JWZ Reviews Video on Linux

An anonymous reader writes "The inimitable JWZ goes once again forth and reviews the state of video on Linux. Expect no mercy."

Comments

Expect No Mercy

[Samus]

For his server?

Re:Expect No Mercy

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

What a grumpy asshole

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[sfe_software]

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.

Re:What a grumpy asshole

[Chazmyrr]

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

[Archie Steel]

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...

Re:What a grumpy asshole

[mixmasta]

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

Re:What a grumpy asshole

[jackbox]

"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.

I like this guy, but...

[mrseigen]

...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...

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

[DrMaurer]

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.

Re:I like this guy, but...

[Dave_bsr]

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.

Re:I like this guy, but...

[LMCBoy]

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.

Re:I like this guy, but...

[MrResistor]

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.

Re:I like this guy, but...

[iebgener]

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...

[njdj]

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...

[seanellis]

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.

Re:I like this guy, but...

[dusty123]

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!

How about what's wrong with JWZ?

[ejaytee]

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?

[Raul Acevedo]

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.

Re:This guy is way off base

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

OS X + Fink = bliss

[IvyMike]

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

[IamTheRealMike]

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

[IvyMike]

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.

JWZ should STFU

[Enahs]

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.

Huzzah!

[wowbagger]

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!

Re:Huzzah!

[athakur999]

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...

Re:Huzzah!

[Tackhead]

> 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!"

You get what you pay for.

[dannycim]

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:This guy is way off base

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

This review sucks..

[Maeryk]

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

Re:This review sucks..

[Tackhead]

> 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..

[blakestah]

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.

Shouldn't rant about things you don't understand

[Rayban]

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.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Who is JWZ

[Anonymous Coward]

JWZ is largely responsible for the existance of XEmacs and Mozilla.

Re:mplayer aspect ratio

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

It's a mindset. (Stating the obvious).

[Bollie]

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).

[CSG_SurferDude]

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!"?

Re:It's a mindset. (Stating the obvious).

[PetiePooo]

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...

EMacs...

[dark-br]

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

I fully concur

[GMFTatsujin]

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

[mccalli]

[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

[Qzukk]

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.

This also applies to XMMS

[Avumede]

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.

He 110% rigth !

[denisbergeron]

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

Don't use the MPlayer GUI

[narfbot]

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

Hurts when he's right, huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Who is JWZ

[jedidiah]

Why should I care again?

Re:mplayer aspect ratio

[c.derby]

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

Then again...

[GMFTatsujin]

I just looked at his web page www.jwz.com. With an index page like that, who the hell is he to gripe?

Wow

[jandrese]

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.

Re:Wow

[swordgeek]

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.'

why does he bother..

[devious]

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..

Re:What's the point?

[swordgeek]

"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.

Re:This guy is an idiot

[banky]

>JWZ should learn how to program
Implementing Netscape on Unix, and working on Mozilla, doesn't count?

Re:Ok, youre right...

[j_kenpo]

"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...

mplayer rocks!

[John Zero]

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.

Honestly, I like this review

[Meowfaceman]

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:Ok, youre right...

[binaryDigit]

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).

Welcome to the Real World

[RatBastard]

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.

Re:Shouldn't rant about things you don't understan

[siphoncolder]

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.

Best quote on JWZ.org is..

[Captain Large Face]

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".

Re:This guy is way off base

[Junks Jerzey]

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

[Waffle Iron]

>>> 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)

:)

Hey, there is improvement!

[Noryungi]

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! =)

Re:Hey, there is improvement!

[yppiz]

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!

[hawkestein]

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)

that poor bastard...

[pb]

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.

Re:that poor bastard...

[dnaumov]

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...

[demon]

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.

what he wrote wasn't a review, it was a rant!

[puck01]

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

Cruft

[Animats]

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:This guy is way off base

[Anonvmous Coward]

"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:What's the point?

[xyzzy]

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:MPEG4IP has a nice interface

[deepchasm]

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.

This is not a rant...

[ciupman]

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..)

Re:Ok, youre right...

[Aix]

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 ...

Re:mplayer aspect ratio

[Anonvmous Coward]

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

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

Re:Who is JWZ

[arose]

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

Re:What's the point?

[tewfik]

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.

Re:Um

[banky]

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.

You have to admit...

[bigdisk]

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?

switching distros

[biostatman]

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)

Re:This guy is way off base

[arose]

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...

mod it up

[ArmorFiend]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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.)

Re:Total disagreement

[Enahs]

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

JWZ Emacs had its own movieplayer

[Per Abrahamsen]

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.

Re:Troll

[banky]

>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.

Re:This guy is way off base

[On Lawn]

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.

Newsflash: /. readers completely miss point!!!

[swordgeek]

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.

Re:From the article... SUCKS.

[Melantha_Bacchae]

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)

You're an idiot.

[Wakko Warner]

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.

Jamie's writing larger reflect my Linux experience

[tungwaiyip]

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!

[wowbagger]

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)

Linux users must hate themselves

[Space Coyote]

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.

Re:Linux users must hate themselves

[diamondc]

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....

Re:This guy is an idiot

[Senjutsu]

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"

Perhaps you should read...

[Pii]

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.

Re:Shouldn't rant about things you don't understan

[jazman_777]

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.

Die RPM Die

[Screaming Lunatic]

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

Good points, but JWZ invokes Goodwin's Law

[Christopher Whitt]

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)

Re:Good points, but JWZ invokes Goodwin's Law

[IntlHarvester]

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.

The whiney little bitch is right

[nrc]

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.

Re:This guy is way off base

[Trepalium]

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?

A real funny read

[someone247356]

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.

Re:What's the point?

[FreeUser]

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).

Did I claim that it was?

[pb]

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.

He's got good points....

[otis wildflower]

... 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.

Apple's DVD Player

[aftk2]

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...

Re:What's the point?

[Hyler]

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?

overlapping windows suck...he is right

[kitsch]

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.

Uselessness.

[Lemmy Caution]

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.

[Hurga]

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

Sheesh

[Obiwan Kenobi]

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:The point of GUI

[TeknoHog]

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.

Re:JWZ=Moron WITH No CLUE! I do video on Linux

[markv242]

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.

J's Home Page Usability

[lanner]

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.

JWZ quotes:

[SimHacker]

"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

It misses the point

[Gerry Gleason]

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.

What I don't understand...

[Fizzlewhiff]

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?

Re:eat this

[dcuny]

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.

Debunking JWZ

[fw3]

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.

Re:Pain in the ass?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Woo wooo! The cluetrain has arrived...

[edunbar93]

"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.

You're missing the point.

[edunbar93]

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.

JWZ has lots of errors

[0x0d0a]

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.