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

[Gian Paolo Mureddu]

I just thought of a means to help improve overall media capabilities 
perceptions of Fedora in the live media (CD/DVDs), and who knows? could 
even benefit the installed version as well. It occurred to me right 
after having to boot a system with a Knoppix LiveDVD disk to perform a 
rescue (I did not have my handy Fedora RescueCD handy, but I had my 
Knoppix LiveDVD disk available). Long story made short: I helped a 
friend with his computer with Windows XP which happened to be trashed, 
and he wanted to rescue all his data, but the problem was he was being 
unable to boot Windows to perform said backup, so I offered to help him. 
Booted the LiveDVD into the desktop (I've many ideas for improvement of 
the Live media based on this last experience, which I may end up sending 
to the LiveCD mailing list) and started backing his stuff up. While the 
network transfer was running, he started roaming in the distro and found 
out the example "media" file OpenSource.ogg (Open Source song) and it 
struck me like lightning... But before I lay out my idea, my friend 
really liked the fact of "sample media", so I thought:

* What if to improve this "media perception" Fedora was to include some 
sample material in ogg/theora format in the Live media? A tour video, 
and some sample music would be terrific. The tunes are not THAT hard to 
get, especially when we have at our disposal great sources like the 
Linux Audio Users mailing list and website [1][2]. There are some great 
tunes that are free to use shared through the list by the authors 
themselves, a little note and an e-mail to the authors asking their 
permission to include their material with the Live media/distribution 
benefits us all (they get more exposure, we showcase free formats), and 
the same goes for video files... These are a bit trickier to get right, 
but there could even be a music sample package available links and notes 
in the wiki, etc... I think this is a more proactive approach than a 
reactive one.

* Another thing I thought would also be beneficial is to include some 
sort of "manifesto" right into the home directory as a sample document 
in various formats: .abw, .txt, .ps, .pdf, HTML, etc. which contained a 
"summarized" version of the release notes in a more "user friendly" 
language (i.e less technical, more colloquial wording, not as thorough) 
and explaining there (again being extra careful with wording to avoid 
misunderstandings and not being legally pedantic) why closed formats 
aren't being used in the distribution, and even give some pointers to 
CodecBuddy, or how to get legitimate means to play these formats, but 
which fall beyond the support of the distro as such because that's not 
Free and Open Source software (concrete example: Real Player), by 
indicating that it is possible, and stating the reasons why such support 
is not included, I don't think we're going against any policies or 
principles. We wouldn't just be saying what can't be done (which for all 
intents and purposes *is* a brick wall), but also offering a possible 
solution. Solution which is not part of the distribution, as there's a 
conflict of interests, philosophies, objectives and goals; but being the 
user a prime concern, there's both education and pointers toward 
possible means in the same document. No need for 
google/ask-in-forums/trash Linux in general and Fedora in particular. 
The same goes for proprietary drivers and such. The fact that Fedora 
can't carry them, doesn't mean we have to remain silent as to point the 
users to potentially solve a problem.

That I believe is what really makes a distribution "user friendly". The 
fact that Fedora doesn't ship with proprietary software (driver or 
application programs), doesn't mean necessarily that we have to shut off 
users who might need to find the means to perform a certain task, 
instead showing them where they can look for means to solve their 
problems should be more helpful. For instance, instead of directly 
linking to the download page of either Real, nVidia or AMD (ATi), point 
towards wiki posts, forums, documentation where the users can examine 
and finally decide whether they want/need such solutions or not.

This is relevant for the Desktop users as well, as I believe the same 
could be done for the installed version.


[1] http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-audio-user
[2]http://lau.linuxaudio.org/