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One |(in my opinion) excellent player that you seem to have missed is Xine (link: http://xinehq.de/ ). Xine is a fully featured media player, with excellent DVD support. Almost just to show off the xine back end, Totem is based on Xine, as is Kaffiene. If you want a small, fast media player which is easily skinable and when you've installed the back end it can be used for other media players as well, xine is for you.
After 10 years of messing with Linux in the workplace as both an Admin and a desktop user I have come to the following conclusions:
1. You have to pay people to write software, a bunch of kids wired on whatever writing code just doesn't do it.
2. VLC is the best of the bunch because it started as a project at Ecole Centrelae Paris, a real technical university, and thanks to the French laws, codec development was unrestricted. VLC was managed and is really the best under Windows as well as Linux, because the project continues with direction and suprevision.
The Linux desktop interfaces, KDE and Gnome are now suffering code bloat, just like the Vista interface, without the refinement. KDE and Gnome, have gotten better throughout the years but are still a bit awkward. Yes they are easy to configure and repair through the /etc directory, but they still do not have the oob (Out Of Box) experience that many Windows products have.
UBUNTU is a fraud, the interface is none past any other Linux, and as far as I can see, Red Hat is the only company that still does innovative research, the Red Hat Repos are far beyond Ubuntu.
For a little while I ran Vista Ultimate, drivers for Vista kept failing, graphics card drivers (Nvidia GeForce 8500), printer drivers and such, so I went back to XP Pro, which ahs far less code bloat and I dual boot with Redhat Fedora 6, a good OS. I tried Mandrake subscription service for a year, it was miserable.
Red Hat along with VLC, XMMS and a good graphics driver is all you really need for the Linux experience. My Linux AlSA driver does a great job with my Soundblaster X-Fi Audio extreme, and it has no problem in 64 Bit dual core land, my CPU is an AMD 4800+ X2. I have my X-Fi card driving my receiver through a sound blaster digital IO module, a pair of Klipsch La Scala Front channels and Klipsh Heresy rears, it is an awesome experience, but none past the experience I get with my creative drivers under XP.
1. You have to pay people to write software, a bunch of kids wired on whatever writing code just doesn't do it.
2. VLC is the best of the bunch because it started as a project at Ecole Centrelae Paris, a real technical university, and thanks to the French laws, codec development was unrestricted. VLC was managed and is really the best under Windows as well as Linux, because the project continues with direction and suprevision.
The Linux desktop interfaces, KDE and Gnome are now suffering code bloat, just like the Vista interface, without the refinement. KDE and Gnome, have gotten better throughout the years but are still a bit awkward. Yes they are easy to configure and repair through the /etc directory, but they still do not have the oob (Out Of Box) experience that many Windows products have.
UBUNTU is a fraud, the interface is none past any other Linux, and as far as I can see, Red Hat is the only company that still does innovative research, the Red Hat Repos are far beyond Ubuntu.
For a little while I ran Vista Ultimate, drivers for Vista kept failing, graphics card drivers (Nvidia GeForce 8500), printer drivers and such, so I went back to XP Pro, which ahs far less code bloat and I dual boot with Redhat Fedora 6, a good OS. I tried Mandrake subscription service for a year, it was miserable.
Red Hat along with VLC, XMMS and a good graphics driver is all you really need for the Linux experience. My Linux AlSA driver does a great job with my Soundblaster X-Fi Audio extreme, and it has no problem in 64 Bit dual core land, my CPU is an AMD 4800+ X2. I have my X-Fi card driving my receiver through a sound blaster digital IO module, a pair of Klipsch La Scala Front channels and Klipsh Heresy rears, it is an awesome experience, but none past the experience I get with my creative drivers under XP.
Everyone should write to this sites asking way are they only supporting one type of system and not an other, I have done that in the past and they actually respond back and in most of the case they change the support and add other systems.
Silly (to not say 'lame') article.
For many years already the problem with media support in Linux has been a legal one instead of technical.
For many years already the problem with media support in Linux has been a legal one instead of technical.
I'm not a Linux user, but I'm hoping to get started with digital music soon. Much of the background information you provided appears to apply equally to Windows-based media players. Thanks for the info.
I do have one question. Just below Figure B, you say:
"In my case, I'm obviously using the nvidia driver."
Yes, that's obvious, but I don't see a selection for NVidia in Figure B. Which of the seven driver options displayed did you select, and how did knowing you're using an NVidia driver translate into the selection you made?
I do have one question. Just below Figure B, you say:
"In my case, I'm obviously using the nvidia driver."
Yes, that's obvious, but I don't see a selection for NVidia in Figure B. Which of the seven driver options displayed did you select, and how did knowing you're using an NVidia driver translate into the selection you made?
he would have used the gl driver.
nvidia chipset cards are opengl enabled.
depending on the specific card, he may have used the gl2 option, which has more functionality that is only supported by the higher end opengl cards.
nvidia chipset cards are opengl enabled.
depending on the specific card, he may have used the gl2 option, which has more functionality that is only supported by the higher end opengl cards.
"nvidia chipset cards are opengl enabled."
Okay, how would I find this out if I didn't know? Is there a reference table somewhere telling you what driver to use for a selected make / model of card?
All this is purely theoretical on my part, especially since Jack noted this is an older tool and not his player of choice. I'm trying to get a grasp on how a Linux users gets from a given hardware component to the appropriate driver. This isn't necessarily limited to video cards.
Okay, how would I find this out if I didn't know? Is there a reference table somewhere telling you what driver to use for a selected make / model of card?
All this is purely theoretical on my part, especially since Jack noted this is an older tool and not his player of choice. I'm trying to get a grasp on how a Linux users gets from a given hardware component to the appropriate driver. This isn't necessarily limited to video cards.
with most current distros, it is only wireless cards and webcams that the distro doesn't set up correctly during the install, no tweaking needed.
[ for most hardware commonly used in desktop systems ]
a few distros have really good interactive config utilities that you can use to verify that everything is working right before actually rebooting after the install, Mandriva's graphic installer being one of the better that way.
the most common way we find out what works, copy a mostly functional config file to a safe place and run the config tool and change stuff around until we either get nothing at all or it works perfectly, then look at the new file and see what settings give us the functionality we want.
[ get nothing, copy the original config back and try again
]
The days of fighting to get hardware working under linux are mostly gone.
[ for most hardware commonly used in desktop systems ]
a few distros have really good interactive config utilities that you can use to verify that everything is working right before actually rebooting after the install, Mandriva's graphic installer being one of the better that way.
the most common way we find out what works, copy a mostly functional config file to a safe place and run the config tool and change stuff around until we either get nothing at all or it works perfectly, then look at the new file and see what settings give us the functionality we want.
[ get nothing, copy the original config back and try again
]The days of fighting to get hardware working under linux are mostly gone.
hwinfo --gfxcard will tell you what video card you have and the current drivers you are using.
What is not being told as Palmetto asked is how does the user get from A to B.
With most distro's, if you sudo, unless you first set up sudo you get nothing, so you have to su.
What Palmetto is asking, from my point of view, is how the novice user would find this info out. The novice user generally will not know about man pages and probably will not know to Google Howto:.
A Linux installation is not as simple as you make others to believe, especially if that user is a novice.
What is not being told as Palmetto asked is how does the user get from A to B.
With most distro's, if you sudo, unless you first set up sudo you get nothing, so you have to su.
What Palmetto is asking, from my point of view, is how the novice user would find this info out. The novice user generally will not know about man pages and probably will not know to Google Howto:.
A Linux installation is not as simple as you make others to believe, especially if that user is a novice.
"hwinfo --gfxcard will tell you what video card you have and the current drivers you are using."
Am I to understand "hwinfo --gfxcard" is a command? I ask because I don't have a Linux system running at the moment. What does sudo or su have to do with it? Must I have root access to run the hwinfo command?
I think we're all in agreement that configuring multimedia isn't a walk in the park. If it was, Jack wouldn't have needed to write the article in the first place. However, I don't know that it's any easier under Windows. I've lost count of the number of times a Windows-based media player goes looking for codec and can't find it. Then what does the novice multimedia user do?
Am I to understand "hwinfo --gfxcard" is a command? I ask because I don't have a Linux system running at the moment. What does sudo or su have to do with it? Must I have root access to run the hwinfo command?
I think we're all in agreement that configuring multimedia isn't a walk in the park. If it was, Jack wouldn't have needed to write the article in the first place. However, I don't know that it's any easier under Windows. I've lost count of the number of times a Windows-based media player goes looking for codec and can't find it. Then what does the novice multimedia user do?
Yes hwinfo is a Linux command, --gfxcard is a command flag. There are several flags for hwinfo that will return most of the system information. I would suggest either Googling hwinfo or finding a Linux box and running either hwinfo, hwinfo --all, or if you just want a listing of the commands hwinfo --help; a more detailed listing can be read from the man pages - 'man hwinfo'.
Some of these flags are --cpu, --sound, --mem, etc. IF I recall correctly, there are about 15. Since I am on a Windows box at the moment, I cannot tell for sure.
You do not necessarily have to sudo or su to use the command, however my experience is that unless you run it from root you do not get a complete response and some areas will be prohibited.
If you wish I can PM them to you later.
Some of these flags are --cpu, --sound, --mem, etc. IF I recall correctly, there are about 15. Since I am on a Windows box at the moment, I cannot tell for sure.
You do not necessarily have to sudo or su to use the command, however my experience is that unless you run it from root you do not get a complete response and some areas will be prohibited.
If you wish I can PM them to you later.
uses an activex control to check for the flash player version for their video content.
then, the real fun part, I can watch ABC in Canada, but I can't watch any video content on ABC.com, because I'm in Canada.
what a really stupid thing that is.
[ both using activex on a website and saying that I can only watch ABC's programming from my television set ]
then, the real fun part, I can watch ABC in Canada, but I can't watch any video content on ABC.com, because I'm in Canada.
what a really stupid thing that is.
[ both using activex on a website and saying that I can only watch ABC's programming from my television set ]
ok article, doesnt include xine based players amd popular audio players like amarok (
which is the best audio player ) , songbird - a web based audio player.
which is the best audio player ) , songbird - a web based audio player.
If there are no hurdles, why kernel developers think that sound is a priority?
The problem is that YES, it is possible to play sound, but in too many ways. Thus, different programs do not play well together. Playing sound from 2 sources may be problematic, recording sound from a software source is normally problematic, from 2 sources of different kind - usually absolutely impossible.
Just look HOW the sound is played - oss, alsa, aRts, Jack - it is a mess and Linux sound sucks big time. For now.
The problem is that YES, it is possible to play sound, but in too many ways. Thus, different programs do not play well together. Playing sound from 2 sources may be problematic, recording sound from a software source is normally problematic, from 2 sources of different kind - usually absolutely impossible.
Just look HOW the sound is played - oss, alsa, aRts, Jack - it is a mess and Linux sound sucks big time. For now.
You can use Automatix to download most of your multimedia files and codec so you can run DVD movies etc.
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