It's possible to play all of those things perfectly legally on Ubuntu. I suppose MP3 is the one most people will need. Luckily, a nice company called Fluendo have partnered with Ubuntu to provide free and legal MP3 decoders for all Ubuntu users. It's been a while since I did a fresh install but I believe Ubuntu offers to install these automatically when you first try to play an MP3 with RhythmBox or Totem.
DVD and WMA are more complicated and, yuck, who uses WMA anyway? But, again, Fluendo offer a fully licensed DVD Player for Linux for a pretty reasonable €20. They also offer fully licensed codecs for other formats like WMA, etc.
And all of this will soon be a moot point as some of the MP3 patents have expired already and the remaining ones should be expiring pretty much everywhere in the next couple of years.
As a Ubuntu user, I can say precisely 0% of the software on my PC is pirated AND I have no issues with malware, viruses, trojans, etc. (according to ClamAV anyway). In fact, probably 99% of the software I run is free & open source. The only proprietary software I use for the time being is Adobe Flash and the ATI Radeon driver, both legally obtained.
I know we'd all like to say that there is no link between illegally copied software (I refuse to use the word "pirated") and malware, but I'm sure we've all seen instances where relatives' PCs got infected by software downloaded from Kazaa, etc.
What really surprises me is that, when given the choice between maybe catching viruses or getting prosecuted for downloading/installing illegal software and using the free and legal open source equivalent, so many people still choose to download their software illegally. I have to say, as a full-time user and software developer, Ubuntu's offering is really, really well put-together and a pleasure to use.
Alright, I'll bite. When was the last time you used Linux? Every modern distribution has some form of package management. I'm a Ubuntu user. Here are the steps I used to install GTKPod:
Start Synaptic (it's under System | Administration | Synaptic Package Manager)
Find GTKPod in the list of installable applications and check a checkbox to indicate that you want to install it.
Click "Apply". At this point, the programme is downloaded to the computer and installed.
Now, please remind me, how is this more difficult than Windows? The same process under Windows is longer and less secure. All packages from Ubuntu's repositories are digitally signed. Can the same be said for the random executable you just downloaded from a web site?
There are so many software patents nowadays, I'm sure it's impossible to write all but the simplest software without treading on somebody's patent. But to suggest that distro owners should knowingly violate patents is kind of negligent.
The patents are only valid in the US and Japan
I know they're slightly biased, but on the MP3 Licensing web site, there's an extensive list of patents which have been granted in an equally extensive list of countries.
The point is moot in 3 years anyway when the patent expires. So, there's no time to popularize ogg if that's what they're attempting.
Again, I'd refer you to the MP3 Licensing web page. If you assume a patent duration of 20 years from filing, the first patents may have begun to expire but there's still quite a number of years to go until all the ones necessary to implement a full-featured decoder will have expired.
I'm all for keeping things 100% FLOSS, but as long as a piece of software has source code and is freely licenced then personally I don't care if it violates patents. Its one thing being forced by law not to use MP3 playback, but voluntarily removing it preemptively...isn't that a little like jumping off a cliff to avoid getting pushed off?
Apparently quite a number of the big free distros have legal teams who would disagree with you. From what I've used, neither Fedora nor Ubuntu include MP3 playback support and it's precisely for this reason. It's OK you advocating violating patents but these distros are made by non-profit organisations who have a lot to lose if they come on the wrong end of a patent lawsuit. At least they make the effort to make MP3 support available. If you want MP3 support, either pay for a commercial distro or quit whining and take the 2 minutes to install support for your distro. As you say, one day all these patents will have expired and even the free distros will be able to ship with MP3 support out of the box.
Of course, most Linux distros ship with support for 2 excellent audio formats out of the box: Ogg Vorbis and FLAC, both of which are better than MP3. Ogg Vorbis is a lossy CODEC which provides better quality than MP3 at a lower bitrate. FLAC is the lossless CODEC and provides CD quality with 30-60% compression. Neither contain any patents that we know of (that in itself is important) and both work great on Windows too.
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It's possible to play all of those things perfectly legally on Ubuntu. I suppose MP3 is the one most people will need. Luckily, a nice company called Fluendo have partnered with Ubuntu to provide free and legal MP3 decoders for all Ubuntu users. It's been a while since I did a fresh install but I believe Ubuntu offers to install these automatically when you first try to play an MP3 with RhythmBox or Totem.
DVD and WMA are more complicated and, yuck, who uses WMA anyway? But, again, Fluendo offer a fully licensed DVD Player for Linux for a pretty reasonable €20. They also offer fully licensed codecs for other formats like WMA, etc.
And all of this will soon be a moot point as some of the MP3 patents have expired already and the remaining ones should be expiring pretty much everywhere in the next couple of years.
As a Ubuntu user, I can say precisely 0% of the software on my PC is pirated AND I have no issues with malware, viruses, trojans, etc. (according to ClamAV anyway). In fact, probably 99% of the software I run is free & open source. The only proprietary software I use for the time being is Adobe Flash and the ATI Radeon driver, both legally obtained.
I know we'd all like to say that there is no link between illegally copied software (I refuse to use the word "pirated") and malware, but I'm sure we've all seen instances where relatives' PCs got infected by software downloaded from Kazaa, etc.
What really surprises me is that, when given the choice between maybe catching viruses or getting prosecuted for downloading/installing illegal software and using the free and legal open source equivalent, so many people still choose to download their software illegally. I have to say, as a full-time user and software developer, Ubuntu's offering is really, really well put-together and a pleasure to use.
Alright, I'll bite. When was the last time you used Linux? Every modern distribution has some form of package management. I'm a Ubuntu user. Here are the steps I used to install GTKPod:
Now, please remind me, how is this more difficult than Windows? The same process under Windows is longer and less secure. All packages from Ubuntu's repositories are digitally signed. Can the same be said for the random executable you just downloaded from a web site?
There are so many software patents nowadays, I'm sure it's impossible to write all but the simplest software without treading on somebody's patent. But to suggest that distro owners should knowingly violate patents is kind of negligent.
I know they're slightly biased, but on the MP3 Licensing web site, there's an extensive list of patents which have been granted in an equally extensive list of countries.
Again, I'd refer you to the MP3 Licensing web page. If you assume a patent duration of 20 years from filing, the first patents may have begun to expire but there's still quite a number of years to go until all the ones necessary to implement a full-featured decoder will have expired.
Apparently quite a number of the big free distros have legal teams who would disagree with you. From what I've used, neither Fedora nor Ubuntu include MP3 playback support and it's precisely for this reason. It's OK you advocating violating patents but these distros are made by non-profit organisations who have a lot to lose if they come on the wrong end of a patent lawsuit. At least they make the effort to make MP3 support available. If you want MP3 support, either pay for a commercial distro or quit whining and take the 2 minutes to install support for your distro. As you say, one day all these patents will have expired and even the free distros will be able to ship with MP3 support out of the box.
Of course, most Linux distros ship with support for 2 excellent audio formats out of the box: Ogg Vorbis and FLAC, both of which are better than MP3. Ogg Vorbis is a lossy CODEC which provides better quality than MP3 at a lower bitrate. FLAC is the lossless CODEC and provides CD quality with 30-60% compression. Neither contain any patents that we know of (that in itself is important) and both work great on Windows too.
Uncompressed 1080i HDTV in RGB takes up about 1.4 Gbps. Where do I sign up :D
Managed to find this on the Lindows site: the full Python source code as released under the GPL, no less:
LSongs
LPhoto