an RPM that installs apt, the Debian package system!

No. apt is just an auto-downloading front end. It works with both dpkg (the Debian packaging system, which is *NOT* apt) and RPM. It also makes Red Hat about ten thousand times more palatable, because up2date (Red Hat's own equivalent of apt) sucks very very very much.

Well, I found some RPMs for Red Hat 7.2, but apparently they expect you to have already rectally inserted Gnome2 on that 7.2 system first. Uh, no.

You *couldn't* manage to compile it yourself? Have you ever heard of checkinstall?

I've seen the horror of Red Hat 8.0, and there's no fucking way I'm putting Gnome2 on any more of my machines for at least another six months, maybe a year.

I think that you're being a bit silly -- lots of people are very happy with RH 8, but whatever floats your boat.

Ok, no gstreamer. Let's try Xine. I found RPMs, and it sucks about the same as mplayer, and in about the same ways, though slightly less bad: it doesn't screw the aspect ratio when you resize the window; and at least its stupidly-shaped window is always forced to be on top. I don't like that either, but it's better than never being on top. It took me ten minutes to figure out where the "Open File" dialog was. It's on the button labeled "://" whose tooltip says "MRL Browser". Then you get to select file names from an oh-so-cute window that I guess is supposed to look like a tty, or maybe an LCD screen. It conveniently centers the file names in the list, and truncates them at about 30 characters. The scrollbar is also composed of "characters": it's an underscore.

Again -- I don't like themed, pixmapped crap interfaces either, but the Windows world is exactly the same. For some reason, people designing media players have it stuck in their heads that anyone who wants to watch a movie wants a non-standard, hard-to-use pixmapped interface.

Oh, and even though I have libdvdcss installed (as evidenced by the fact that Ogle actually works) Xine won't play the same disc that Ogle will play. It seems to be claiming that the CSS stuff isn't installed, which it clearly is.

What the hell do your expect? You grab a bunch of random RPMs (not from Red Hat) which you didn't compile yourself (and ignored the fact that there are *two* DVD CSS libraries) and now you're bitching that things don't work. Either get it from RH (or FreshRPMs) or compile it yourself, laddie buck.

--
May we never see th

Re:JWZ has lots of errors by Rysc · 2003-01-24 18:55 · Score: 1

"For some reason, people designing media players have it stuck in their heads that anyone who wants to watch a movie wants a non-standard, hard-to-use pixmapped interface."

Quicktime started it.

"Hey, we're Apple, the hip design company! We make software easy, consistant and fun! We spent millions designing in terface guidelines which I fanatically insist everyone follow... AND THEN WE BREAK THEM ALL! VIVA LA TITANIUM!"

--
I want my Cowboyneal

Now there ARE mplayer rpms... by r6144 · 2003-01-24 17:24 · Score: 1

See mplayer download page. (Binaries were not available several months ago because of licensing problems. Fixed now.)

I'm using them quite happily. Except that it doesn't support aalib or other toyish things, the rpm version works well and doesn't feel slow.

Go FreeBSD! by No-op · 2003-01-24 17:40 · Score: 1

For this reason I use FreeBSD, which at the very least, will automatically install any depenency needed. And if it starts installing X windows or some other huge bit of stupidity, I can cancel the install.

Apparently, I'm not alone in not wanting to bother with this because that's why the ports collection was created oh, 10 years ago.

HEAR HEAR!

a voice of reason amidst the darkness... thanks!

--
EOM

When the Simpsons stopped being funny by 0x0d0a · 2003-01-24 17:43 · Score: 1

The Simpsons was funny in the pre-Homer-absolute-idiot era. Incredibly funny. Now it's pretty bad, and the only reason it's still on is because of the niche that it carved for itself back in the day.

--
May we never see th

Absolutely by 0x0d0a · 2003-01-24 17:52 · Score: 1

Dead-on accurate. This is *precisely* what I was thinking when I saw his criticism.

Why the *hell* are almost all (and all mainstream) video and audio players on all platforms always bitmapped and nonstandard in UI? It doesn't add a damn thing, and it's annoying as hell.

--
May we never see th

What is Quality? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 18:08 · Score: 0

I've been reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanence, and I have some interesting questions for all Linux coders / users...

Quality is a way we define how we like things. If mplayer requires command lines, but Windows Media Player works with a double click, some people would say that, mplayer is a poor quality product. Others would protest that the command prompt allows for more granularity, hence higher quality. I think that we have separated the technical and the aesthetic and both have their strengths. What we need to do as FREE (eg Linux) people is realize that we have the ability to decide that QUALITY is the key, and the technical and aesthetic are just two categories of what we have been conditioned to see exclusively.

When the Notre Dam was built, the technical and the aesthetic were merged from the onset. When you enter the Cathedral of the Rational (ie: any financial sky scraper tower eg Enron), you have a technically sound foundation, with an "aesthetic" veneer covering the base. We could see the fraud that it represents, if we choose. I knock on the "marble" pilars of my gleaming bank, and it's more hollow than its corporate philosophy. And its obvious to anyone who cares to check.

Modern Technology seems to have mastered this split between the aesthetic and the technical. You either have too little choice, or too much aesthtic. The split is very defined, nonetheless.

We still can differentiate between what we know as Quality, and what we know as technical or aesthetic. The Quality is foremost. Once we accept that Quality rules, perhaps we can destroy this split. We can teach the artist how to add, and the coder how to imagine. Then, Linux can be humane. After all, it is an extension of us.

Very Similar Experience by tealwarrior · 2003-01-24 18:50 · Score: 1

This review represents my experience well as I have been trying to get my rh8 box to play video this last week. I wanted to watch mp2 tv shows on my linux box that were taped on a windows box so I don't mess up the taping by watching. I ended up starting with xine since it was listed first on my google search and was already installed.

I ran into the same interface issues, like how do you open files from the gui (:// MRLBrowser), and once I figured it out, the interface was so annoying that I soon abandoned it guessing correctly that I can send them in as command line parameters. So off we go and the video is playing but the sound is all choppy.

Feeling success is near as we have playing video I boldly maximize the window to full screen. Fuck, how to I get back! I go for the escape key which just screams out as a solution to "I'm trapped in full screen mode, what should I do?" ESCAPE!!! escape does nothing; Ctrl-C does nothing; I hit other random keys; nothing. I am forced to Ctrl-Alt-Backspace which at least means I don't have to reboot. Note to self, do not maximize the application until we learn the hot keys which I'll have to look up later as they aren't on the non-existant menus.

Hunt the web for choppy audio xine, etc, try changing the audio channel, again this is difficult at best to decern how to do this from the gui as it might as well be a volume control in xine. Don't tell me either that they already have another volume control since there are two mute buttons prominantly displayed so two volume controls is completly reasonable. Alas this doesn't fix the sound problem.

Abandon xine, look for mplayer rpms (no, I don't compile apps myself), don't find them on the mplayer site. This is usually a sign of a still-in -early-developement app, try ogle.

Now, so many people are quick to point out that ogle doesn't claim to play anything but dvds, but it does play them on my machine, and so well, no choppy sound or video. These are mp2 files, very similar?, yes, but alas no.

Back to xine and a new version which claims to fix some sound bug. freshrpms.net is my friend. oh look mplayer rpms (maybe later) as all we need is sound from xine and this looks promising. Get the new version of xine, install half a dozen other packages including glut which isn't even on freshrpms but we find on rpmfind. Now rpm tells me what I need, in a way that is actually useful. It does not list a specific function that it can't find and leaving me to discern what package that might be in as I suspect gcc might. I'm only guessing from other compiling experiences, but they have not led me to believe that compling apps I'm not working on will not be anything but a big time sink

We're all installed; the video is playing; the sound is good, once I change the audio chanell as suggested before. I'm feeling brave again and want to see if I can play these files over the samba mount to the windows machine, where they get recorded. In theory I can copy them much faster than they play; maybe it'll work? No. What if I start the copy, and play while in progress? No. xine crashes spectactuarly for both and now won't play anything; not even local files that it played before. I delete it's config and it fuctions once again.

Conclusion: JWZ's experience is the norm for most users except that most give up long before we did. I can't recommend linux to anyone who has expectations of functionality similar to windows and doesn't have a ton of time or experience, and probably both. While it has gotten much better, we still have a long way to go before the above is not the typical app install experience.

--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, in practice there is.

Good job!!! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 19:02 · Score: 0

Nice to see someone cares. I sometimes go there and want to make a difference but then get caught on something different, move on, and forget....

Re:This review sucks. by gli · 2003-01-24 19:37 · Score: 1

Crap is still crap, regardless it's free or not. Quality and freeness are totally different issues. But I don't think you'll understand that.

Re:Uselessness. Amen brutha. by JW+Troll · 2003-01-24 19:47 · Score: 0, Troll

I'm still waiting to see these Open Sores "gurus" photoshop a picture with the precious CLI. Really. I've heard how wonderful CLI media players are, and how efficient the CLI is for everything but now I want to see just how special the CLI is for myself.

For that matter, I'd also like to know how to play my DivX movies within KDE or GNOME at full framerate (and colour depth) using any media player.. something seemingly impossible under Red Hat 7.2, Mandrake 9 or Lycoris.
Strangely enough Windows 2000 has no problem performing as I require. Of course, everything else under Win2K is so much faster I'd be amazed if Linux could do video better.

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just like the humble blood clot... turboporsche@telus.net

Some people... by soccerisgod · 2003-01-24 19:56 · Score: 1

...should just use Windows and stfu.

Yes, not all is perfect in the Linux world. But this rant is so far from being anywhere close to objectivity it hurts. I personally think Arpad Gereoffy did a great job with mplayer. So the gui sucks? DOH...Isn't it more important that it works, and works almost better than ANY other player for ANY other OS? I don't know any other player that can play so many formats - .avi, .mpg, .mov, .asf, .wmv, .rm, you name it, mplayer plays it!

I really think that, if some people can't appreciate a good program, maybe they just should go back to using windows and complain about that :

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If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?

Re:Shouldn't rant about things you don't understan by david@ecsd.com · 2003-01-24 19:57 · Score: 1

I can't understand why you would complain about installing dependencies for a product that is still in development. How is software supposed to advance if we're always using v1 of libraries instead of v2?

Well considering how Gnome2 is a complete UI mess and isn't an improvement on version 1, I could see that part of his argument.

Re:This review sucks. by Malcontent · 2003-01-24 20:07 · Score: 1

Nobody make you download and install it. But somebody wrote a program and gave it away for free. Somebody else provided you with a free server where you can download and install it. Instead of saying thanks you choose to shit on them. Nice.

I'll never understand why you choose to shit on people who are working to make a difference in this world. People who volunteer their time and money to provide you with free software. It's true I'll never understand ungrateful fucktards.

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War is necrophilia.

Moderators Go Wild! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-24 20:18 · Score: 0

The parent post doesn't approach being coherent and it makes +5? Listen putz, all interfaces have a 'skin', even if it's the non-changable default. How the hell can every XMMS skin - two sliders, a few transport buttons, an info window - be 'unusable'? These are the same basic components of every Windows media player and most hardware devices.
You deserve a Mac.

Re:Moderators Go Wild! by Avumede · 2003-01-25 03:37 · Score: 1

If you bothered to read my post, I explained why all the XMMS skins are unusable (and said the same criticisms apply to WinAmp). Learn to read.

The cluetrain had an accident! by FooBarWidget · 2003-01-24 20:58 · Score: 1

"THIS IS A CUSTOMER COMPLAINT!"

THIS IS NOT A CUSTOMER COMPLAINT! The MPlayer/Xine/Ogle/Gstreamer developers are all volunteers! NOBODY is their customer! They are doing this for free, in the hope that you may find it useful. If they're companies, then things would have been different. But they're not, they are volunteers. What they give you is a *gift*, nothing more, nothing less. If you don't like it, then don't use it. But stamping it in the ground and calling people names using "fucking" and "retards" and "morons" is completely unresponsible and immature behavior.
I repeat: those developers are VOLUNTEERS, not commercial developers!

Another point: all you people seem to like to blame all this on "open source developers". This isn't an "open source" problem, is is a "volunteer developers" "problem". Let's face it, if you tried out a freeware player for Windows, you don't like it and stamp it in the ground, insulting the developers, how do you think they (the freeware Windows developers) will respond?

"the people making the product in question need to have their egos adjusted"

Ego? JWZ's the one who needs an ego adjustment! He thinks he oh so mighty so he decides to flame and insult the developers. Sorry, but anything that contains tons of flames and insults can't possibly be "helpful".
If you wrote a freeware media player for Windows, JWZ tries it and think it sucks, and actively flames you down and insults you, would you consider that helpful? I highly doubt it.

Open source is not magic. These players are made by *volunteers*. Just because they're open source doesn't change that fact. Flaming and insulting volunteers' work is NOT helpful.

A truly brutal review. by pair-a-noyd · 2003-01-24 21:28 · Score: 1

But, who is this dude anyway?
I use Mplayer and it plays everything I throw at it and it's great. It does NOT change the aspect ratio when resizing the window.
BUT, it will not allow me to change the playback size, in other words I can't zoom it to 2x or 3x or whatever to fill my screen, I have to start it up then hit control-alt-minus to get it to use all of my display.
I did not compile it with the GUI option.

Mplayer looks so good on my PC that I prefer to watch movies on it than on my 27" TV in the living room.
I don't have a DVD player in my PC so watching Divx rips is my only option.
The other players he reviewed DO suck though, just like he says.

P4-2ghz, 512ram, 140gigs, TNT2, MDK 9.0, kernel 2.4.20-2, KDE 3.0.5a
Registered Linux user number 302172
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http://www.embarrassing.net/images/mspaper.jpg
http://www.embarrassing.net/images/relieve.jpg

head-to-head with WinXP and OS X. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-25 01:48 · Score: 0

I only boot my TiBook into OS X now when I want to watch a DVD -- and I'm not even sure I'll have to do that once XFree-4.3 get here (can't recall off hand what the trouble was with hardware YUV...) I just don't find OS X to be as "intuitive" and "usable" as every one claims it to be. There are quite a few Mac-isms to the system that baffled this newcomer (like being unable to burn ISO9660 cds without tracking down hdiutil -- how "friendly"). I don't think Finder is as usefull as Nautilus. I don't think Aqua is better looking than GTK. I can't for the life of me figure out how Apple made Jaguar perform like X on the framebuffer but they did. The Linux desktop is coming along just fine.

Perhaps you're thick by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-25 04:16 · Score: 0

If you have to look up the manual to do basic operations of the application (in this case, play, rewind, fforward, fullscreen), then I would say there are some serious issues with the usability of the application.

If you can't remember how to use arrow keys, that bloody great space bar and f for fullscreen, then you probably can't even spell mplayer.

Don't switch to a Mac for video... by DingoBueno · 2003-01-25 04:47 · Score: 1

The part that strikes me as particularly funny is the amount of work I had to go through just to play video on my brand new PowerBook. After several days of effort I settled on none other than.. wait for it... MPlayer.

And the best part about it is the GUI. It's a box with play, pause, stop, ff, rw, and fullscreen. Wish I could have that on linux without writing it myself.

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ascii art

Linux subtitling by David+Jao · 2003-01-25 06:44 · Score: 1

Are there really any tolerable programs for Linux that'd do wav-based subtitling?

Since you asked...

My subtitling guide describes how I (used to) subtitle in linux and my timing guide describes how I do wav timing.

Both of these documents are unfortunately old, and I have not had the time to update them to reflect recent improvements. For the subtitling engine I have switched to using transcode instead of mplayer, because transcode has all the features I described in the previous post, including inverse pulldown which is very important for anime! (Probably not important for finnish TV, since pulldown is an NTSC-only abomination.)

For wav timing, I still use the same basic input setup as described on my timing page, but I have written a graphical interface which allows somewhat sane editing of the script without *having* to know SQL. A preliminary version can be seen in this screenshot. I plan to release this software as well, probably at the same time I update the guide.

At the present time my Ph.D thesis takes priority, so expect to wait a few months before I get back into fansubbing mode.

Re:Linux subtitling by WWWWolf · 2003-01-25 09:06 · Score: 1

My subtitling guide describes how I (used to) subtitle in linux and my timing guide describes how I do wav timing.

Thanks for the tips! That didn't look that hard, actually, but not as easy as SSA. (Then again, the version of SSA I have here has one annoying limitation - only able to operate on 8 bit wavs. Then again, Finnish speech is legible even at 8 bits =) The idea to use RDBMS for script storage is pretty neat, too. I just hatched an evil plan for a standalone GTK+ app that would do the same without direct SQL hackery or a web interface.
Probably not important for finnish TV, since pulldown is an NTSC-only abomination.

Abomination, well, you got that right. I've read a few papers about it and I still don't get it (something about removing and duplicating frames when someone sneezes towards the television or something), but fortunately I don't need to, because PAL is our pal. =)
Re:Linux subtitling by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-25 19:14 · Score: 0

3:2 pulldown in 30 seconds: you have 24 frames/s film, you need 60 fields/s (interlaced half-frames) to broadcast, or ten fields from four frames. Each frame is copied into either two or three fields (the number alternates for smoothest possible results).
Sometimes top and bottom fields come from different film frames, so anything moving quickly horizontally was in a different place on alternating scanlines--that's "combing", so good NTSC TVs need "comb filters" to reduce the effect.
DVD frames have bits saying whether they're "progressive" (not interlaced--every scanline represents the same moment) and whether either the top or bottom field should be repeated when interlacing (so three-field frames are only stored once). Some movies aren't encoded correctly, so good progressive DVD players have to deduce the original film or video cadence by looking for combing.

Re:This review sucks. by gli · 2003-01-25 06:46 · Score: 1

As I said you don't understand. People talk negatively about some [free] software because the software has serious flaws. JWZ may have said it in a bad manner but he's telling a lot of truth. If the software works flawlessly nobody would sh!t on it. And it's funny that in this case a lot of people regards JWZ as a total asshole while at the sametime sh!tting about Emacs being complete crap and RMS being an idiot. Shouldn't those people shut up and do it themselves if they don't like Emacs?

Here is better round-up by juhtolv · 2003-01-25 06:50 · Score: 1

Never mind JWZ. Here is better article about video players of Linux:

GNU/Linux Media Player Roundup
.

Here is my E-Mail I wrote to JWZ:

WWW-diary of Juhapekka Tolvanen: Saturday, 25 January 2003

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Juhapekka "naula" Tolvanen - http://iki.fi/juhtolv

MOD PARENT UP by unborn · 2003-01-25 06:52 · Score: 1

This is the best response given here.

JWZ is a dog who turned into a flea.

Recipe for a decent GUI for MPlayer by Trolling4Dollars · 2003-01-25 07:13 · Score: 1

Damn Kxine is butt ugly. But, I can see how it's more usable for noobs. What's always puzzled me is why more people don't take a hint from Windows and use the F1 key to provide help for an application. Yes, there are some who do, most notably on the KDE side of things. But, Here is what I think would make a decent GUI for MPlayer:

1. When you click on the icon to launch it, all you get is a file dialog box and a URL field in case you want to use a stream.
2. Once the file or stream is opened, it prompts you for Fullscreen or windowed mode.
3. In full screen mode a brief message saying "Press F1 to see a keyboard map of the keys that control playback" appears and fades out after 2 seconds, then the media plays.
4. In windowed mode, you have controls for the media that only appear when you are in the display window itself. They overlap the video or the visualization with semi-transparent controls for:
-stop
-pause
-ff
-rw
-next track
-prev track
-half size
-double size
-full screen
-open new file/stream
-playlist

An that's it. Clean, simple and usable by anyone. The KB should never be forgotten when it can work much better than the GUI for media player functions. I absolutely love MPlayer's ability to scroll through a video in 1 minute and ten minute increments. Along with a progress bar onscreen no less. Much better than a stupdi scroll bar like Windows Media Player, Real, Quicktime, etc...

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Un-news

Re:Shouldn't rant about things you don't understan by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-25 10:27 · Score: 0

"Why do people get off on putting other people's work down? Just because you made a quick buck in an IPO doesn't give you the right to rant about whatever you want and expect people to bow down. Why not write up a bug report or a quick suggestion? Isn't that what we do if something bugs us? That's the beauty of having each access to the application developers! Your riches don't elevate you above the rest of us, my friend."

You're retarded. I'm not rich, and I still complain and bitch about shitty interfaces. And I damn well have every right to. And if a bunch of dickhead dorks find a rant of mine on my own personal web page and go posting it on their flamewar site, that's their own fucking problem, with no relation at all to my money or "right to rant". wtf? "right to rant"? Like people need permission from some slashdot geek to rant? Your post started out ok, but turned quickly into space-pirate feces.

Re:This review sucks. by Malcontent · 2003-01-25 11:09 · Score: 1

"As I said you don't understand"

I said that I don't understand why you shit on open source developers who work for you for free.

"People talk negatively about some [free] software because the software has serious flaws."

Yes and that's what will destroy open source. Only 1% of the people do any real work or pay a few bucks for their gratitute. OTOH the other 99% (like you) feels that it's prefectly appropriate to shit on those 1% of the people calling them fucktards and communists and calling their software shit. As time goes on you and the rest of the ungrateful 99% will keep shouting louder and louder and the 1% will lose even the occational "attaboy" they get now to continue to code. Eventually they will stop coding because nobody wants to work for free for ungrateful shitheads like you.

You, JWZ and the rest of the ungrateful rude and uncivilized bastards will kill open source.

"Shouldn't those people shut up and do it themselves if they don't like Emacs?"

Absolutely they should. I don't like Emacs so I don't use it. You'll neve catch me badmouthing emacs. RMS has done nothing to me or my family that would cause me to critize him. Why would I badmouth somebody who has done nothing wrong to me? Why would you? Why would anybody?

Look at what Slava did with Jedit. I don't know if he wrote Jedit because he didn't like Emacs but today Jedit rivals any editor on the planet including Emacs. I have never heard Slava say anything bad about anybody who worked on Emacs or VI or anything else. He rolled up his sleeves and wrote an awsome editor and other people helped. That's the way open source works. And you know what I have heard people shit on Salava and Jedit. There is no shortage of assholes and I hope to god Slava does not stop because of the assholes.

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War is necrophilia.

Real state of Emacs on OS X by SuperKendall · 2003-01-25 19:40 · Score: 1

Is there anyone here that really uses a rootless X server and Xemacs for work every day? I tried that solution myself (desperate for a real integrated native Emacs that windowed well), and there were enough annoying problems that I abandoned that approach really quickly... come to think of it, I think the Aqua port of XEmacs and XEmacs running under a rootless X-Server shared the same problem with shell stuff invoked from within emacs dropping results (like 'M-x grep a *' in a large directory full of text returning three results).

Anyway, I did want to mention for those scared off that GNU Emacs now compiles well under OS X, I've been using that and it is very stable. The only issue is that cut and/or paste does not work from/to Emacs and other OS X apps (I forget the direction that's broken).

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"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley

Native Mozillas by Sits · 2003-01-25 22:44 · Score: 1

I believe there are efforts for "native" parts of Mozilla's browser on several platforms. Windows has K-Meleon, Linux has Galeon (GNOME) and Skipstone (GTK) and MacOS X has Chimera.

Just use FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-26 10:47 · Score: 0

no video or multimedia problems at all!!

ermm ...

no video or multimedia == no problems at all!!

More about JWZ than anything else by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-26 10:59 · Score: 0

Is JWZ right or wrong? Neither. J's rant is just that. It reveals more about the kind of computer user J's is. J doesn't tell us anything that we don't already know. MPlayer sucks -- for some people. For other people it rocks.

Ridiculous by bonch · 2003-01-26 16:47 · Score: 1

You're right--nobody should ever criticize anything. We should halt all critical progress because the ego-strokers can't bear to have the truth of their lazy interfaces and bad coding pointed out.

This is why Linux is still where it's at on the meter of progress. The strange mindset that because somebody put a lot of work into something and decided to give it away, nobody can point out its flaws and decide not to use it because of those flaws. Sorry, but people will criticize things even more if Linux gains more ground, so you'd better get a grip and learn to deal with it.

Re:Ridiculous by Gordonjcp · 2003-01-27 01:02 · Score: 1

There'as a difference between pointing out the flaws in something, and just simply bitching about it. JWZ is more than capable of making helpful comments and suggesting modifications to the programs he tried, but chose instead to whine about the problems.
If the aspect ratio changing on resize bothered me enough, I'd modify mplayer myself. It doesn't though.

ICCCM is a nightmare for users by SimHacker · 2003-01-27 02:22 · Score: 1

The fact that ICCCM is a total nightmare negatively effects the quality of life of all X-Windows users, not just developers. Aren't you aware that the Linux desktop user interface experience is absolutely horrible, or have you poked your eyes out with hot pokers to keep from seeing that? Didn't you ever wonder why all X11 window managers and toolkits and applications suck? When you build bookshelves out of mashed potatoes, the ants will come. If you've brainwashed yourself to believe X-Windows doesn't suck, you might as well be enjoying Microsoft Windows 3.1 -- you're self delusional enough to fool yourself into anything!

-Don

--
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com

HUGE difference between work and people by gosand · 2003-01-27 04:00 · Score: 1

1) People don't get off doing that. They're actually saying something about what they don't like. Progress, as you should remember, is not about sitting silently and taking whatever is handed to you. Progress is made by telling someone what's wrong with what they've done. So what if his tone is nasty? His words are what's important, and his words equate to: "Why is this so hard. Make it consistant, make it easy."

Sorry, but there is a HUGE difference between saying "the interface sucks" and "the person who coded this was an idiot". You want to complain about mplayer, fine. You want to say it is the shittiest program you have ever used, fine. You want to say that whoever coded it is a fucktard - not cool.

The program is a thing, the coder is a person. Don't attack the person, attack the code if you don't like it. Maybe there are 50 reasons why it is the way it is. Maybe it is extremely powerful and customizable, but not very user friendly. So the coder had priorities about what is really important. Who knows?

I think it is fine to say a program sucks, but you should never blast the person(s) behind the program. For this reason alone, I don't feel sorry for jwz at all. I wouldn't listen to him either.

--

My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.

Re:HUGE difference between work and people by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-28 15:54 · Score: 0

Grow a fucking backbone, you weeny. This is the interweb.
Re:HUGE difference between work and people by gosand · 2003-01-29 02:44 · Score: 1

Grow a fucking backbone, you weeny.
Said the anonymous coward.

--

My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Re:HUGE difference between work and people by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-30 14:44 · Score: 0

Your point?

JWZ by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-27 04:41 · Score: 0

One of the implementors of the original Netscape/Unix; he ran mozilla.org for a while; coded XEmacs (and ran into RMS on the way), xscreensaver, etc.

863 comments