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 that failed miserably and seemed like a pretty shoddy application all around, so I

Ranting about DVD support under Linux isn't really fair. The people who are doing the work are under threat of legal action from various quarters, and companies like SuSE need to be really careful about what they package and distribute for fear of direct legal action against them. You might have noticed that clicking on an MPG file pops up a player which works fine. DVD would do the same if the players could be openly developed and installed by SUSE.

On Monday 17 December 2001 11:42, Jason A.Van Cleve wrote:

You're welcome. But actually, from a usability standpoint, Linux IS as bad as you expected--probably worse. I may have started a flame war just now,

:) no flame war coming from me... just a little different point of view...

but as someone who has been trying to master this OS for over a year now, I would warn you that Linux is not for the faint of heart--or the short of time. More specifically, as a server it's a wonderful platform, for it is well-conceived and well-designed as such. But configuring Linux as a workstation or multimedia platform is, in my experience, next to impossible, <snip>

hmm... I guess you should see a little difference between those two... my experience so far is this: configuring it as a workstation is not really a problem at all when you view it as a "work"station... even back with SuSE 7.0 (and more so with 7.3 or at least with a recent KDE) an OS that you could get your work done with came right out of the box with everything the normal user needs... you get an excellent MUA, a decent office (SO5.2), a great graphics prog (gimp) and instant internet access, even almost everything a programmer needs... and with SuSE7.3 a standard installation is at least as easy as any windows installation... considering that most computer users buy their computers with a preinstalled OS and just use it (w/o being able to even install a M$ system), I'd say that for the normal user it doesn't really matter if you give him a M$-OS or some linux w/ KDE (for use as a "work"station as stated above)... But, of course, I have to admitt that it is not that easy to get all the multimedia-capabilities that come "out-of-the-box" with a recent M$-OS and it is a pain in the ass to configure a real multimedia plattform... Having just installed SuSE 7.3 on a new machine, I have to add that I was really impressed with what comes "out-of-the-box" here... Without needing to configure anything by hand: - I got a perfectly working kwintv - my cdrecorder was recognized and seems to be working (I just did it on Saturday, so I had no time to test that yet) - printing works perfectly - no additional software needs to be installed to have all the little standard tools (that you need to install on a M$-OS) and they're all part of the konqueror and beautifully integrated: ftp-client, archiver, editors with syntax-highlighting, audio-ripper (to .wav, to ogg-vorbis, to .mp3 (with lame)), download-manager-capabilities and ,of course, a fabulous browser - a good MUA (you'd need to install additional software on any M$-OS to get that... :) ...same with the browser) - ssh-client ...and so on... show me another OS that does that out of the box... And after all... as soon as you have everything configured for a multimedia platform (which is NOT impossible), you'll love it... and the best part is: it will continue to work and won't screw itself up after a while (like all the M$-stuff), so you can use it for years if you want to w/o crashes and w/o becoming slowler and slower and slower until it's unusable... Johannes -- Powered by SuSE 7.3 - KDE 2.2.1 - KMail 1.3.1 Version Info: Linux 2.4.10-4GB

<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" wrote: that failed miserably and seemed like a pretty shoddy application all around, so I looked to Xine, --- DVD was bleeding edge until recently. Unfortunately, you are never going to get the CSS libs included as part of a package from the likes of SuSE, for legal reasons. Ask yourself why American business executives and politicians don't want to people to watch DVDs under 'h4x0r' favoured systems like linux. Think DMCA/SSSCA. That said, there's no barriers if you just spend a little time to get the css stuff. ---

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