<rant> I want to play a DVD on Linux. Seems like a simple thing, yes? On Windows, I simply install PowerDVD, and away I go. It's a little jerky, but it does the job. On Linux, I tried running Ogle, but
12/17/01 10:42:51 AM, "Jason A.Van Cleve"
I needed to compile and install a special driver made by NVidia, if I had a chance of attaining my goal. Installing a driver i! s not easy in Linux, I can tell you. Windows can often do it for you automatically, and even when it can't, you normally only have to run a single program and then reboot. With Linux, it's not so simple, and even finding a driver that's suitable for your particular system can be challanging. Well I found the one I needed and tried to install it.
Well, life would have been a lot easier for you if you'd installed the NVidia RPMs from SuSE. They aren't difficult to find! --- To my dismay, I found that the driver needed to access the "sources" for my kernel, which were not installed because I had had to upgrade my kernel just to get SuSE Linux itself working in the first place, and the RPM I had used had not updated my kernel sources. So now I'm three complicated steps away from any hope of playing that DVD. I find a package containing the required sources and try to install that. No good: it conflicts with my existing kernel sources, which no longer match the kernel I'm running but are still there. So I try to uninstall those sources, in order to install the right ones (four steps away and countin!
g). That fails too, telling me I can't uninstall those sources because gcc and some other things depend on them. Sweet Jesus!
</rant>
I'm still working on this, and it is by no means an isolated misadventure. I have suffered many like it, and you will too, if you mean to use Linux in the same capacity as you have used Windows. Trust me, whatever those elitist nerds who sing the gospel of Linux may tell you, it's a royal pain in
Aaah, so you upgraded to a different kernel? Well once you do this leave what is known as Naive User territory and you can't rely on the SuSE rpms that were packaged for the kernel that came with your distro. There's no way that SuSE or any other distro provider can ever handle this, as there are a multitude of possible kernels out there that one could pick. When you are brave enough to switch to a new kernel you should get the sources to go with it. All you needed to do was to force the upgrade of the kernel-source RPM (--force --nodeps) then you have the sources corresponding to your kernel. If you play safe and stick with the kernel that came with your distro then this isn't necessary. the ass to learn. It may be as stable, flexible and efficient as they say (maybe), but I have found it also obstinate, esoteric, and as confounded as anything I have ever known.
So be warned, and good luck!
--Jason Van Cleve
One thing I've noticed from press hacks talking about linux is that they're still happy to parrot the
same cliches about Linux not being ready for the desktop. I used to say the same myself when I
had SuSE 6.x but I think that has changed enormously in the last 12-18 months, especially with
the arrival of KDE2, which beats the sh1t out of windows as a GUI manager. I think the problem
with Journalists is that they are lazy. They took a brief look at Linux back in 99 when the hype
came out and decided it wasn't up to the job of playing pr0n videos or Flash animations or
whatever else they wanted to do and then decided it had 'no chance on the desktop'. People like
this are reluctant to reevaluate their opinions in the light of the massive improvements that have
been made in the last couple of years (or they're totally unaware of things like KDE2).
There's nothing I can do on windows that I can't do on Linux these days, and that includes all
multimedia stuff with the exception of WMP content, which is based off a proprietary MPEG-4
codec for obvious reasons. I no longer even dual boot and resist the temptation to use emulators
(other than the Codeweavers wine shell for QT support).
Streaming...Digital Cameras....QuickTime....MP3 ripping...Scanner support. It's all there.
Tim Harrell