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

[Valent Turkovic]

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!

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!

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!?!

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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

Valent
- fiber optics and networking engineer from Croatia.

-- 
http://kernelreloaded.blog385.com/
linux, blog, anime, spirituality, windsurf, wireless
registered as user #367004 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org.
ICQ: 2125241
Skype: valent.turkovic