playing DVDs with totem

[Abhishek Rane]

Alan wrote:
>> Peter Lauri wrote:
>>     
>>> On Wed, 2007-12-26 at 07:23 -0600, lostson wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> If fedora is not 'plug n play' what distro would you reccommend for
>>>> one's mother then ?
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> I am sad to say it, but with 99.99% chance Windows XP :)
>>>
>>>
>>>       
>> Also Ubuntu is catching up these days and I won't be surprised even if
>> they come up with a distro for moms specially...tux4mom lolz :-)
>>     
>
> Actually I use Fedora with a handful of rpms from other less authorized
> sources.  It plays 95% of the media I want to play.  (I still see problems
> with some wma files.  Some I question as to if they are trojaned anyways.)
>
> Windows XP on the other hand plays very little.  If it does not understand
> the codec (and that happens a lot) it does a web search and then errors
> out with a "cannot find a codec for this media".  VLC on Windows does a
> much better job than Windows media player, but that is an extra download,
> and also available for Linux and OS X.  With Windows it might work if you
> buy something.  Then again, it might not.
>
> Somehow Windows got a reputation for "it just works".  It is total
> nonsense.  Most of the time you have to track down obscure pieces to make
> things work.   And sometimes the options it provides are less than useful.
>
> The claim that "Windows is easier to install than Linux" is also pretty
> bogus.  I spent the weekend getting Windows XP Por installed on a machine
> for my wife.  It was my old desktop machine that had run Linux with no
> problems for the last year.  Windows could not find the Ethernet driver,
> the sound card driver, or the correct video driver.  I had to download
> what I could find.  With Linux I can find out what something is without
> opening the case.  If Windows does not have a driver for a device, it
> gives you no clues as to what it is.  You have to open up the box.  (And
> then hope you can find a driver on the vendor's site.  Not always
> possible.)  With Linux, all those devices "just worked". I never did find
> a correct driver for the EMU10k1 sound card.  (Creative Labs Live 5.1
> Digital.  None of the drivers would load.)
>
>   
Yes absolutely correct,imagine the horror of losing your soundcard 
driver cd and installing xp..Searching the right drivers may take 
hours..Hardware engineers have  to roam with a bagful of driver cds and 
try them out on the stupid thing and if something goes wrong then BSOD 
shows up...A little problem in the CDROM device or the HDD can screw up 
a windows xp installation big time...Also we have to buy MS office 
separately in case of XP but linux has Openofffice built in....People 
have a misconception linux doesnt support anything but thats totally false