Review of Consumer-Friendly Linux Distro

miketronics writes "Linspire Five-O is a full-featured Linux operating system which is intended for desktop use, mainly as an alternative to Windows XP. XYZComputing has a review of the latest version. The company, which was formerly known as Lindows, has gotten a lot of press for including their OS with pre-bundled computers." From the article: "Once the installation is over with Five-O is ready to go. The first time the OS is used Linspire's tutorial program will activate. This is one of most accessible tutorials on any Linux distro and it should be a great help to new users. Though it does not go into extreme depth, it does give the user enough understanding of the OS to get started. Even if you are a Linux pro it will probably be helpful to check out the CNR section, as this system is unique to Linspire. The fact that the developers have the tutorial voice-narrated shows Linspire's commitment to user support -- this feature makes the otherwise boring tutorial watchable."

Comments

Voice narration?

[sharkb8]

How helpful will a voice over be when Linux doesn't install your soundcard drivers properly?

Re:Voice narration?

[Scud]

Jamie? Is that you?

Re:Voice narration?

[i.r.id10t]

Debian is more PnP for me than Windows XP.

I just installed Debian stable (sarge) last week on my Dell GX-270 at work (adding an XP partition and getting rid of FC2). In my past experience, all the dell optiplex hardware will work, but often times the proper config needs to be made, just like you mention.

Anyway, this particular install of Debian everything Just Worked. Sound, network, USB mouse, LCD monitor, Intel video, USB ports - everything, no extra config needed.

Re:Voice narration?

[skiflyer]

I concur, Debian in particular is getting light years better over the last 18 months... even my laptop *almost* works out of the box with the Debian installer (though unfortunately that's taken steps backwards the last 9 months or so)...

And whatever ubuntu put on top of debian, everything does just work with the exception of some Wine oddities... but I still prefer plain Debian so my servers are the same as my clients.

Re:Voice narration?

[Toby_Tyke]

Debian is more PnP for me than Windows XP.

I agree, up to a point. Ubuntu installs on my PC, and every piece of hardware is detected and configured properly, including networking. In contrast it takes well over an hour post install to get everything running and configured in XP. But when people talk about hardware compatability, thats not what they mean.

I can walk into a store and buy any piece of hardware, and it will work under XP. Digital cameras, USB TV tuners, MP3 players, anything. The same cannot be said of Linux. My girlfriend has a creative Zen Micro MP3 player. I love it,and I'd like one myself, but I just can not get it to run under Linux.

I know this is really a problem with the manufacturers not supporting Linux, but they no doubt believe it's not worth the effort.

Re:Voice narration?

[Eideewt]

Same experience here, which, as a n00b, I really appreciate. I get to concentrate on learning to work the system instead of learning how to fix it.

Re:Voice narration?

[someone300]

For the zen you need libnjb and gnomad. Gnomad works for me, sorta buggy though.

Linux needs a decent unified media device access library. Kio, gnome-vfs or the filesystem are "good enough" but they're not fantastic ;), and loads of different types of library being hard coded into the apps isn't a good thing. Freedesktop media access would be good.

My biggest problem are Sony media devices (netmd, network walkman).. I think only a very small few of them work.

Re:Voice narration?

[Toby_Tyke]

I did try using Gnomad, but after hours of tweaking just could not get the damn thing to work reliably.

And you're right about sony stuff. Why can't manufacturers just make MP3 players mount as removeable hard disks?

Re:Voice narration?

[X0563511]

Easier to "steal" music. Unfortunatly making that only slightly harder makes a LOT of other useful and legal things much more difficult.

Re:Voice narration?

[killjoe]

WOW. I have never had any version of windows recognize any hardware on any optiplex. Not even the network card. I have always had to go and download the drivers from another machine and put them on a USB key so I can get the network going.

If what you say is true then it's quite a coup.

Re:Voice narration?

[Issue9mm]

So you're saying that it did recognize your USB?

-9mm-

Re:Voice narration?

[sharkb8]

Generally most people won't carry a list of compatible hardware down to Fry's. They'll buy what's on sale and download the driver. No driver for Linux? That'll be the problem that keeps Linux from getting adopted as widely as Windows.

Admittedly, it's a chicken/egg problem, as vendors won't write Linux drivers themselves until more people have linux.

And then there are people like me who take an old computer, and put Linux on it to try out. You end up with too many problems, and turn the box into a Windows file server.

And when I install XP, pretty much all I have to do is put the CD in and set a few options. It took me about 3 hours to get FC3 on my old ass Optiplex.

Re:Voice narration?

[grolschie]

It took me about 3 hours to get FC3 on my old ass Optiplex

It took about that to install XP on an old ass K6-500, so what's your point?

Re:Voice narration?

[sharkb8]

it took me longer to put FC3 on my computer than XP. I'll point out that XP comes on 1 CD, FC3 on 5. Linux may have more crap coming with it, but I don't want to spend time putting 3 GUIs on my hard drive.

Re:Voice narration?

[QuantaStarFire]

Then don't. Just install GNOME or KDE and be done with it. That's the beauty of package selection; you can select damn near everything you want/don't want to be installed.

Personally, I installed all the GUIs just so they're there if I wanna try them out. I've taken a strong liking to GNOME though, so I don't imagine myself using anything else anyways. I might give KDE a go, although since KDE apps work in GNOME, I haven't seen the point.

Re:Voice narration?

[greenlead]

From the recent article here at Slashdot, I believe the mobiBLU cube does act as a removable USB storage device, without needing special software. http://www.mobibluamerica.com/dah1500.html

Re:Voice narration?

[arose]

Ubuntu has one CD and unlike with MS Windows you are mostly done after that one CD.

Re:Voice narration?

[nolife]

About drivers..
Many people are already familiar with Windows. Not that is any easier then Linux but being familiar makes it easy. Keep in mind, there are people familiar with Linux as well.

An example from today.

New XP machine and a new HP9050 printer on the network with an IP of 192.168.0.100.

Start --> Printers and Faxes. Select add new printer. I select next at the Add printer wizard box. I am given the option of "Local printer attached to this computer" or Network Printer. I select Netowrk Printer.
"What printer do you want to connect to?" I try all three options with the printer ip address. None of them work. I go back and select "Local printer attached to this computer". Odd, it's not attached to my computer, it's on the network but I'll try it anyway. I select next and a box pops up and says No PNP printer found, press next to continue. I guess the box "Automatically detect and install my PNP printer" was checked by default. I browse through the list of available ports and do not see my network printer. I choose the other option called "Create a new Port". Standard TCP/IP Printer port is my best guess. When trying to create the port I recieve an error saying the port could not be created and i needed administrative rights to do that. I log off and log in as local administrator. I get back to that point and create the port with the printers IP address. I immediately get a prompt telling me to indentify what type of device I am trying to connect to and given a list of devices. I had the printer turned off so i turned it on and tried again. Ah, it determined it is a HP Jetdirect card now and Windows is asking me what type of printer am I trying to install. I am presented with a list of drivers I'd like to use. I browse through the HP printers and do not see the LJ 9050 listed. I cancel the process and hit HP's web site. After some searching around I see 2 drivers that look good for XP, a PCL5e and PCL6, I assume I do not need the 9050 printer system which is over 50MB in size. I browse the readme files and I have no idea which one I need or which is better. I decide to get the PCL5e because it only 5.8MB. I download and run the install. I am presented with two options. Automatically install the drivers and delete the temp files on completion or if I'd just like to expand the files into a specific directory. I take the default to perform the install automatically. That process completed. Well, what was that? I see no printers installed and now I have no idea what just happened or what was supposed to happen.
For a forth time, I go back into "Add Printer". I selected Local Printer and add port again, type my ip address in and this time recieve an error that the port is already installed on my system. Oh, I canceled out of the add printer wizard earlier when I realized I need drivers but the wizard did at least create my port. I am now presented with a same dialog box asking to pick my printer model. I still see no HP 9050 printer listed under the HP printers list. I tried to browse the HD for the driver but not only do I not know what I am looking for, I do not know where to look. I will run the HP9050 PCL5E driver file again. This time I select to just expand the file into the c:\hplj9050 directory. For about the fifth time. I go back to "add printer", select my previosuly configured port, and this time select have disk and point to that directory on c:\. Finally, it shows my printer and installs the driver. I can now print to my 9050!!!

Okay, in all honesty, I do this all day every day and it would really only take me about 3 minutes to get this installed but did you see those steps? Those are real steps and a realistic process of what a non computer geek would have to go through to get this printer installed. For someone NOT already familiar with Windows XP, this is by no means easy. It seems easy to you and others because you take it for granted because you have been using and messing with the OS for years. For someone who has not been, the process would be no easier then installing the same printer on a Linux system.

Re:Voice narration?

[blonde rser]

I had an even more impressive experience with Debian. My motherboard died so I replaced it along with a new cpu. The new motherboard has built in ethernet and sound. Plugged the harddrive into the computer and it booted up and everything was already working. I was extremely impressed.

Later I plugged in a bluetooth dongle that was recognized though connecting the bluetooth keyboard took a little more research than I would have liked.

Re:Voice narration?

[greylion3]

A word of warning;

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/mess age?board.id=oplex_other&message.id=16846&query.id =319629

In case you start having weird problems, don't blame it on Linux unless you've checked (and double-checked) for faulty hardware.

Re:Voice narration?

[germanStefan]

I also think that modern Linux distros will find and configure more drivers than Windows XP will. HOWEVER this is not really a fair comparison. Windows XP is what, from 2001? Lets pit Debian 3.0 with its native kernel against Windows XP and see which one gets more drivers out of the box correct.

Don't get me wrong, I use Linux on all my systems and don't have any devices which don't work out of the box. I dislike microsoft as much as the next Linux using slashdotter, but I don't think its fair to compare a modern Linux to a 4 year old Windows...now it is their own fault for not releasing a "better" version of windows in those 4 years...just my 2 cents

Re:Voice narration?

[killjoe]

I propose we keep insulting the people who write linux in the hopes that they write the drivers themselves (and risk jail time for reverse engineering or DMCA violations).

There is probalby no sense in contacting the vendors. I think simply stating that linux will never be adopted on the desktop over and over again should solve the problem neatly.

I would also rule out doing anything that might even remotebly be considered constructive. So don't code, don't give money, don't write to the vendors, don't test, don't do anything except complain loudly that your old piece of crap hardware was not supported fully by linux and that you went to windows instead.

That will solve the problem for sure.

Re:Voice narration?

[killjoe]

Oddly enough yes. The USB and CD worked fine virtually nothing else was recognized.

Re:Voice narration?

[nbert]

XP comes on one CD, but to make a fair comparison those Office CDs and other Apps you'll need to make the installation actually usable should count too.

Re:Voice narration?

[falsified]

Ditto the RCA Lyra, although those don't carry many songs. It's an option, though.

Re:Voice narration?

[Toby_Tyke]

New XP machine and a new HP9050 printer on the network with an IP of 192.168.0.100.

To be honest, most home users don't add networked printers. The sort of hardware I'm talking about is cameras, TV cards, video cameras, the fun stuff. People on this thread have talked about researching what you're buying, but the point is that with windows I don't have to research compatibility, I know it will work. For sure. And I know that for any piece of hardware I buy in PC world and plug into the back of a windows box, hardware installation will consist of "insert disk, next next next finish" and maybe a reboot.

Re:Voice narration?

[bluGill]

No, XP is the latest. Linux vendors have learned to spin a new release every 6 months or year. Microsoft ships far more systems, so their marginal cost to ship a new CD with the latest drivers should be less. Microsoft also charges more for XP than most linux vendors. (desktop vendors anyway, enterprize vendors charge more, but then 2003 server is more too)

I refuse to compare anything other than the latest out of the box distributions. It is Microsoft's fault if they are out of date.

As I recall XP SP2 was released early this year. That is the latest version, and there is no excuse for not putting that on the CDs they are shipping.

Re:Voice narration?

[default luser]

Microsoft typically only includes new drivers with each service pack that give designers a common base to work with (like generic bus and system interface drivers). For example, service packs have added built-in SATA and USB 2.0 support to Windows 2000 and XP.

On the other hand, every new Microsoft OS ships with a good sample of popular drivers for devices released in the past few years. MS does this to encourage the upgrade market: the included drivers make upgrading a potentially smoother process than if you had to go fishing for the drivers yourself.

Once the majority of the upgrade market has jumped onboard (first year or so), the only people who have to worry about drivers are system integrators(who are better off managing their own driversets), and power-users, who don't mind jumping through a few hoops.

It would be foolish for MS to release updated specific driversets for minor service pack releases (which would only make the downloads larger), especially now that Windows Update has a convenient driver update tool.

Mirror of full article

[winkydink]

here . Though I doubt that that a review of Linspire is going to get slashdotted late on a Friday afternoon.

Re:Mirror of full article

[debilo]

Though I doubt that that a review of Linspire is going to get slashdotted late on a Friday afternoon.

Because we geeks are busy getting ready for one of those zillion parties we alway get invited to?

Re:Mirror of full article

[debilo]

colour me offtopic [...] swanky blowout [...]...homo stylist guys

I'd rather color you pink. Thank you.

Re:Mirror of full article

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate you.
No wait, parties are boring, so whatever, go ahead and waste your time.

Re:Mirror of full article

[Nun, Mouse, Cowherd]

Review? I didn't see one, just a screen full of ugly ass crapvertisements, and two sentences with a "Next" link, along with links to the 537 other "pages" in the article. That is the absolutely most obnoxious site I have ever seen. I thought it was the wrong page! Ack!

Re:Mirror of full article

[rob_squared]

No, because linspire might as well be goatse.cx

Re:Mirror of full article

[rmdir -r *]

Because we geeks are busy getting ready for one of those zillion parties we alway get invited to?

No, because we're doing even geekier things. I, for instance, know a guy who, at this very moment, is vacuuming out an old Mac and installing NetBSD on an UltraSparc 4. Which totally cuts down on your Slashdot time.

Re:Mirror of full article

[aywwts4]

No, its sci fi friday, duh, this site is dead when battlestar galactica is on ;)

50 bucks?

[Eternauta3k]

The tradeoff is the price- Linspire Five-O can be downloaded for just $49.95, significantly less than most other retail desktop Linux distributions.

You know, fedora's quite cheap...

Re:50 bucks?

[myslashdotusername]

But for $50 it comes with an AV scanner, which sadly only scans for windows viruses. Still, if you're setting up a desktop for someone who wants to do -email on this 'intarweb' thing it's going to be useful.

Re:50 bucks?

[Sancho]

Guess it depends on definitions. Fedora isn't a retail desktop Linux distribution, is it? Fedora's counterpart, is an enterprise solution, and thus doesn't fit the "desktop" modifier.

In fact, offhand, the only other retail, desktop Linux distribution I can think of is SuSE, which is downloadable for free, but costs money if you want it on CDs. The full retail package of SuSE is around $90, but again, you're getting more than just a download.

I have seen Debian CDs for sale in retail stores, and they were less than $50 I believe, however I haven't seen this in awhile.

Truthfully, I'd like to know about all these other retail desktop LInux distributions....

Re:50 bucks?

[r1_97]

I think the $50.00 includes a year of their click and run downloads which provides a ton of easy to intall software applications along with upgrades.

For a non-tech Windows desktop user, this provides an easy transistion to Linux with a good GUI.

Re:50 bucks?

[Chosen Reject]

After people spend so much on Windows for so long you have to wean them off of that habit. If they suddenly saved all their money they might go and spend it somewhere else a little more unsavory.

Re:50 bucks?

[cosmic_gravy]

Distrowatch has a page discussing the "freeness" (I know, not a word) of various linux distros:

http://distrowatch.com/stats.php?section=freedom/

Linspire is listed under "4".

Re:50 bucks?

[Edward Teach]

I just downloaded Suse 9.3 Professional for free from their website.

Re:50 bucks?

[Sancho]

Yeeesss.......go back and actually READ my post and see if your reply isn't redudnant ;)

Re:50 bucks?

[Sancho]

Although I guess the "want it on CDs" bit may have caused confusion.

I just meant, you can't get the retail package for free, which includes getting pre-burned CDs, manuals, etc.

Re:50 bucks?

[markdavis]

> Guess it depends on definitions. Fedora isn't a >retail desktop Linux distribution, is it? Not really. But Mandriva is. And it can be had retail or free. SuSe personal can be had retail or free also.

Re:50 bucks?

[grolschie]

I think the $50.00 includes a year of their click and run downloads which provides a ton of easy to intall software applications along with upgrades.

... which are all free from Debian and other Linux repositories.

Re:50 bucks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi

I'm writing to ask for your advice since you seem to know about Linux. I was recently at a friends house, and he showed me his new Linux. It had a lot of interesting "features" like windows and firefox and tcpip. He even showed me dirty pictures with it.

My friend told me that he downloaded his Linux for free! He even showed me the web site. I think it was linuxtorrent.com. I freaked out! He's stealing form Linux! He told me that it was OK and that Linux is free, but I didn't believe him.

What should I do? My friend is stealing from Linux. A lot of people worked very hard to make Linux, and he's taking it without even saying thanks. I want him to stop, but I don't want him to go to jail! Please, help me, I don't know what to do?

Re:50 bucks?

[Stauf]

Just to nitpick - freeness (look right at the bottom of the first 'free' entry) is a word. (Also here and here.)

Re:50 bucks?

[myslashdotusername]

Tell him to download FreeBSD, because you know, it's dead.

Re:50 bucks?

[Flywheel]

> Although I guess the "want it on CDs" bit may >have caused confusion.

Apart from the Net-Install CD-image, you can also find five CD-ISO's containing the entire x86-32/IA32 installation.

But if you want AMD64 optimisation or support you have to pay up.

Re:50 bucks?

[Novus]

But if you want AMD64 optimisation or support you have to pay up.

Nonsense. The AMD64 version is available for download as a DVD image or for FTP installation. Read SuSE's own download page.

Re:50 bucks?

[ToasterofDOOM]

Sadly? What other virues do you want it to scan for? There have only been about 40-50 viruses for both Mac and UNIX platforms and those were ages ago. There have only been 6 Linux viruses and only one was in the wild (Bliss) as opposed to in a laboratory. IIRC it was fixed the same day.

Whats up with the screenshots???

[TheWorkz]

Come on... taking screenshot images of the OS through a Digital Camera?? How about VMWARE? or Video Output? Anything is better than a monitor picture. Jeeesh...

Re:Whats up with the screenshots???

[jessejesse]

yea whats up with the screen shots through a digital camera? There has to be something better then a lousy monitor picture if nothing else use a plasma!

... jarring word choice ...

[ninjagin]

I started reading the review, but I was shaken free when I read this, on page 2:

"The company, which was formerly known as Lindows, has gotted a lot of press for including their OS with pre-bundled computers."

After "gotted", I think that as I continue to read the review, I'm going to be looking for these little goodies more than actually taking in the content.

... must ... resist ... powers ... of ... critique ...

Re:... jarring word choice ...

[cryptoz]

Eh? the article says "gotten", does it not? Perhaps I'm making a fool of myself, but hey. Oh well.

Re:... jarring word choice ...

[ninjagin]

I copied the quote directly.

Just for grins, I checked again and it still says "gotted".

Makes me wonder how it passed spell-check and proofreading.

I did finish the review, ultimately, and found that I didn't learn anything new about Lindows/Linspire.

Oh well, at least there was "gotted"! TeeHee.

Re:... jarring word choice ...

[Neop2Lemus]

Perhaps you meant

Makes me wonder how it gotted passed spell-check and proofreading?

Re:... jarring word choice ...

[pete-classic]

What's your problem? "Gotted" is a perfectly cromulent word.

-Peter

Punch Card

[locokamil]

When will people understand that Linux is for real men who honed their skillz by walking uphill both ways to the mainframe building in order to run their punch card programs? ::sigh::

Re:Punch Card

[fbartho]

you forgot the sundress and the snow.

Re:Punch Card

[NineNine]

When will people understand that Linux is for real men who honed their skillz by walking uphill both ways to the mainframe building in order to run their punch card programs? ::sigh::

I *totally* understand that, which is why it doesn't really do anything for me (more often than not, it literally doesn't do anything for me).

Re:Punch Card

[Edzor]

I remember my old maths teacher telling my class a story about when he was at university 'back in the day'.

The class had just finished thier semester projects, and a few of them where walking arcoss the quad to go hand in them in, when this guy holding his punch card project in a box lid tripped and 500 nicely ordered punch cards fluttered merrily arcoss the quad.

Re:Punch Card

[markdavis]

Tell that to my computer-challenged mother, who uses Linux. A friend at work who uses Linux and has no idea how to admin it. My best freind's 68-year-old father, who uses Linux.

Linux doesn't *HAVE* to be any harder to install or use than any other OS.

Re:Punch Card

[The_Wilschon]

The Real Men (TM) of Linux don't have "skillz". Nor are they {"leet","1337",whatever}. Nor do they ever trade "warez". Or "pwn" someone they don't like.

On the other hand, the rest of your post is absolutely correct.

As opposed to 199 or 299 for XP.

[DaedalusHKX]

Or the GODS only know how much Foghorn will cost... errr... I mean longhorn.

I'm sure the screaming and gnashing of teeth from new micro$oft adoptees will be heard even on that misconfigured soundcard the above poster had... (I didn't know windows could configure exotics either... I recall having a turtle beach 6 speaker that worked BETTER in linux... and cost me half what the SB Live 5.1 did.)

But who am I to argue :) I may get this Linspire for my folks... if they need too much help with Suse or Ubuntu.

Then again... at least my parents are BSD users (and I mean command prompt, not gui).

Re:As opposed to 199 or 299 for XP.

[wirelessbuzzers]

Or the GODS only know how much Foghorn will cost... errr... I mean longhorn.

You mean Vista.

You underestimate...

[Anonymous Coward]

Though I doubt that that a review of Linspire is going to get slashdotted late on a Friday afternoon.

The number of geeks who do not have a life...

You do know that often a :

[DaedalusHKX]

make uninstall

will remove the app, unless of course you prefer to use emerge/unmerge and apt-get uninstallations :)

I haven't had too much cause to uninstall apps since I have a brain... I don't install crapware from the local marketplace. (And when I do, all I have to do is wipe them from the Wine subdirectories).

What I like about Linspire

[bogaboga]

There are many things to love about Linux based Operating Systems especially on the virus/malware/addware side, but what I have come to like about Linspire is that it just works as advertised. It just works! SuSE does not (remember multimedia)? Second, it's beautiful. I love its fonts. For other distros, I have had to tweak X11 and download this script http://vigna.dsi.unimi.it/webFonts4Linux/webFonts. sh in order to see fonts as I like them. What troubles me most is that even for Debian based ones, the invoking of this command "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade" might leave you with an unusable system.

Now, if Linspire could adapt autopackage http://autopackage.org/, the better since Linspire packages would be able to install on any distro.

Re:What I like about Linspire

[bogaboga]

Huh. I've been using Debian as my full-time desktop system and on various servers and other desktops for eight years, and that's only happened once, when I upgraded an old system directly to Sid and X got horked.

Learn to read. I said "...might leave you with an unusable system". Keyword: might. Failed upgrades are not always the case. It does happen sometimes. Do you understand now? Besides, it also depends on the system itself and what is installed. Now go drink some coffee.

Re:What I like about Linspire

[Bri3D]

[Semi-OT] Your debian problems were caused by not using dist-upgrade. The dist-upgrade function fixed the "broken system" problem that you mention by installing and uninstalling packages as needed during the upgrade.

Re:What I like about Linspire

[Saint Stephen]

I like the Bitstream Vera fonts better.

Re:What I like about Linspire

[cortana]

apt-get install msttcorefonts

Re:What I like about Linspire

[poopdeville]

And they sky might fall tomorrow. That doesn't mean there's any significant chance of that happening.

Re:What I like about Linspire

[Gregg Alan]

Learn to read. I said "...might leave you with an unusable system". Keyword: might. Failed upgrades are not always the case. It does happen sometimes. Do you understand now? Besides, it also depends on the system itself and what is installed. Now go drink some coffee.

That's one of the most useless things I've read here. So, to make sure I get you: Taking some action might result in some other undesired action. Further, taking your original statement to heart... you're saying that Linspire removes the possibility of problems through upgrade? Wow.

You are either extremely ignorant, a fanboy, or on the payroll.

GCC? I think not.

[Anonymous Coward]

Linspire does not include GCC, and it is only available with a CNR subscription, unless you go back to using apt-get, which Linspire says may screw up your system. No gcc? can't install many apps..... Why should I pay for GPL'd software?

Re:GCC? I think not.

[MichaelSmith]

No gcc? can't install many apps..... Why should I pay for GPL'd software?

It's not for you. This is intended for people who have never heard of a compiler.

Re:GCC? I think not.

[KingSkippus]

Philosophically, I agree with you, but I can see their point, too. Using GCC to compile and install non-Linspire sanctioned applications gives non-novice but non-advanced users the ability to majorly screw up their system. These users would then proceed to unduly tax the company's tech support people and, even worse, gripe about how unstable Linspire is to all of their friends and Internet forums.

If you don't want to pay for GPL software, you don't have to. But remember the beauty of GPL software—Linspire can sell it to people who will pay for it if they want to, and the promise of stability and ease-of-use makes me lean towards thinking that it's justified.

Re:GCC? I think not.

[bogaboga]

Why should I pay for GPL'd software?

Because it 100% legal to do so. Now you know. Right?

Re:GCC? I think not.

[fyoder]

Linspire does not include GCC, and it is only available with a CNR subscription ...

No problem, just download the source and compile it. ;-)

Re:GCC? I think not.

[Mr. Underbridge]

No problem, just download the source and compile it. ;-)

Sick bastard. Is this the answer to "How do you keep a Lindows user busy?"

Re:GCC? I think not.

[Rylz]

You could always download the gcc source tarball and compile... oh wait.

Linspire is for newbies and it's great

[martin_b1sh0p]

I still think Linspire is one of the best distros for newbies. I run Fedora Core at home and I tried to get the wifey to switch to Linux and she did not like it one bit. She said, and I quote "It's like a really old version of Windows, I feel like I just took a step backwards."

However, during one of those special offers, "Download Linspire now for free", I installed Linspire on our laptop and she had no problems making the switch.

Granted she still went back to XP once she found out that her beloved American Greetings Create-a-Card program didn't run under Linux.

Re:Linspire is for newbies and it's great

[martin_b1sh0p]

Tried it. Couldn't get past the installer (InstallShield I believe). I didn't try just moving over all of the Dlls and Exe though. So who knows it might have worked.

Awful review

[Osty]

What's wrong with the review? I don't know. I couldn't bring myself to read through it. But from looking at the presentation and skimming the article, it sucks. Why?

• 7 pages? WTF? Was that really necessary? Combine several pages (especially page 1 which only has two paragraphs) or at least provide a printer-friendly version.
• Photographs for screenshots? Weak. Maybe that's fine for cases where you can't really get a screenshot (during installation, though you could've run an installation through Virtual PC or VMWare to get screenshots), but after that you can easily take normal screenshots. In fact, the images are a mishmash of screenshots and photographs. Why would you take a photo of the Linspire Control Center (for example) when you could take a screenshot?
• Horrible conclusion. If you're going to give a pro/con list, you should explain it in your conclusion. You say that Linspire is "not as performance oriented as others", or "lacks important features"? What are they? I saw nothing about either of those two problems in the conclusion, and I really don't feel like going back through six other pages looking for the one sentence where you explained what you meant by "lacks important features".
• Grammar. "These lax requirements is what allows Linspire (and other Linux distros) ..." wtf? "Requirements" is plural, so you need to match that with your verb ("are" instead of "is").
• No explanation of system requirements. What is a "Linspire-compatbile sound card" or a "Linspire-compatbile ... modem, cable modem, or DSL modem"? If Linspire has a compat list, link to it. If they don't, why not do a bit of research and provide a nice list for users?
• Still too much focus on installation, and praise for stupid crap. Linspire uses a GUI installer, making it appear more friendly? Woo! Distros have been doing this for years! Installation is pretty much a solved problem as far as I'm concerned (even Debian is supposedly getting a better installer some time). Besides that, though, the installer still doesn't appear to make partitioning any easier (whether it should or not is not the question here). The review chooses to go through the Advanced installation option, but never touches on the most difficult part. If everybody simply had their partitions magically configured like the reviewers, I'm sure nobody would ever be confused by partitioning.

Re:Awful review

[woah]

It's a blog masquerading as serious review site. What did you expect?

The real question is, why is it on Slashdot?

Re:Awful review

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, one could argue that Slashdot is a blog masquerading as a serious news site.

Re:Awful review

[sp0rk173]

erm...he didn't say "all distros." Also - Gentoo GUI installer Exists. Available now for testing.

Re:Awful review

[CastrTroy]

What? just because you are using a GUI, you automatically don't have total control over the install? And just because you don't have a GUI you automatically have complete control? That makes no sense. Here's a mock up of a non-GUI installation that gives you no control.

Would you like to install Linux? (Y/N)

It does everything for you, as soon as you say yes. Does that give you complete control? I'm tired of people who think GUI = No Control. You can have plenty of control with a GUI. It's just that usually you don't.

Re:Awful review

[NumbThumb]

heh - bullseye.

Re:Awful review

[spar_edesigns]

What's worse is the fact that whoever did the review obviously has no idea of the requirements for Windows Xp, which will run quite happily on a much lower spec machine that that quoted for Linspire. As I also ranted about (shameless plug) here: http://blog.oflaherty.dk/archives/2005/07/30/first -step-of-writing-a-review-remove-head-from-bum/

Five - 0

[Quirk]

Copyright infringement?

Book him, Dano.

Re:Five - 0

[sanosuke76]

As anyone at Michael Robertson's previous company knows, he had Dano on the payroll.

YOU shouldn't pay for GPL'd software...

[theurge14]

...because you know to install everything on your own without the handholding.

This product is for people who do not have your knowledge, and would gladly pay for the software to install on its own.

That is in the GPL you know.

They outsourced the review

[dickeya]

It was cheaper. The 50 bucks killed their budget.

Am I a power user?

[Anonymous Coward]

The failings of Linspire should only be recognized by power users who will want things like WINE and GNOME desktop.

I didn't know my desktop preference made me a power user. Kick ass, I just thought GNOME looked better! I'm sending a resume to Microsoft.

Re:This isn't Linux

[Haeleth]

Someone who runs Linspire shouldn't say "I run Linux" any more than someone who runs Mac OS should say "I run FreeBSD".

Nonsense. Linspire is a GNU/Linux distribution, because the Linspire kernel is Linux and the Linspire userland is GNU. Then Linspire's desktop is based on the same systems that are used by practically every other GNU/Linux distribution there is - X, KDE, and so on. Fundamentally, Linspire is Debian with a bunch of user-friendly frontends.

On the other hand OS X is not FreeBSD in any sense. Darwin, the open source platform that forms the core of OS X, is a hybrid that has code in common with FreeBSD - much of it is indeed derived from FreeBSD - but has never been remotely the same thing: for example, Darwin is based on the Mach microkernel, while FreeBSD's kernel is monolithic. OS X's userland is a GNU/BSD hybrid (the default shell is GNU bash, which is not even installed by default in FreeBSD), and its desktop - the only part of the system that the vast majority of users ever see - is entirely based on Apple's own proprietary code.

The two cases are not at all analogous.

Performance?

[ucahg]

From original article:

The minimum requirements for Five-O:

- 800 MHz or higher processor
[snip]
These lax requirements is what allows Linspire (and other Linux distros) to run well on both inexpensive and old computers- both of which may have trouble with Windows XP.

Lax requirements? Better than XP? Those requirements seem high to me, as someone who has Windows XP running just dandy on a Pentium II 350MHz PC. 800? Minimum? Why?

Re:Performance?

[1000101]

I was thinking the same thing. I have a p.o.s. 500 MHz PIII laptop at work and it runs XP Pro. I can't run too many apps at once, but Outlook, SQL Enterprise Manager, and Visual Studio can all be run simutaneously. Here are the minimum requirements:

XP Pro:
PC with 300 megahertz or higher processor clock speed recommended;
233 MHz minimum required (single or dual processor system);
* Intel Pentium/Celeron family, or AMD K6/Athlon/Duron family, or compatible processor recommended
128 megabytes (MB) of RAM or higher recommended (64 MB minimum supported; may limit performance and some features)
1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available hard disk space*
Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution video adapter and monitor
CD-ROM or DVD drive
Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device

Linspire 5.0:
PC with 800 MHz or higher processor 128 MB of RAM (256 MB or higher recommended for best performance)
Hard drive with 4 GB free space
SVGA or higher resolution and monitor (3-D graphics accelerator card for some games, screen savers, etc.)
CD-ROM or DVD drive
Keyboard & Mouse
Linspire-compatible sound card and speakers or headphones
Linspire-compatible 56 Kbps hardware modem, cable modem, or DSL modem
Ethernet card for Internet/LAN connectivity

Re:Performance?

[CastrTroy]

I'm running Mandrake 10.2 on a PII 266. It's a little slow to boot, and doesn't compile stuff all that fast, but otherwise it's perfectly good for browsing the web, editing photos from my digicam, typing up documents, and most other day-to-day tasks. I don't understand why they would say 800 MHz is the minimum.

Re:Performance?

[FictionPimp]

I'm running gentoo on a pentium 166 with 64 megs of ram. Sure I can hardly run X...and those compile times were killer. But it works! Thank God thats not my main box and only a little router.

Re:Performance?

[dreemernj]

Indeed. I currently run WinXp on computers at my office with P2 233s and 128 megs of ram, a couple of P3 450s with 64 megs of ram and Win2k on a couple of P166s with 32 megs of ram. Most of which couldn't simply take the install of a Linux distro since they only have 3.2 gig HDs, which fits 2K or XP and a full install of MS Office 2003. This Linspire stuff is far from Lax.

Before that and even still on some 16 mb ram machines I used Win NT 4.0 SP6a with Office. For a business machine, or a home machine for someone that is mainly looking for web browsing, email and word processing, its hard to beat an OS that boots up to only 10-12 mb ram usage and only takes up 200 megs of hard drive space but can run up to Office XP, modern IE or Opera (never tried FF on it though) and can be installed on i386, PPC, Alpha, and MIPS all off the same CD.

Correct Link

[cosmic_gravy]

Oops!
Forget the last slash:

http://distrowatch.com/stats.php?section=freedom

Re:Correct Link

[Sancho]

Nifty link, thanks!

Re:Correct Link

[FictionPimp]

This makes me wonder if there is enough difference between all those distro's to actually necessitate the difference.

Not That Great

[Daniel Baumgarten]

No, I did not RTFA, but the blurb alone left me with some thoughts:

"The company, which was formerly known as Lindows, has gotten a lot of press for including their OS with pre-bundled computers."

That's not entirely true, as there are other Linux-based operating systems that also do this. Linspire has gotten press attention because it bundles their OS with major vendors' computers. You can walk into Wal-Mart today and buy a computer with Linspire pre-installed. This makes it unique.

I don't see what's so great about a voice-dictated setup process, either. To me, that just presents accessibility issues, and I'd personally be annoyed by it if there wasn't such a thing as a volume knob.

This is just me, though; I've never been a fan of holding the user's hand, no matter what the level of experience. I believe Carl Sagan once said something about the problems inherent in overly abstracting technology from the user.

Review of the review review

[jlapier]

"Awful review" was a great review of the Linspire review. The author plainly stated his opinion and then backed it up with a tightly prepared bullet-point synopsis of serveral points. I especially enjoyed the comments regarding the length of the article and the photographed screenshots. I couldn't agree more.

The only bad thing I could say about this review (of the review) was that it was anti-climatic. After an intense, bullet-driven analysis, the author leaves us with no conclusion, instead leaving us to ponder over the difficulty of disk partitioning rather than tying together the point he was trying to make.

4(/5)

The killer: media players

[ChiralSoftware]

I have a friend who is smart, but not a real "computers guy". He was at my house and needed to borrow a computer. I only have Linux computers here, and so he tried it and was impressed. He could do everything he needed to do under Suse without any problems: access his mail, access the Web, access Excel spreadsheets (with OpenOffice), etc. Except for one thing: he couldn't play video clips, and when he got his laptop, he said, "I'll use Windows on this so I can play video." That's all. Otherwise he would use Linux.

I am very experienced with Linux and computers in general and I still can't get Windows Media video to work properly on this, and the only DVD playback I have is through MPlayer and I still can't get a GUI working on MPlayer.

What I had to go through to get this far: Download and compile MPlayer. Ok, that's no problem and it plays DVDs. Download and install the Windows codecs pack. Now MPlayer (still with no GUI) can play WMV. That's great. Xine (KDE's preferred video player) can't detect these Windows codecs, even though I put them in /usr/lib/win32, which is where they're supposed to be. So no integrated desktop playback; if I want to play a clip, I download it, save it, open up a console window, and point MPlayer at it. I tried to get MPlayer to compile with --gui-enabled so at least I could have a front-end for it. No luck; it can't find gtk2+ development libraries. I tried to install them and couldn't find them anywhere that MPlayer could find them. I also tried to install a dvddecss lib where Xine could find it so Xine could play encrypted (standard) movie DVDs. Again, nothing I could do worked.

Mind you, this is all with Suse 9.3, the latest and greatest. All of this stuff is supposed to be worked out by now. I can get it to just barely work, with no desktop integration and no GUI, and I'm an experienced and knowledgable user. What are other people supposed to do, just use their imagination?

Oh and the situation is even worse with Flash. In my previous Suse installations, Flash worked fine in Konqueror. Now with Suse 9.3, I get a crash when Konqueror tries to render a page with Flash, so I have to use Moz or Firefox to view it, and guess what, those have problems working with KDE's sound system so I might not get sound with my Flash.

I realize that there are legal problems with codecs and DVDs and whatever. Before Linux is ever going to get consumer-level acceptance, these problems need to be solved, or worked around. A solution would be to get a commercially-developed Linux media player that a) integrates with the desktop and b) works and c) package that with the distro. A work-around would be to make up a media player installer that you just click on, it downloads whatever it needs from non-US sites, and it does all the stuff, and it WORKS.

I'm happy to pay for Linux distros (I think I paid almost $100 for Suse 9.3 pro). If they have to tack on another $10 or $20 to include a solid, well-integrated working media player, they need to do it.

All the other apps are more than good enough right now. OOo is a good consumer-level (and biz level) replacement for MS Office. Firefox is better than IE. All that is lacking is multimedia playback.

---------------
mobile search - coming soon

Re:The killer: media players

[Daniel Baumgarten]

Totem with gstreamer seems to handle most WMV files fine. Multimedia support is inconsistent in the open source community, but that doesn't mean that it's lacking. You need to know where to look.

Incidentally, I use Debian, which handled all sorts of multimedia playback right out of the box, so to speak. So in some cases, you don't even have to look at all.

Re:The killer: media players

[narfbot]

Media players are just fine in linux, it's just that none of the big distros are brave enough to include one with a working configuration. I suggest you try slackware with maybe Xine. I don't think Pat would cripple a package like other distros. I don't use Xine but MPlayer so I don't know how it works. Compiling MPlayer with GUI support is easy. Last time I checked MPlayer requires GTK1, not GTK2 -- there's a difference.

Re:The killer: media players

[mattyrobinson69]

Except for one thing: he couldn't play video clips, and when he got his laptop, he said, "I'll use Windows on this so I can play video." That's all. Otherwise he would use Linux.

video playback works fine for me in linux, i find windows harder to setup (download varioud codecs manually, what is this? 1998?)

and I still can't get a GUI working on MPlayer.

Im pretty sure gmplayer is working out the box on debian testing

What I had to go through to get this far: Download and compile MPlayer.

sudo apt-get install mplayer

Ok, that's no problem and it plays DVDs. Download and install the Windows codecs pack. Now MPlayer (still with no GUI) can play WMV. That's great. Xine (KDE's preferred video player) can't detect these Windows codecs, even though I put them in /usr/lib/win32, which is where they're supposed to be.

iirc - sudo apt-get install w32codecs will setup the codecs for mplayer and xine

So no integrated desktop playback; if I want to play a clip, I download it, save it, open up a console window, and point MPlayer at it. I tried to get MPlayer to compile with --gui-enabled so at least I could have a front-end for it. No luck; it can't find gtk2+ development libraries. I tried to install them and couldn't find them anywhere that MPlayer could find them. I also tried to install a dvddecss lib where Xine could find it so Xine could play encrypted (standard) movie DVDs. Again, nothing I could do worked.

try kaffeine video player

Mind you, this is all with Suse 9.3, the latest and greatest. All of this stuff is supposed to be worked out by now.

it is worked out, in debian (and gentoo, and probably others)

I can get it to just barely work, with no desktop integration and no GUI, and I'm an experienced and knowledgable user. What are other people supposed to do, just use their imagination?

be recommended a distro that has these features by default such as debian testing

Oh and the situation is even worse with Flash. In my previous Suse installations, Flash worked fine in Konqueror. Now with Suse 9.3, I get a crash when Konqueror tries to render a page with Flash, so I have to use Moz or Firefox to view it, and guess what, those have problems working with KDE's sound system so I might not get sound with my Flash.

fair enough, although it should have been tested by suse. arts is commonly considered crap, and fortunately will be replaced in kde4 (probably by gstreamer) as its not being developed anymore. i dont use arts personally.

I realize that there are legal problems with codecs and DVDs and whatever. Before Linux is ever going to get consumer-level acceptance, these problems need to be solved, or worked around.

yes, it is unfortunate but it is possible to point your sources.list to other 'dodgy legal ground' repositories hosted in non-facist countries

A solution would be to get a commercially-developed Linux media player that a) integrates with the desktop and b) works and c) package that with the distro. A work-around would be to make up a media player installer that you just click on, it downloads whatever it needs from non-US sites, and it does all the stuff, and it WORKS.

debian with third part repositories?
All that is lacking is multimedia playback. see above

Re:The killer: media players

[Bambi Dee]

I also use SuSE 9.3. After downloading the four Multimedia packs from YOU (no MP3 support otherwise, etc.), I added pub/linux/misc/suser-guru/rpm/9.3 on ftp.gwdg.de and suse/9.3 on packman.iu-bremen.de to YaST's installation sources and installed MPlayer, w32codec-all, mplayerplug-in (for Mozilla/Firefox), and kmplayer (KDE frontend for MPlayer/FFMpeg/Xine and much cleaner than the default MPlayer GUI). That was all, I think. (It must have been simple; after all, I got it to work!) Xine plays Xvid, Divx, mov, wmv... as well now (but I really prefer KMplayer).

Re:The killer: media players

[teslatug]

I use Slackware. It could be a lot easier, but I've gotten most videos to work on all recent releases of slack.

Re:The killer: media players

[chadruva]

Well, i'm running SUSE 9.3 Pro (Retail), and MPlayer plays anything you can trow at it.

Compile MPlayer yourself if you want to get best results, if you don't want or care to compile download the following packages from:

http://packman.links2linux.de/?action=index
MPlayer
w32codecs
Lame
lzo

If compiling, don't forget to install gtk-devel package (Gtk1 not Gtk2), and configure with the following options: ./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-gui --with-codecsdir=/usr/lib/win32

The download the All codecs package from MPlayer page, uncompress and copy them to /usr/lib/win32

Download the default skin from MPlayer page and uncompress it on /usr/share/mplayer/Skin

Run gmplayer and you have mplayer with GUI which will play practically anything. You can also download kplayer which is a KDE based GUI on top of MPlayer:

http://kplayer.sourceforge.net/

There, more than enough to get you going. One more thing, use the alsa plugin for sound.

Re:The killer: media players

[destuxor]

I completely agree, multimedia is a serious problem in modern binary Linux distributions. Multimedia is the reason that I choose to use Gentoo Linux on my desktop/server. I want MP3 support. I want to watch encrypted DVDs. I want to watch Real videos without that confounded RealPlayer 10. It's all completely possible and completely legal if you're using Gentoo or any other source based distribution. Furthermore, it's legal to install such programs onto any Linux distribution provided you build the source yourself and do not install a binary.
After using Ubuntu on my laptop for some time I decided I needed to watch a movie on my laptop. Of course, Debian's apt system is completely foreign to me and I wasn't about to learn a new package manager after becomming used to Gentoo's portage system.
So I decided to install MPlayer and Xine-Lib from source, among other utilities. I believe this is the howto I used: http://www.oldskoolphreak.com/tfiles/hack/ubuntu.t xt
So it's got me thinking I should write some scripts to perform this installation automagically. I'd really like to get some kind of project running to collaborate with others.
Do you guys think such a project would be successful? Scripting up an installer for all these programs would be really easy if I had a howto to go by, so do you all think people would be OK with such an installer? Would you find such an installer acceptable for your own personal use?
I'll probably go ahead and write some scripts and tell my fellow Gentoo users what I've done, but I'd appreciate any experiences or thoughts fellow Slashdotters have.

Re:The killer: media players

[FictionPimp]

doesn't totem just use xine-lib?

I'm lucky I didn't have to worry about multimedia support

I just emerged mplayer and win32codecs

and on my ubuntu box I just followed ubuntuguide.org's instructions.

No problems at all.

Re:The killer: media players

[Mad Merlin]

I can't say I've shared your experience, the only dodgy part was getting DVDs to play while I was still using Mandrake, the (well known) trick is to install libdvdread and decss, after that it works perfectly. I'm now using Gentoo, and multimedia is absolutely zero effort to get working. Portage has pulled in all of the codecs (win32 + others) for me automagically and I have yet to find a video I can't play, the same goes for DVDs.

Re:The killer: media players

[kharchenko]

In my experience, it's exactly the opposite. I find that while mplayer can handle any format I dish out (and I play a lot!), windblowz media player half of the time refuses to play video files, doing a useless "web-services driver lookup". I guess those formats aren't MS-approved. Tough shit. I've gone to some lengths and downloaded driver packs that all divx/xvid/whatever flavors - and it still wouldn't work. I won't even get started with subtitle support.

Re:The killer: media players

[Chizz44]

This is my first post, so be gentle....

That being said, I am posting this from a Mandrake/Mandriva (whatever they wanna call it) box, and I would hardly classify myself as a "seasoned Linux guru". Yes, I come home every night and do an automatic urpmi.update -a and urpmi --auto-select, but I have never had a problem with running any and all the vidoes that I want; DVD's, MPEG's, AVI's and ...well, that's all the formats that pr0n usually comes in, so I'm good. My preference is Kaffiene, that gets borked by an update, I switch to Mplayer for a day or two until the RPM problems are sorted out, and if I have to, I'll drop all the way down to Xine...What I've found as a MCSE who makes a living supporting Windows machines (thank the power's that be for Windows), is that problems in Linux can always be solved and it can be tweaked by someone willing to spend a bit of time and concentrated thought to fix it. Ready for the world, I don't think so, unless you have a cookie cutter environement, where you can deploy a distro en masse, and then convince the users that not being able to install Webshots! is not the end of the world....I've tried a few distros and I always go to setup file sharing and video playback first, and have yet to fail with the Xine/Mplayer combo...it wasn't PnP, but it can just about always be done by the patient. Now I will close my eyes and prepare to get slammed by Slashdot!

Re:The killer: media players

[ithicine]

One of the many reasons I use Linux is because of the multimedia support. WMP doesn't seem to come equipped to play DVDs; when I insert a disc, it cries, screams, and runs home to mommy, who doesn't have any codecs to give. On the other hand, everything is always perfect with xine. It even loads faster than WMP. Come to think of it, I have yet to run into a video format that xine wouldn't play.

It doesn't even seem to (in my case) require much special setup if anything. It worked great in Gentoo, and just dandy under Ubuntu. No problems either way... though playing videos sure as hell was a problem not all that long ago. The last time I remember running into these problems was back when Mandrake 6.0 was cutting edge.

But hey, you're right that people run into problems. The fact that I haven't (in at least the last year) doesn't speak for everyone else's experience. So really, what I'd like to know is why people are having such a hard time when they don't have to.

Re:The killer: media players

[grumling]

Great. Now, for the rest of the world running Windows, how the hell are we going to figure all this out? See, I wanted to play an mpeg 2 file on my Windows machine. I downloaded the file, double clicked on it and it automagically opened in media player and played. I didn't have to load anything else, didn't have to add "pub/linux/misc/suser-guru/rpm/9.3 on ftp.gwdg.de" or "MPlayer, w32codec-all, mplayerplug-in (for Mozilla/Firefox), and kmplayer (KDE frontend for MPlayer/FFMpeg/Xine and much cleaner than the default MPlayer GUI)"

I realize there's a little bit of humor in your post, but COME ON! Playing a multimedia file should be a no brainer on any desktop operating system.

On a related note, I spent the better part of a month attempting to get Xastir running on a basic Mandrake install. I ended up having to complile a kernel (which always seems to mess things up in unexpected ways), screw around with low level soundcard stuff, and I still didn't get it working. So, I put Win98 back as the default boot, installed UI-View32 and it's been running without a hitch for a few months now. I know I'm not the smartest guy in the room, but I have been around computers all my life, starting with a PDP-8e that I programmed from the front panel. One would think I could get a simple application to load. And why is it that an .rpm package needs to have dependenancies? Just load the darn things. If the package needs 'em, go get 'em (or better yet, include them with the package). What a pain, and a perfect example of why Linux will never be a good OS for the masses -the folks developing it are not developing for the masses, but for themselves.

Re:The killer: media players

[reclusivemonkey]

and the only DVD playback I have is through MPlayer and I still can't get a GUI working on MPlayer

RTFRM... ./configure --enable-gui

Re:The killer: media players

[linuxpoweredtrekkie]

Just FYI incase your reading this, rather than compiling things simply add: http://packman.iu-bremen.de/suse/9.3/ as a source for the yast package manager as described here http://susewiki.apanela.com/tutorials:yastsources Then you can install the w32codecs, and xine and mplayer etc without any crippling

Re:The killer: media players

[Bambi Dee]

It's pretty easy to figure out because so many people are pissed off about it. :}

But I wasn't trying to prove or refute the desktop/multimedia-worthiness of Linux or the point the original poster made. (Dualhead? Edit xorg.conf and Xresources; instructions found on a Gentoo and a Mozilla website. And PDFs and Xine videos are still twice as wide as they should be. Compile something? Track down a gajillion libs and -devel packages and pray your autoconf is 1.9.whatever instead of 1.9.the_other. Scanning? First locate the firmware and edit some script regarding its whereabouts. Et cetera. No, it's not been a smooth ride.)

I was just hoping that maybe, perhaps, this information is in some way useful to the original poster (Xine issues, no GUI with MPlayer). He's probably fifty times more experienced than I am, but knowing a few extra repositories does make SuSE-life much easier.

Incidentally, I didn't really find it that much easier with Windows until I discovered "codec packs" bundling every codec under the sun with Media Player Classic and Quicktime and Real alternatives. A fresh install won't play most of my movie files either, not to mention niche or retro audio formats from Ogg Vorbis or FLAC down to XM or SID. Yeah, I do understand those aren't quite as relevant as MP3 or DVD support. But it took me some googling in either case.

Re:The killer: media players

[smannell]

I had similar problems trying to get Totem working when I installed Suse 9.3. In the end I installed Kaffeine and everything worked fine; even Windows media files. I'm not saying Suse doesn't need improvement in the multimedia area; it definately does. I just thought I'd offer an alternative that worked well for me.

Re:The killer: media players

[Stevyn]

I have found similar results with gentoo. A few use flags and emerge kplayer and it will figure out everything to do from there. Gentoo may have its shortcomings in other areas, but software configuration and integration is very good. Anyone who has pulled their hair out trying to get software to coexist with each other on other distros may want to look into gentoo.

Re:The killer: media players

[RazzleDazzle]

GUI for MPlayer was super easy for me to install on Gentoo.

1. Open shell
2. $ emerge sync
3. $ emerge kmplayer

dvd playback, wmv, qt, mpg, avi, mp3, etc. they all work flawlessly for me. Though I generally use xmms for mp3/ogg playback because the playlisting and streaming is easier.

I also installed the mplayer browser plugin so mplayer can be embedded in firefox, konqueror, maybe even opera.

Re:The killer: media players

[MrNemesis]

Whilst I have absolutely no problems getting multimedia to play back on my system, I still have one thing to say:

IMHO media players for Linux suck.

There, I said it. As far s features go, Linux media players seem almost unsurpassed. There's lots of high quality code that manages to play back my movies using less CPU than my windows partition, and give me higher quality video along with it, as well an inbuilt support for subtitles, remote controls, DVD's... the works. Brilliant.

But the media frontend/GUI's are appalling. I may have been spoilt by having used Media Player Classic on windows for the past three years, but is there any technical reason we can't have a GUI like that in Linux? A nice, simple interface with hordes of functionality hidden beneath the surface for anyone who needs it? Instead we get "skinnable" Hi-Fi-esque (why?) GUI's with tiny, fiddly buttons that seem to require a zillion different mouse clicks, key presses and command line options before you can cajole them into doing what you want.

At the moment, the only media player I've found that comes remotely close is Totem which seems to be a sort of clone of MPC, but it's still nowhere near as usable (it has the drag'n'drop playlist and the double-click-to-fullscreen I want, but no hover-up control panel in fullscreen) and if you're not a GNOME user it still requires a boatload of other apps and services to be installed as dependencies (but then GNOME bloat is another rant in itself). Xine-ui is probably the second best IMHO, and that's not saying much; silly, ugly, built-in libs and no in-movie playback controls. mplayer's GTK (not even GTK2) frontend gmplayer is abysmally hard to use and has virtually no options. Whilst I understand that these apps are entirely volunteer-driven, I find it astonishing that the volunteers are happy with them.

And before you criticise, yes I am actually learning C++ so that I can help make a media player GUI I can live with. Althgouh I don't expect that'll stop me being ritually ignored/modden into oblivion for daring to question Linux's usability.

Re:The killer: media players

[IntergalacticWalrus]

Multimedia under Linux is hell because any usable open source media player is violating a shitload of software patents. This isn't the devs' fault, nor is it the distros'. It's just the sad truth that virtually every mainstream codec out there is protected by software patents (even mp3, which most people take for granted, requires an expensive license to decode). The distros can't bundle usable media players because of this, and most media players can't distribute binaries for the same reason. And no, not being US-based isn't a viable excuse.

You mention the idea of a commercial closed-source player. That wouldn't work. It would be too expensive to cover every important codec, not to mention most of them won't accept selling you licenses at all (the two biggest codec owners, Microsoft and Apple, have no interest in seeing Linux get better on the desktop front).

Re:The killer: media players

[WhiteWolf666]

You may have to reinstall... it depends on how much damage compiling the media players from scratch did :)

I'll try and help you through this, however....
1. Reinstall *all* the mplayer and xine packages from the original RPM. Obviously, you won't need to do this if you reinstall your whole system.

2. Go to SuSE YaST Online Update. Get the updates 'multimedia pack 1-4'. If you've already installed them, toggle down to 'All Packages', and 'Refresh (reinstall)' them.

3. Go to http://packman.links2linux.org/?action=122. There is a link to a script there that will download libdvdcss2 and compile it for your system. This will enable dvd playback in the included versions of Mplayer and Xine. Once Xine is capable of playing DVDs, Kaffeine and all the other Xine based players will be capable of it.

The direct link is here http://www.iiv.de/schwinde/buerger/tremmel/downloa ds/script_rpm4/install_libdvdcss2

4. Go to http://packman.links2linux.org/?action=124. Grab xine-lib and w32codecs. This will enable quicktime playback, WMV playback, ASF playback, etc . . .

This support is *not* 100%. You will not be able to play all quicktimes. I haven't figured out why; however, many of the quicktimes will not play on my Mac or Windows systems either. /shrug. Some people encode quicktimes in weird non-standard codecs.

5. Done. Most your media will work. If you find stuff that you cannot play, it means you need to find an RPM for that particular codec. Some are hard to chase down for *any* platform, meaning I've found quicktimes I cannot play on Linux, OS X, or Windows.

You can find a yast-source for packman.links2linux.org on their site somewhere. I recommend downloading the RPMs and installing them one by one, simply because its not always complete, and sometimes I've found packages in their yast-source that do not exist on the site (this can cause screwed up dependencies).

Now, your flash problem. I have no idea why that occurs :) I've never seen anything like it. Are you running the 64-bit version of suse, or the 32-bit one (I have flash working in both)? Did you try to upgrade your flash with the one from Macromedia's site? Have you updated your system to the latest one from YoU?

I suggest trying to reinstall Konqueror and Flash from RPM. I've installed SuSE 9.3 (from the DVD and CD) on about 15 machines, and all have properly working Flash.

Also, you can disable ARTS, as a temporary solution for Mozilla/Firefox. Arts can be disabled by typing killall artsd. Arts can be permantely disabled by using the KDE control panel under sound system. This will allow your sound to work, though, your system should have dmix enabled by default, allowing multiple programs to access the sound card. Have you altered your .asoundrc in your home directory? Keep in mind that the root user does not get an .asoundrc, so dmix is not enabled by default for root. I believe uninstalling and reinstalling your soundcard using YaST will correct this.

I've had the same exact problems as you when I've tried to install this stuff from source. You've got to get all the directory options for ./configure exactly right, or everything breaks. You're much better off using RPMs if you can find them, and for SuSE, packman.links2linux.org is the place to go.

Re:The killer: media players

[pnutjam]

Open YAST and select the option to add installation sources

Add this FTP server:
packman.links2linux.org

Then Add this path:
/pub/packman/suse/9.3/

I have used this ftp server to install kaffeine and I can play dvd's and wmv files without any problems.

Re:Here, use this cheap Windows knockoff.

[Daniel Baumgarten]

"If Linspire looks like Windows, why would anyone switch?"

It's cheaper.

Great review

[NineNine]

I thought the review was great. I'm even considering forking over the $50 to try it.

So there.

Tux tour

[NullProg]

The first time the OS is used Linspire's tutorial program will activate. This is one of most accessible tutorials on any Linux distro and it should be a great help to new users. Though it does not go into extreme depth, it does give the user enough understanding of the OS to get started.

Does anyone remember the disk you used to get when buying an Apple? Apple made a nice tutorial for all thier computers. I'm suprised the Gnome/KDE/whatever teams don't have something like this. It could be a flash animation or an interactive web site. Show them how to cut/paste, system configuration etc. Hell, do a interactive Tux demo.

People love to be shown how to do things rather than reading TFM.

Food for thought, enjoy.

Re:Tux tour

[Daniel Baumgarten]

Apple hasn't done this recently because the GUI is such a commonplace concept. Unix is not a very commonplace concept, however, so an easy-to-find tutorial of some sort in a Linux distro would be nice.

Re:Tux tour

[Chandon Seldon]

Mac OS *is* Unix. In fact, it's even *more Unix* than Linux is.

Re:Tux tour

[Jesus_666]

Yes, but is tries to abstract the user from it as much as possible. While a Mac user can be expected to find his way around Finder, effective usage of bash certainly is not expected.

BTW, such a tutorial might make for a good demo... You put up a computer running the tutorial over and over in a store/on a computer show/etc. People get to play with Linux (as the tutorial should include parts where the user can try out the stuff he gets taught) and you can use it for promotion. For example, when the tutorial tells the user about the difference between middle-clickng and Ctrl+V, it might use phrases like "With Linux, you get not one but two clipboards" or "The intuitive middle-click allows you to cut and paste text without having to use menus or keyboard shortcuts".

On this year's Cebit, Apple pretty much just put up a few Macs and let people play with them. Bang, instant marketing.
While Linux GUI-wise isn't as sexy as OS X, putting up some (faily locked down) Linux boxen and let people play with them might be a good idea. Especially if there is a nice, friendly tutorial that gives you detailed information on how Linux is different from Windows (this is important as many complaints about Linux are that stuff works differently from Windows. It's easy to complain about that if you're unprepared, but the more people already know about Lniux, the less is going to catch them by surprise (and thus agitate them)).

Re:Tux tour

[The MESMERIC]

no problem.
So why not contribute by building these tutorials yourself?

Linspire did it also in Flash.
Puppy Linux did it as HTML files.

Re:Tux tour

[ImaLamer]

I must say that the first distro I paid for was Mandrake 7.2 and it not only came with tutorials but there were online tutorials for common tasks. There was confusion at that time as to what to do with CD-RW drives and changing the settings was all laid out for you with step by step screen shots.

Those are the distros that I like, the ones who answer faq's with detailed fixes and insight. I would think a Wiki or some other type of site could be perfect helping first time users. They can decide to go as deep as they'd like into whatever topic they are looking into.

Re:Tux tour

[http]

It could be a flash animation...

clever hobbitses want to help where iss gun?
but, nullprog is friend, triess to help us learn
nullprog is trickses! wants us to be next to the eye
NO! he tries to fight the undocumentations, is good!
here is gun, preciousss, but where isss bullet?

Linux

[nate nice]

Linux is an amazing kernel regardless of how it's been developed, which actually makes it all the more impressive. The thing is right now there simply are not the resources to develop a competitive desktop operating system based on Linux. Every year Linux gets further behind Mac OS X and soon Microsoft's Vista for typical desktop use in business and homes.

Linux is however superior for servers I think. Everything makes sense. Security, configuration and the many options are at least equal to what is shipped by others and the development tools are fantastic. Nothing as pretty as MS's Visual Studio but functionally Linux can offer anything that MS can. On the desktop, there is no Linux solution that offers the functionality that Windows or OS X have.

I guess I stopped caring about Linux on the desktop a year ago or so. I gladly use it at home to run my various servers but use Win 2000 and OS X based systems for general tasks.

Don't get me wrong, I used Linux as a desktop for s few years and thought it was decent. But after using OS X enough and even Windows 2K I just cannot bring myself to use Linux on a desktop all the time.

Like I said, I enjoy using it for my servers, routing and some programming but it has a ways to go (and a fleeting ways at that) to catch up to commercial offerings. It doesn't take anything away from Linux and you don't have to tell me that Linux can be used as a desktop. I just think Apple and Microsoft provide better systems for day-to-day desktop use. Linux provides equal and better services for networks/servers.

Re:Linux

[Daniel Baumgarten]

Actually, I stopped using Mac OS X for good the other day. Now I exclusively use GNOME 2.8 as my desktop. Not even the latest stable version. I find it very easy to use and very functional, and it doesn't get in my way. I actually like not having to navigate to /Applications to get to all my programs. And since I'm getting a start with making music, I greatly appreciate being able to run programs like BEAST and csound that are either not as well supported on the Mac, or not supported as all.

The moral of the story is that Your Mileage May Vary. Use the whatever is the right tool for the job for YOU. I like the freedom and control offered to me by GNU/Linux, and I appreciate the polish of more recent iterations of Unix desktop environments such as GNOME and KDE. But if you prefer the practically zero configuration offered by such operating systems as Mac OS X or Windows (or even Linspire), by all means, don't feel pressured by us FOSS zealots. I still posit that free/open source software is inherently better than any commercial offering, but of course you're allowed to disagree.

Re:Linux

[plasmacutter]

Hate to beat a dead horse.. but the idea that windows vista will provide a useful desktop experience to any but the most inept home users is ludicrous.

The quantity of DRMthey crammed into this thing will be repellant to anyone who wants to use their computer as more than just an overpriced cd/dvd player (with attached browser).

I personally think anyone who wants to actually use a PC as a PC is going to be repelled by vista and compelled to adopt linux.

I'm a mac addict myself, but despite being "prettier", osX is not particularly further ahead in the user experience from decent gui linux distros.

Re:Linux

[Eideewt]

I, on the other hand, prefer Gnome to a Windows desktop. Having to select "All Programs" to reach most of the applications in the Start Menu really bugs me. It's better now in XP since I can pin things to the Start Menu, but I still don't like it much. I much prefer the way Gnome does it, with a trio of menus (in 2.10) that put most of what I want to do right there, available in a top-level menu, and drawn with large text. I also like having removable storage appear on my desktop when I insert it. Text rendering is just beautiful. I can roll up a window to see behind it and unroll it to use it, all without moving my mouse. I can copy and paste with just my mouse.

Windows just feels clunky and difficult to me in comparison, and ugly too. For some of us, Linux fits on the desktop better than Windows ever has.

Re:Linux

[Jesus_666]

Well, it does run World of Warcraft.

It's strange, but my gaming machine is an iBook running OS X. It's easier to be a Mac gamer than to be a Linux gamer (even if only a little bit).

Oh, and just for the record: I don't play WoW, but it is a small selling point for OS X as compared to Linux, as is every game. I demand entertainment, dammit (although I don't need it badly enough to go back to having Windows as the primary OS).

Re:Linux

[Jesus_666]

True. GUI-wise, Linux already has surpassed Windows, except for a few issues like GTK/Qt integration. When I have to use a Win box, the lack of middle-click pasting always annoys me (this is missing in OS X, too). Windows only has one taskbar - with KDE I never use fewer than three. And the one taskbar can't even hold applets. The icons are small and don't scale well, unlike the SVG stuff I'm used to. The control panel is almost unnavigable in "easy" mode. User/Administrator separation is a true PITA. The Start Menu is a mess - all apps are put into one directory while my K menu is nicely sorted - by default. Gentoo even puts apps in logical places when I install them.

Compared to modern Linux distros, Windows' GUI shows that there have hardly been any major improvements since '95. While the interface felt slick and refined ten years ago, colouring the buttons blue isn't going to cut it anymore today.

Re:Linux

[ElleyKitten]

Don't get me wrong, I used Linux as a desktop for s few years and thought it was decent. But after using OS X enough and even Windows 2K I just cannot bring myself to use Linux on a desktop all the time.

You like Win2k? I hated Win2k. Even WinXP, while it's nice, I'm much happier w/ ubuntu & gnome. I guess everyone's different though.

Re:Linux

[WhiteWolf666]

I find gaming easier on Linux than Mac.

With cedega (www.transgaming.com), WoW just works.

Plus I get Windows-only titles like Half-Life 2.

Re:What would you like in Linux:

[Daniel Baumgarten]

It sounds like you just want Linux to be more like Windows. So why don't you just use Windows? (Linux has BETTER hardware support in general than Windows, by the way. It only runs into trouble when hardware vendors won't cooperate.)

Why pay? Same reason you pay for plumbing.

[ThreeDayMonk]

Why should you pay for GPL software? Simple. Because you don't want to compile it yourself. (No, I don't mean you personally, of course.) It's the same reason as I'd pay for plumbing. I don't want to be elbow-deep in sewage, and I wouldn't have a clue what to do anyway.

The software is free, but that doesn't prevent others from making a profit off services. The GPL specifically allows it. And the point of the CNR service is that it supplies working software to users who either can't or won't compile their own. Is that wrong?

By the way, Windows doesn't come with a compiler. OS X does, but you have to install the development tools specifically. Ubuntu doesn't have the development toolchain in the basic installation. It's not as unusual as you seem to think, at least for a regular-person-targeted OS.

Videolan

[calyptos]

Videolan has worked very, very, well for me. The -only- thing I can find that it won't play is DRM audio/video. I highly recommend it, even has a great GUI and lets u reencode files.

Re:Videolan

[zxking]

I agree whole heartedly. VLC is the best player out there. It can pretty much play any mmedia extension with optimum resolution(especially if you add the divx and xvid codecs). Playing and navigating DVDs is also seamless(as long as you have a DVD decoder!).

I also like the way it integrates a streaming server that you can easily set up. It comes in a compact form with a well thought out and stripped down GUI with intuitive menus. However, this simplicity does not come stand in the way of the complex features behind it such as extending the GUI(if thats what you like, not me), capturing devices, keeping video bookmarks and navigating DVD menus. To top everything off, almost all commands have keyboard shortcuts(customizable)-I don't use the mouse this days.

I believe it is the killer media app. You should definitely check it out. Hey, even the Google guys thought it was good enough to base their video section of it.

Re:Here, use this cheap Windows knockoff.

[SilentShriek]

a) Windows is not free with PCs--it's worked into the price. If you were to purchase the machine with no OS, you'd see the difference. b) There are plenty of cross-platform solutions, e.g., OpenOffice.

Slackware Xine package works great with WMV

[ph43drus]

I'm running Slackware 10.1, but 10.0 also worked (didn't try to get Xine working with any earlier versions).

So:
1) Install Slackware
2) Grab the codecs off of the MPlayer webpage
3) Put them in /usr/lib/win32
4) Play WMV files (and others)
5) ???
6) Profit!

Again, Xine works great under Slackware. All you have to do is grab the codecs off of the MPlayer site and drop them into /usr/lib/win32, and it works with the default Xine package.

Pat's the man. He'd never purposely cripple a package. $25 for the subscription, $40 to just order the CDs as a oneshot. (And yes, I'm a complete Slackware fanboy.)

Jeff

Funny!

[Blakey Rat]

I don't have mod points, but that was funny. Thanks for the laugh on a friday afternoon.

Re:Rather buy XP Home for $70 more!!!!!

[Propaganda13]

Why not buy the OEM version and a piece of hardware for $60-90 total?

Single page view

[That's Unpossible!]

http://www.xyzcomputing.com/index.php?option=conte nt&task=print&id=389&Itemid=2

Re:What would you like in Linux:

[Daniel Baumgarten]

"I just would like that they would fuse or something...*dreams on*"

Yeah, probably not going to happen. Windows and GNU/Linux come from two very different computing paradigms. I predict that you will never see the jargon that is the Unix shell go away, in any distro. Not Gentoo, not Red Hat, not Linspire. Never. It may look cryptic, but it has been refined for decades into the animal it is today, and if you do the sort of work that the shell was designed for, there is no graphical substitute.

Remember as well that easy != Windowsesque. Look at the Mac OS. Though itself and Windows were very similar at a time, they have certainly gone their separate ways. The Mac is still generally considered to be the superior interface. Likewise, Linux desktops are actually pretty easy to use, even though a great deal of them make no significant effort to resemble Windows.

It should also be noted that although graphical configuration is less common in Unices than in desktop operating systems like Windows, this does not make the configuration file wrong. It is a different way of solving a problem, and if Linux were the system with 90% market share, some people would surely complain that Windows lacks easy-to-read configuration files.

Re:Rather buy XP Home for $70 more!!!!!

[Propaganda13]

Noticed after clicking submit that you can buy Linspire 5.0 OEM version for $21.95 at Newegg

Still not my cup of tea, but...

Re:What would you like in Linux:

[Daniel Baumgarten]

Thanks for reaffirming what I just said. Linux has better hardware support than Windows in general, except when hardware vendors do not cooperate. That is to say, when they do not design their hardware on open specs for which Linux hackers can write their own drivers.

Besides video acceleration, the drivers for which are kept notoriously secret, I have never had a significant hardware problem with Linux. Even when the vendor's hardware support is shitty, there's almost always a GPL alternative written by someone who got tired of waiting for the vendor to fix the bugs in the original driver.

Re:This isn't Linux

[markdavis]

That is just plain silly. Indeed just about every Linux distribution is nearly the same, once it is installed. So yes, they are "basically the same". And yes, "Linux" is commonly used to denote an "operating system" and that is fine. Beats the hell out of saying "A GNU/Linux/X/KDE/Gnome/etc Open Source Based Operating System combined by Linspire".

You don't have to "port" Linux applications from one distribution to another. The only thing you really need to know when jumping from one distro to another is what shared libs are available. And you need to consider that even within the SAME distro at different release points.

And MacOS-10 is significantly different from most BSD Distributions. Most notably being the non-X GUI.

Running as r00t

[Anonymous Coward]

...but Linspire sucks because you have to run as r00t.

(yeah, yeah, but I felt someone had to say it)

Issue with MPlayer...

[Xarius]

The BLFS book has excellent sets of instructions for compiling software from scratch, particularly MPlayer. works perfectly for me, and I only really have problems with badly encoded quicktime files, check it out and let me know if you have any success.

Re:Here, use this cheap Windows knockoff.

[Daniel Baumgarten]

With Linspire, that $400 Dell box is $350. That's what I mean. The computers that come pre-bundled with Linspire at Wal-Mart are ultra cheap. Therein lies the attraction.

I'm never paying for an OS again in my life, though. My next computer comes with no operating system, and I'm not paying a dime for the Debian netinst CD I will have ready to load onto it.

Oh, and Debian is one of those distros that offers that uniqueness you were talking about. Linspire is designed to be an easy alternative to Windows with almost no learning curve. Debian and other distros like it are there to make a good OS, period. That's where the innovation happens.

Re:Cheap knock-offs better than Windows?

[SilentShriek]

Linspire could serve as stepping stone for people who are super-comfortable with Windows, who also may be somewhat interested in Linux. Change is often a matter of disconcert. Over time, it could serve to bolster the open source community further, as people migrate over to "cheap Windows knockoffs".

Helix Player 2.0 in development

[kforeman]

I agree with your assessment. Multimedia on Linux is behind other platforms. Real, Linspire, Red Hat, Novell and others aggressively working to change this landscape. Specifically, we are now working on the Helix Player 2.0 https://player.helixcommunity.org/ which provides for support of Windows Media, MP3, RealVideo, RealAudio, Flash, etc as well as other great features like Ad-free radio and Automatic Bandwidth Detection.

I urge all interested to join us by joining the project mailing lists and letting us know if you encounter and bugs in the product.

Kevin Foreman,
GM, Helix

Re:Helix Player 2.0 in development

[black hole sun]

I can't believe I just modded you up. You claim that this is supposed to be a solution? That it plays windows media?

Why then does your FAQ have a list of features that helixplayer DOES NOT support?

# RealAudio 3
# Windows Media (wmv/wma/asf, mms streaming)
# Older QuickTime codecs (eg, Sorenson. New QuickTime supported via MPEG4)
# MPEG1, MPEG2
# Digital CD playback
# DVD

In addition, it doesn't even support mp3's -- the FAQ says you need real player for that!

Tell me again what problems Helix Player is supposed to solve?

Re:Helix Player 2.0 in development

[kforeman]

Good clarification. The FAQ refers to version 1.0 of the Helix Player, which is the open source media player that powered the no-cost RealPlayer 10. The Helix Player 2.0, adds "support" for many more codecs and formats. Note, that in many cases a legal commercial use license will need to be obtained by the Distro in order to ship this "supported" format. So to be clear, the Helix Player is 100% GPL open source. Version 1.0.5 is gold and we are working on version 2.0. The Helix Player powers the no-cost RealPlayer which is a superset and adds the ability to play MP3, RealAudio, RealVideo, Flash, etc. Sorry for the confusion and I look forward to seeing you on the Helix User forums and mailing lists. Kevin

Re:Helix Player 2.0 in development

[rinkjustice]

I've found Helix Player isn't so much a media player as a launchpad for other media players. What's the big deal about that?

I'm tired of all the useless KDE and Gnome multimedia apps in my Applications Menu that don't work, I won't waste my time installing them anymore. Even XMMS, which used to be my fave linux mp3 player has stopped playing mp3's die to some legality. It's no use to anyone now, especially not me!

So far, Realplayer and MPlayer are the only media players worth using nowadays (and MPlayer can be a nightmare to install). Flash from macromedia is supported, but not Shockwave. What gives?

I figure movies and streaming audio/video should be ready to go, even from a fresh install. Linux cannot proceed without it.

Re:Helix Player 2.0 in development

[DashEvil]

I'd like to point out that XMMS didn't drop mp3 support. Distributions like RedHat and Fedora strip the mp3 support out.

I'll install xmms from source, and the latest versions are of great use to me.

Re:Helix Player 2.0 in development

[Jesus_666]

Multimedia on Linux is behind other platforms.

Multimedia on Linux is behind Windows, but ahead of OS X. For example I can play most Windows Media files on my Linux box, but not on the iBook - even if I open the files in the Windows Media Player. (Actually, I havent't yet encountered a file that the Mac WMP can play.) If the current Mac WMP doesn't support the current WM codec then it's pretty pointless to install it.
It's similar with other codecs - without VLC, I couldn't play any Windows Media encoded video files as the WMP refuses to play them and there either are no QuickTime plugins or they don't work. (And no, I didn't get the installation wrong. It's pretty hard to do that on a Mac.)


Compare that to Linux, where you can often just type in emerge/apt-get install/yum install <list of media codec packages> and get a system capable of playing 98% of all video files with minimal hassle.
Sure, you need to know how the names of the packages are and some distros require you to include the necessary repositories because of licensing issues. But that's a price I'm ready to pay considering that I don't pay a cent for the OS and that the necessary steps to make your distro media-ready are usually well-documented and tutorials are easily found via Google.


Maybe it would be an idea to include stuff like libdecss or an MP3 decoder in the default repositories and add a flag that keeps people from checking them out without jumping through (tiny) hoops?
For example, the Portage system allows packages to be "masked" (i.e. flagged as non-installable) for various reasons. It would be easy to add an "offensive" keyword for packages that might violate patents etc. Other systems might have similar functions (such as moving the offensive stuff to a separate repo that is included by default but disabled - I think Ubuntu does things this way).
If someone really wants a media-capable Linux and doesn't care about patents (= is a normal home user), he can enable the repository/remove the mask/do something else to enable the offensive packages, probably with an action as simple as ticking a checkbox in a package manager GUI. Real power-user distros might even require the user to enable a few commented-out lines in a config file or add "offensive-packages" to $USE.

Linux isn't that far behind Windows, media-wise. It's just tricky to get the stuff to work and patents and other restrictions certainly don't help. With some work, getting a Linux capable of playing almost anything might become easier than making Windows media-ready.

Re:Helix Player 2.0 in development

[stuntpope]

That's curious about WMP on OS X. I recently got a Mac mini, installed Windows Media Player on it, and haven't noticed problems. I can watch CNN video with an embedded WM player, the included sample video plays, and content from WindowsMedia.com works.

OTOH, my Slackware 10.1 install (default, no multimedia tweaks) can play about a quarter of windows media files through Totem (xine). Mostly, though, they throw a codec error.

Re:What would you like in Linux:

[almostinsane]

But the hacked drivers never use the hardware to its full potential. They don't have the specs so how could they? The linux drivers are enough to get by and make it work but you never get what you paid for.

Re:What would you like in Linux:

[Bambi Dee]

The graphical configuration tools in (say) SuSE or Mandrake already work pretty well, but it might help if they'd actively guide you toward the relevant config files just in case the need arises (as it inevitably does; or maybe that's just me).

Obviously it's not particularly clear for a 'newbie' what file you're supposed to mess around with, or how (how could you possibly guess that a non-commented option in /etc/X11/Xresources can fix the font size problem in the Firefox UI?).

So I wish YAST and its ilk had (a) an "open config file in text editor" button, and (b) a "view config file before/after applying changes" option. Those would help me more than pretending no manual editing is necessary, and they'd put me on the right track (even if it's just by giving me an idea what to google for.)

Why not have our cake and eat it too?

no problem

[hawk]

After all,
> This is one of most accessible tutorials on any Linux distro

Why, that's as fully reassuring as, "one of the least violent mob enforcers" . . .

:)

hawk

Re:Here, use this cheap Windows knockoff.

[westlake]

a) Windows is not free with PCs--it's worked into the price. If you were to purchase the machine with no OS, you'd see the difference

With a magnifying glass. Maybe. Nothing to lose sleep over.

Marble Blast Gold is an insanely boring freeware g

[crivens]

"As it turns out Marble Blast Gold is an insanely boring freeware game"

I stopped reading at this point as it was an insanely boring review.

You're fired.

[Stauf]

I'm sorry, you said "skillz". Clearly, a violation of section 4.

You can turn in your punchcards on the way out.

Review of the review review review

[Stauf]

"Review of the review review" was a reasonable review of the Linspire review review. However, the reviewer of the review's review was more then a little brief, and skimmed right over a few of his most important points. He claims to have "especially enjoyed the comments" about length and screenshots, however he neglected to back them up with any quotes or specific points from the original review of the review; leaving the audience to wonder exactly what it was he was agreeing with (many of us prefer to read the review's review before reading the review of the review).

However, the author, jlapier, did raise some interesting points about the conclusion of the initial review's review. He claimed that it was "anti-climatic", and backed up his claims with a witty reference to the review's review's final point.

A well written, snappy review. Even though it suffered a little without reference to his primary material.

3.5 / 5

Re:Review of the review review review

[joshjoneswas]

Just kidding.... i'm not "that guy" :)

Grandparent is right

[poofyhairguy82]

Beats the hell out of saying "A GNU/Linux/X/KDE/Gnome/etc Open Source Based Operating System combined by Linspire".

No....call it Linspire, an OS. The grandparent is right. Linspire uses the Linux kernel and GNU (and other) applications, but it is not "Linux." Using Linux as a brand for all the Distros is confusing to some..the differences might be small to some, but most of the major ones are different enough to be their OS. Mandiva OS. SuSe OS (they call it that I think). Fedora OS. Ubuntu OS. etc.

Most of the major distros provide drivers and programs and whatever people need in some sort of package system.

As RMS says, Linux is a kernel.

Mepis

[zogger]

If you get Roblimo's "point and click linux", you get a dvd with him going through the tutorial, as well as the distro. Saved me a ton of tech calls from the other room from my GF.. I can go "n00b, RTFM AND WTFDVD" heh. I have both a simply mepis and a linspire live cd, and I must say the mepis works marginally better than the linspire, but they are very close to being equally easy. With that said for me I'd rather a full Knoppix for a live CD, but for newbs, Mepis and Linspire are perfectly acceptable. Well, anyone really, they are both decent Linuxes. Never tried Xandros so can't comment. Don't really care for Ubuntu.

Neither made my new all-in-one USB printer work though....grumble. Thought I had the model number correct, transposed it in my mind, got one that just doesn't work. Back to de sto'....Not jumping through hoops with hardware any longer. I'll spend and hour or two, after that, nope. This is 2005, stuff should just work. Including ME, double heh.

Problem with all Linux Distros I have seen.

[jellomizer]

For home users they are all trying to be as user friendly as Windows. I don't see why more Linux developers are not focusing to make Linux as easy to use as a Mac. This would have a couple real advantages. First you are able to keep up with Windows interface changes because they just try to copy what apple does anyways. Secondly OS X architecturally is much closer to Linux then windows is. So some of the development would be easier. If Linux could be the OS X for the rest of the PCs then Linux could have a very strong advantage in the market. But because all the distros are so focused on making a Windows Clone it just will never be as good as windows for interface.

RMS quote: "freedom or diferent master"

[at_slashdot]

Although the basic GNU/Linux system is free software, most of the GNU/Linux versions now available include a small amount of non-free software--just enough to spoil them as a way to attain freedom. But Linspire is in a class by itself; large and important parts of this system are non-free. No other GNU/Linux distribution has backslided so far away from freedom. Switching from MS Windows to Linspire does not bring you to freedom, it just gets you a different master.

https://e.ututo.org.ar/xp/modules/news/article.php ?storyid=144

Linux is...

[The Monster]

As RMS says, Linux is a kernel.

I have gone so far as to say that 'Linux' is actually a toolkit for building a kernel, and with 'GNU' is a collection of tools for building an operating system. Fedora uses those tools one way, Debian another, and Linspire quite another entirely.

I doubt that the kernel running on very many Linux systems is the same as on this laptop, but on my XP machine at work, I can confidently say that it's the exact kernel used by millions.

Xandros?

[psyon1]

what about Xandros?

Re:Rather buy XP Home for $70 more!!!!!

[smchris]

Surely you're pulling our leg. Nobody _wants_ to pay for XP _home_!

Re:KPlayer

[QuantaStarFire]

Blame Microsoft. And people who choose to use WMVs.

That's a gigantic list of asses to kick, and unless you have some good ideas on how to afford all those plane tickets and get past security, I'll just stick with MPlayer. :P

Mandrake, Suse and Mandrake

[fishlet]

I found your comment insightful but didn't have any mod points to say so.

I recently thought i'd try abandoning Mandrake and switched to Suse (9.3) as well). I read the good reviews and thought Novell's backing might have done it some good. Oh what a mistake that was. As you said, there was virtually no multimedia support. Then in my case, after doing the automatic updates my NVIDIA 3D drivers would refuse to install. Curiously too, Everything seemed significantly slower. Apps would take longer to start and the initial boot time was almost double what it took Mandrake. Granted this is affected somewhat by what services you choose to run but in each case I had it fairly trimmed down. Needless to say, I'm back on Mandrake and it has been working reasonably well.

Use VLC media player

[Artemis3]

You should really use VLC media player. I even use the win32 port on many windows machines because it doesn't need codecs or special format support. Its fast and light on resources.

The rest of your issues seem distro related. You should try Ubuntu (with Totem-xine, see the Ubuntu guide) or any other friendly distro. Just because something costs money, it doesn't mean its any better.

Re:The killer: media players use apt-get

[nonsense28sal]

Why compile from scratch? Get apt-get! Here's a link on how to set up apt-get and then here's another link on how to set up your /etc/apt/sources.list files. Then just apt-get install mplayer, windows codex and lame. I use SuSE 9.3 and it plays multimedia better than my WinXP box any day of the week. BTW...you did not need to pay $100 for SuSE 9.3. You could have done a network install for free.

Re:Marble Blast Gold is an insanely boring freewar

[Jesus_666]

Besides, we all know that Windows ships with action-packed games such as Minesweeper or FreeCell. I can see why the reviewer was disappointed by (the IMO quite entertaining) Marbe Blast Gold. You just can't expect to keep up with the apex of modern gaming technology that is Solitaire.

Re:Here, use this cheap Windows knockoff.

[dave420]

In every sense of the word :)

Free copy of Linspire

[Teja]

All you have to do is enter the code: LINDOWS When you select that you want to download a copy (not a hard copy of the CD).

Linspire / Tiny bundling

[flibble-san]

"The company, which was formerly known as Lindows, has gotten a lot of press for including their OS with pre-bundled computers"
Talking of which, now that Tiny computers have gone bust - who will bundle Linspire on PCs in the UK? Tiny was the only PC manufacturer in the UK to do this. I wonder what Linspires plans are for this...?

Liar! 10 years old are better on Linux

[bluGill]

You are a liar. I have seen 10 year olds on computers. They are better with linux. Same point and click interface, plus the programs they run don't demand administrator, so they never accidently screw up the system or delete mom's files.

On Microsoft Windows their programs only run with administrator. Once they are done with the game they start playing with things, randomly dragging files around until the system won't run. (though XP hides system files, it is an easy click to unhide them - and when playing they might do that)

You 10 year old sister will not be typing those cryptic commands. (well she might, but only if you trust her with root, but lets assume she doesn't care) Everything she wants to do can be done from either the GNOME or KDE desktop.