30 days using Ubuntu

[mehulved]

Many people, daunted by Vista's hardware requirements and product activation issues, claim on various boards how they plan to "switch to Linux." We spend 30 days using nothing but Ubuntu Linux to find out if this is truly a viable alternative for the consumer.

Read the article here - http://consumer.hardocp.com/article....xoY29uc3VtZXI=

[gxsaurav]

like i said before & still saying, it's good but it's playing catchup with Vista in features. A simple & open
source decoder like FFDshow is also not included

Off topic, i read somewhere that Linux is getting finally proper NTFS write support just like Windows. Does the latest Ubuntu 7 beta (fiesty herd something) has it?

[kalpik]

^^ NTFS 3-G will be a part of feisty.. You can even install it on 6.06 and 6.10..

[eddie]

Originally Posted by gx_saurav

A simple & open source decoder like FFDshow is also not included

ffdshow is nothing but ffmpeg with direct show hooks. Why Linux distros do not have ffmpeg by default?
Read...
http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/legal.html

[mehulved]

Originally Posted by eddie

ffdshow is nothing but ffmpeg with direct show hooks. Why Linux distros do not have ffmpeg by default?
Read...
http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/legal.html

Some people have the habit of leaping before looking or not looking deep enough.

[gary4gar]

Q: Since FFmpeg is licensed under the LGPL, is it perfectly all right to incorporate the whole FFmpeg core into my own commercial product?
A: You might have a problem here. Sure the LGPL allows you to incorporate the code. However, there have been cases where companies have used FFmpeg in their projects, usually for such capabilities as superior MPEG-4 decoding. These companies found out that once you start trying to make money from certain technologies, the alleged owners of the technologies will come after their dues. Most notably, MPEG-LA (licensing authority) is vigilant and diligent about collecting for MPEG-related technologies

but they should understand that we aren't making any money out of this, then are they bothered so much?

[kalpik]

^^ The distro owner is not making money.. But the the user may make money

[eddie]

Originally Posted by gary4gar

but they should understand that we aren't making any money out of this, then are they bothered so much?

If any distro maintainer included ffmpeg by default in their distro then they are telling the world that they'll not make money from the CD or packages in what ever ways possible. Now, what if the maintainer wants to sell CDs of his/her distro? What will happen then? In any case,distro maintenance has two scenarios

a) A company develops/maintains it for money like Canonical, Novell or Redhat but they do not want to include ffmpeg as they'll be making profit...hence risk of law suites.
b) A volunteer or freelancer maintains it who does not want to fall in any kind of legalities so he just skips the package...hence does not include ffmpeg by default.

I hope it is clearer now

[mediator]

Hmmmm.....nice article!

[gxsaurav]

^^^^

ya nice article, good enough to scare any new user trying to switch to Linux\Ubuntu. Life was hell for that guy..so much to configure just to get simple things such as flash working & so much more to configure, he couldn't even rip to mp3 even with gstreamer installed

about FFDshow not being bundled. Can't they leave the properity part? FFDShow works as plugins right

[nach p]

I'm certainly going to put a Windows XP partition on Whakataruna for the near future - but I've decided to keep the bulk of my hard drive - and most of my day-to-day operations, in Linux. XP is going to be my OS for gaming, audio loop editing, and Photoshop, but for everything else, Linux has transformed into an attractive, utility-driven, customizable, and generally easy-to-use interface that takes all of the virtues and none of the faults from the other major OSes and gives it to the consumer for free.

yup it is a nice article.
and it showed that for a momemt dual boot is necessery 2 do some work which is not possible at the moment.
But as a support is an increasing we will able (maybe u guys running only Linux) 2 use it only a single OS

[mehulved]

Originally Posted by gx_saurav

^^^^

ya nice article, good enough to scare any new user trying to switch to Linux\Ubuntu. Life was hell for that guy..so much to configure just to get simple things such as flash working & so much more to configure, he couldn't even rip to mp3 even with gstreamer installed

about FFDshow not being bundled. Can't they leave the properity part? FFDShow works as plugins right

Please understand it's all business out there. Ask all those formats to become OSS, then their full support will be included out of the box with a free linux distro. Or just simply rip to ogg, whose support is available out of the box.
Unless those proprietory formats open up their source I don't see how can they be included in a free linux distro.

[The Outsider]

just wondering distros like pclinuxos, mandriva etc include support for restricted formats out of the box

they don't get to face any lawsuits?

[mehulved]

Mostly people sue company than a community cos it's difficult to sue a latter though not impossible. Companies like Red Hat, Novell, Canonical have legal existance whereas communities don't have anything as such. It can happen that the persons in USA can be sued but in many countries this **** like patents, copyrights and such aren't recognised. So, people from these countries cannot be sued.
The example can be found in hailgautam's post on why MS cannot sue Indians for using pirated windows. Similarly, no one can sue Indians (or other countries where those patents aren't recognised). We are safe to use those codecs and all since India doesn't recognise these patents and such.

[Ankur Gupta]

I have already switched to Linux....enjoying my journey thoroughly...

[gxsaurav]

What about VLC Player? isn't that open source? Why not include that

[mehulved]

Which company in the hell does design software? And show me a distro which is given for free, by some company and has VLC.
gx that's why I say, learn to read. You only read what you want not the whole day. Reading includes understanding what those words mean.

[gxsaurav]

Yo, i m just asking, VLC is open source why not include that. your post didn't answered my question

[GNUrag]

Originally Posted by gx_saurav

What about VLC Player? isn't that open source? Why not include that

You still dont seem to get it, do you?

If you bundle software capable of playing back MP3 streams, you need to pay up the patent owner of MP3 codec, i.e. Thomson Consumer Electronics.

Have a look at the MP3 Licensing rates at Thomson's website.
http://mp3licensing.com/royalty/
you need to pay $5 per unit of codec distributed to users. Would you mind calculating how much that comes out to for just one distro like say Ubuntu who has been distriibuting couple of million copies of CDs (multiplied by 5 versions of ubuntu - warty, hoary, breezy, dapper, edgy)

[eddie]

Originally Posted by gx_saurav

about FFDshow not being bundled. Can't they leave the properity part? FFDShow works as plugins right

If they include ffmpeg without proprietary part then how will that help? Distros will have to create a crippled fork of ffmpeg which will provide functionality that is already there in default xine library i.e. to play open format files only. What is the use of creating and maintaining a fork then?

[gxsaurav]

Originally Posted by GNUrag

You still dont seem to get it, do you?

If you bundle software capable of playing back MP3 streams, you need to pay up the patent owner of MP3 codec, i.e. Thomson Consumer Electronics.

Have a look at the MP3 Licensing rates at Thomson's website.
http://mp3licensing.com/royalty/
you need to pay $5 per unit of codec distributed to users. Would you mind calculating how much that comes out to for just one distro like say Ubuntu who has been distriibuting couple of million copies of CDs (multiplied by 5 versions of ubuntu - warty, hoary, breezy, dapper, edgy)

Ok, this I get that Ubuntu will need to pay Thomson. This seems like a proper answer to my question, thanx GNU. However VLC for Windows supports it, right & it's free (or maybe VLC just uses the inbuilt Windows mp3 decoders)

Originally Posted by eddie

If they include ffmpeg without proprietary part then how will that help? Distros will have to create a crippled fork of ffmpeg which will provide functionality that is already there in default xine library i.e. to play open format files only. What is the use of creating and maintaining a fork then?

Here is the thing, FFDshow (or FFmpeg) supports decoding of DivX Xvid etc, which are based on the open source Mojo project right.....

ah leave it, there are no piracy laws in india , better use Ubuntu or whatever with Win32 codecs, guess it's time for me to install something on my Ubuntu VM

[phreak0ut]

Originally Posted by gx_saurav

However VLC for Windows supports it, right & it's free (or maybe VLC just uses the inbuilt Windows mp3 decoders)

You are paying for Windows right??

[gxsaurav]

Originally Posted by phreak0utt

You are paying for Windows right??

Hmm....point. Well in that case paying sounds good to me. It saves a lot of hassle. But I still urge that there should be proper paid distributions with all such codecs. Even I won't mind paying Rs 1000 for such linux cos still the price is less then tht of Windows & it is as good, provided that I get free upgrades for atleast 4 years. like from version 6.06 of Ubuntu to 6.10.

By the way..I m not paying for Windows Vista , I got it through my technet subscription

[mediator]

Proper paid distros (with proprietary codecs) or proprietary distros do exist!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari..._distributions (check for proprietary ones)
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/52394.html

Neways, when did windows include all the codecs? I dont think there's any problem to download and install the codecs in both windows and linux!

[Ankur Gupta]

^^Exactly

[mehulved]

Originally Posted by gx_saurav

Hmm....point. Well in that case paying sounds good to me. It saves a lot of hassle. But I still urge that there should be proper paid distributions with all such codecs.

Mandriva, Suse's paid edition, Linspire and more. There are such paid distros which come with non-free softwares installed buy them.

[eddie]

Originally Posted by gx_saurav

Here is the thing, FFDshow (or FFmpeg) supports decoding of DivX Xvid etc, which are based on the open source Mojo project right.....

If something is based on a open source project does not mean that the resulting product will be open source too. In any case, Xvid and DivX seem to violate many software patents (very limited knowledge) thus they cannot be included cos of the obvious risks.

[phreak0ut]

Originally Posted by GNUrag

Have a look at the MP3 Licensing rates at Thomson's website.
http://mp3licensing.com/royalty/
you need to pay $5 per unit of codec distributed to users.

Is the site down? I'm getting a 404.

[mehulved]

opening fine here

[praka123]

all in all,a nice review.