Why is Fedora a multimedia disaster? - Here is why.

[Bastien Nocera]

Hello Valent,

On Tue, 2007-04-17 at 16:14 +0200, Valent Turkovic wrote:
> I install a fresh Fedora7 (test 3) then run web browser and go to
> fedora magazine page - from there I download some video ogg files from
> it.
> 
> Why is it that when I click on the file I can't view the video? Player
> just crashes! And the default player is kamboodle! Why is that?!? That
> is the worst video player I have seen ever! On any platform!
> Opensource or not there is no excuse to put that player as the default
> one!

I believe you mean Kaboodle:
http://www.hakubi.us/kaboodle/

> Fedora 7 experience was a bit better than FC6 one - because in FC6
> when I tried the same experiment I got an error message that ogg is a
> unknown format and system doesn't know how to open it!

And that was with Kaboodle again?

> Great! And that was an OGG file with 0% proprietary fibers in it :)
> How do you expect to get people to use linux as a destop when the MOST
> simple multimedia desktop scenario doesn't work!?!

Did you have a really bad day when you wrote that? :)

> If you can't play "official" video form redhat pages then this is a
> serious case of TERRIBLE multimedia desktop usability!

Again, that's not very constructive.

> I know about all the great effort that has gone into fedora releases,
> and I love it. It is the best linux distro for me, but I know how to
> set it up, iron out the quirks that mess up the destop experience and
> configure it for optimal work/play flow.
> 
> But please, please make it a lot easier on non-geek people so that
> they can also use this great stuff called fedora. And belive me there
> are people wanting to do so, but they can't because we don't let them.
> They need some features to be enabled by default or else they won't
> know how that they even exist.
> 
> So please change the default video player to totem or something else,
> just NOT kamboodle because it just doesn't work and it sucks GUI vise.

You wouldn't have happened to do a KDE installation? Totem and Rhythmbox
are, respectively, the default movie and music players in the GNOME
installation.

> Regarding proprietary video codecs RedHad developers just say
> something like this: "We talked with out lawyers and they said no."
> Ok? And? Where can we see this discussion? I know that you can't put
> MP3 support in fedora, but that you can't even put an link for some
> European server that has all the codecs? Lawyers say that RedHat can
> be sued even for puting links that enable multimedia. Ok, maybe I
> believe it but it is maybe possible that some one would sue, but
> hardly win that case.
> 
> But there are legal ways around that, you can put a text saying that
> it is legal to enable multimedia codecs only if you live in a country
> that doesn't have software patents - like I do.

Canonical is a company registered on the Isle of Man, not a US company.

> It is possible if you want it - Ubuntu has shown that because they
> will be doing just that, and even a step beyond that. Ubuntu will have
> a Ubuntu for European market and other countries that don't have
> software patents (my country doesn't!) with all multimedia codecs
> embedded within the distro!

They don't have multiple versions, as far as I know, and they would have
problems regarding the legality of shipping some of those patented
codecs in the US.

> So please let's start the discussion because believe me there is a
> great  need for this because there are lot's media files that are
> every where (internet, youtube, divx rips of dvds, etc...) that people
> have a need to watch and listen.

What's the discussion about? Having a discussion won't change the legal
stance of Fedora.

> Hope to hear from Fedora/RedHat developers and Desktop usability
> experts what are their opinions.

Read the Fedora FAQ for some third-party ways of getting codecs:
http://www.fedorafaq.org/

Cheers

> I will make this email available also on my blog:
> http://kernelreloaded.blog385.com/
> so you can leave/read comments there also.

PS: You should use more exclamation marks.