Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-factory (507 mails)

[Atri <badshah400@xxxxxxx>]

On Friday 31 July 2009 03:36:44 Cristian Morales Vega wrote:
> 2009/7/30 Atri <badshah400@xxxxxxx>:
> > On Friday 31 July 2009 00:09:48 Dean Hilkewich wrote:
> > > On 09/07/30 12:08 PM, Atri wrote:
> > > > It will be really nice if 11.2 implements an easier way of installing
> > > > restricted multimedia codecs than that exists currently. The current way
> > > > of doing it via one-click installation is somewhat more complicated than
> > > > ubuntu's codec installer. In my opinion, the entire process could easily
> > > > be done via a script that runs a terminal showing a warning about the
> > > > usage of restricted codecs requiring user-interaction, then calls zypper
> > > > to add the Packman repo and installs/updates the required multimedia
> > > > packages from that repo. Of course there may exist several better ways
> > > > than what I suggest, but it would be worthwhile to explore methods of
> > > > installing codec support that make it much easier for a complete
> > > > newcomer. In any case this is probably one of the first things a home
> > > > user does, so the ease with which it can be done does influence his/her
> > > > opinion about the distribution somewhat.
> > >
> > > What is hard about one-click? Click, enter password and keep clicking
> > > next until done.  With the exception of the password people have been
> > > doing this for decades on other OS's.  Having someone drop to cli to run
> > > a script is completely backwards.
> > >
> > > Dean Hilkewich
> >
> > I totally agree with the one-click procedure, no problems with that. But
> > we should at least make the one-click link easy to access. In the present
> > implementation one is lead through a series of links and choices before
> > one can actually 'one-click' the installer that does the job. Also the
> > one-click installer leads to conflicts sometimes which require
> > user-interaction, and not of an easy kind at all, for somebody new.
>
> There could be legal implications if openSUSE included a link/script
> to the codecs in the distro itself. Right now these 1-Click links are
> hosted in http://opensuse-community.org (not related to the openSUSE
> project).
>
> And the codecs 1-Click link doesn't always work because the 1-Click
> tech itself has problems that need someone with time to volunteer to
> work on it... some of the problems need work also in ZYpp/repository
> metadata format.
> http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-softwaremgmt/2008-08/msg00012.html
> http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-softwaremgmt/2008-12/msg00001.html
> http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-softwaremgmt/2009-07/msg00000.html
>
> Not sure if yast-pkgbindings, that 1-Click uses, still selects
> different packages than zypper (and IMHO zypper is the one doing the
> right thing, others do wrong).

Hi!
I do not know about the legal ramifications in precise detail. Since one can 
already subscribe to the Packman repository (this contains the restricted 
codecs) quite easily from within the distribution without so much as a warning 
being displayed, I would think it would be alright to add the repository by a 
script that calls zypper after it shows in red bold letters the disclaimer 
that you are about to install community codecs. I think something similar is 
done in Ubuntu, whereby the codec-installer enables community maintained 
multimedia repositories after showing a disclaimer. But then again, I do not 
know if that might create a problem licence-wise. 

What I understand is that one-click is not as easy as it sounds if you are 
trying to install restricted codecs since it invariably leads to package 
conflicts and requires user-interaction at a level that might be scary for a 
new user. zypper on the other hand handles such conflicts better and is a 
really great tool. Most of us who are familiar with the software installation 
procedure in openSUSE use zypper anyway for installing restricted-drivers. 
With suitable use of the non-interactive mode the process could be made truly 
one-click easy.

Bye
-- 
Atri
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