Comments on: Why Linux don’t support mp3 and selected wifi cards out of the box?

By: hena

hena — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 08:14:13 +0000

hai every one
i’m just the beginner in linux .i use fedora(red hat)
my music player shows an error that “some decoder are missing” &
can anybody give some suggestion.?…

By: shaun p

shaun p — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 20:54:05 +0000

Actually, Ubuntu is a South African distro. By Mark Shuttleworth, the bloke who sold his Thawte company to Verisign years ago. He is a Russian Cosmonaut (paid $20 million for the privilege) and billionairre (dollar). His HQ is in London. Mark was born and went to uni in SA.

By: Ricky

Ricky — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 19:50:28 +0000

Hmm, ‘Most major distros are made in the U.S’.

That sounds a lie. Most popular ones are actually European. Take [K/X/Edu]Ubuntu, it’s British (well, Isle of Man but it’s still a British territory and their main unregistered headquarters is in London) and openSuSE is German along with Mandriva from France.

By: gibin george

gibin george — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 05:44:43 +0000

also i can’t play mp3 as well as mpeg in linux.encoder not installed

By: bjb_nyj101

bjb_nyj101 — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 16:28:16 +0000

Some distro’s do, some don’t.

openSUSE,MEPIS,PCLinuxOS,Mint,Freespire,Linspire,eLive,Antix,Sam.
These disro’s all support mp3 out of the box. Ubuntu has a the restricted drivers manager that pulls down the codecs when you try to play them.

Red Hat/Fedora doesnt include codecs because they ONLY supply FREE (as in freedom) software in their distro and in their repositories.

By: Ted

Ted — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 06:41:17 +0000

and so., communisim was born….

Look it’s quite simple,
STOP BUYING THEIR CRAP….

they give you a “cell phone” that cant’ connect to half the cells cause of “conflict of interest”, mp3 player’s that can only play mp3s for a month, and what’s next, Food that you can’t have cause the FDA says it promotes grass roots?

Look, lemme just say, if you wanna keep THEM happy, keep buying their JUNK “toys”… if you wanna BE happy, give it up… they got NOTHING for you!

What good are those toys? REALLY SIT DOWN AND SERIOUSLY CONSIDER, WHAT THIS CRAP DOES FOR YOU!!!!:?!?!?!?!?!?!??! what is it? and then, consider what “THEY” have to gain by charging for it…

“REBEL” no… not really, (you don’t owe them your alegience…) but if you’re reading this an you’re in america, then… GTFO if you don’t owe your country alegience! GET INVOLVED…. Happless Tecno Weenies!

Let’s start a revolt… how about just going straight linux, and providing our own shizz to OUR OWN community???? well, i’m finally ready… May God Help Us ALL! cause otherwise, we ain’t gotta prayer……

Look, it’s all smoke and mirrors,
i do not lie,
it’s all a flashy flim flam SHOW….
that’s the truth,
These toys do NOTHING for our good…,
move beyond
Ted concurs.

By: darkside9

darkside9 — Tue, 08 May 2007 01:03:27 +0000

I know that it’s a good idea to replace all that licensed crap,like mp3,avi,etc but from the point of view of the end desktop user,i think that sucks to rebuild your entire collection from scrap,even converted from mp3 to ogg.That’s one area where linux will loose,because to many this lack of playng a simple mp3 file on a computer,will eventually make others to not even bother with it!

By: nixcraft

nixcraft — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 22:28:07 +0000

quintin,

Good read and someone really need to fix these problems.

Appreciate your post.

By: quintin

quintin — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 13:37:37 +0000

I think all the people who posted a basic ‘Who cares’ message should read http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/world-domination/world-domination-201.html.

If Eric Raymond can’t give you a reason to care, then step asside while the rest of us get it done.

By: kodok_ijo

kodok_ijo — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 15:30:51 +0000

It’s sucks I can’t play my mp3 files, my dvd collection on linux. that is the reason I not full switch to linux. Ok I can download and install the appropriate files, but what about the dependencies stuff ?? I can use apt-get, yum or other apss, but internet connection in my country is so freakin expensive, it tooks months of works before i can pay 1 month internet bill, dial up ?? I try that, but it’s so freakin slow and very expensive …. any idea how to solve this problem ?? because this kind of issue cause linux penetration in my country so low .

By: tktim

tktim — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 04:39:32 +0000

New Linux desktop users:
Open Source/Free Software replacements:

Vorbis audio compression format digital audio intended to replace MP3.
Speex audio compression format designed for speech / VOIP intended to replace ?
FLAC audio data compression playback and audio archival intended to replace ?
Theora video compression intended to replace MPEG-4 video (e.g., H.264, Xvid and DivX),
RealVideo, WMV Windows Media Video.

Please correct/update as necessary.

By: Justin Silverton

Justin Silverton — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 01:27:09 +0000

“P.S. Show me a Windows machine that will 100% use all your video card �extras�. You can�t, just basic driver support is there, just like every version of Linux I have ever installed. The only difference is no Direct3D on Linux without extra work, but then again, what is DirectX for Microsoft doing??? Can someone say add-on?? ”

The difference is that with windows, you can get video card drivers with all the “extras” directly from the manufacturer.

If linux ever wants to become as popular as windows on the desktop, there needs to be some kind of incentive for hardware manufacturers to develop drivers on it (and requiring it to be open sourced is not one of them..in fact..it is probably one of the main reasons linux is still far behind windows).

By: Egon Spengler

Egon Spengler — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 17:52:10 +0000

For gstreamer-powered software (totem, rhythmbox, et al.), fluendo has mp3 codec available, and Ubuntu has gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3 – Fluendo mp3 decoder GStreamer plugin.

By: Guess Who

Guess Who — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 16:27:48 +0000

Kanotix does NOT come with codecs or proprietary apps

By: ShakaZ

ShakaZ — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 15:04:12 +0000

“However some distribution comes with all these goodies but they are not free”

This is simply not true, there are several free distro that do include miltimedia support out of the box, with all the needed codecs & some other proprietary apps that are used commonly by linux users… just to name one i use regularly : Kanotix

By: nixcraft

nixcraft — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 12:42:45 +0000

@Steven,
It depends upon your view and usage. I have already suggested using Vorbis and FLAC. However in reality you may need to use one of those propriety formats out there. It will be better if we really get open format.. just one of those my XMAS wishes

@X1NN,
Commercial support available for Ubuntu contact Ubuntu’s parent company Canonical Ltd – http://www.canonical.com/ for more info.

@Keith
Can you specify your wifi chipset name?

Appreciate all of your posts and suggestions.

By: Stig

Stig — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 08:56:59 +0000

Slackware comes with mp3-support by default.

By: Steven Brown

Steven Brown — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 08:14:52 +0000

This is the wrong approach – you are teaching users (and future developers) that the best way to deal with a proprietary roadblock is to attempt to circumvent it, and often illegally. That’s not how Free Software works.

They need to be told about truly Free media codecs like Vorbis, Speex, FLAC, and Theora, and why they should encourage authors to release in these formats rather than under patent encumbered ones that limit the number of people that can legally view them.

By: Leon Brooks

Leon Brooks — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 07:50:26 +0000

I use Mandriva, which has the PLF (Penguin Liberation Front) people producing RPMs to cover non-free stuff which the distro itself can’t safely ship.

It’s not perfect, but it works pretty well. I can dink around with random players of all sorts, and can read my daughter’s iPod as well.

By: X1NN

X1NN — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 21:21:21 +0000

Is there a way to legally buy the licenses without buying linspire. Like say you could just pay to use mp3′s under Ubuntu??