SuSE Linux 9.3 Professional Review at Mad Penguin

llywelynelysium writes "Mad Penguin has an excellent review of the upcoming SuSE 9.3 Professional release. The review is mostly positive, commenting on SUSE's improved speed, improved Gnome suppport, inclusion of Xen, and interestingly, the use of Firefox as the default browser. On the other hand, the review states that Novell has futher crippled the multimedia capabilities of their distribution by removing MP3 playback support. SUSE scores three stars in the end."

Comments

Removed MP3 as well?

[Spudley]

On the other hand, the review states that Novell has futher crippled the multimedia capabilities of their distribution by removing MP3 playback support.

Growl. Oh well, guess I won't be bothering with that upgrade then. :-(

It's bad enough that they crippled Kaffine/Xine in 9.2 -- You can't even download and install the missing libs; they've blocked them from within the software - if you really want to play DVDs in 9.2, you have to remove Xine and install a non-crippled version from elsewhere, and then install the missing libs as well. Way too much hassle to be worth the effort for a home user. But I don't mind. I can watch DVDs without SuSE's help. MP3s are different - I play music all the time on my computer, so if MP3 playing is crippled in the same way in 9.3, I certainly won't be upgrading, no matter how good the new KDE sounds.

Re:Removed MP3 as well?

[Zorbie]

A hassle? It took me less then 5 minutes to google for the correct packages, download them all and install them, to restore mp3/divx/etc. It's removed because of licensing restrictions. It's not their fault, blame the damn patent Nazi's out there. The files all exist to correct this 'feature' on servers out of the country and outside US jurisdiction. Sure, I'm a Linux user, but I'm no guru at it. I'm still learning the higher level stuff. Windows, I do in my sleep. Besides, like Windows, if you're looking for help as a new user, you ask a friend or post to a message board and they're quite happy to help. It's rare to have any issue not resolved inside of a half hour if you really try.

Ogg Vorbis is better than MP3 in many ways.

[jbn-o]

The review fails to convey any comprehension of why MP3 support is missing in the most widely-used GNU/Linux distributions ("I confess to not knowing all of the specifics regarding the legalities of MP3 playback [...]")? This point was apparently important enough to the reviewer to lower the overall score of SUSE and recommend installing the proprietary RealPlayer software (turning what might otherwise be a free software system into something far less trustworthy, sharable, and inspectable).

What is impressive (and depressing at the same time) is how many people reviewing various free software operating systems don't seem to understand why there's no MP3 encoding/decoding software bundled with the OS, despite the availability of such software online.

As for using Ogg Vorbis instead of MP3, I say you're right on. Perhaps more people should examine the situation from an ethical standpoint: it's not ethical to distribute media files and software that will get the users into trouble with the law, particularly when there's an unencumbered alternative which sounds better at comparable compression rates and has better tagging facilities. If you must distribute MP3s, distribute Ogg Vorbis files right along side the MP3s, so people have to risk committing patent infringement if they don't want to. If you want to be a really nice distributor, make sure both lossy encodings are generated from the same source file--don't transcode one lossy encoding into another if you don't have to. In so many situations I see online, people who stress "best tool for the job" cave into a self-fulfilling argument of popularity (Ogg Vorbis will not be more popular if you don't use it).

A similar situation exists for FLAC versus Shorten; I see a lot of Shorten files on archive.org and it makes me sad to see that happen because Shorten is non-free and even the zero cost Shorten source code is not irrevocably licensed. This is hardly an appropriate choice for long-term archiving. Meanwhile, FLAC reference source code is licensed under an irrevocable free software license, FLAC is not patent encumbered (as far as I know), FLAC is supported in some portable digital audio players, FLAC compresses better than Shorten, and FLAC lets you easily apply an Ogg wrapper (giving one all the advantages Ogg brings). There is currently a problem dealing with Ogg FLAC files, but I suspect that this is not a showstopper and can be remedied with some improvements in software. I doubt you'll find all of these ethical and technical advantages in other lossless compressors. On top of all that, Josh Coalson (the author of FLAC) seems to be a cooperative developer who solicits working with those trying to add FLAC support to their programs.