Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (4656 mails)

[Kai Ponte <kai@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Saturday 27 January 2007 18:20, Zhang Weiwu wrote:
> As I recently discovered it is not very easy to enable mp3 on most media
> players of OpenSuSE (except RealPlayer). 

Actually it is very easy:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=509097

(that took roughly five seconds to find - or less time than to type this 
email)


> I am getting upset for this, 
> because this might block a lot of non-techie user using SuSE (after all
> RealPlayer is not the default player in SuSE). Maybe I am doing
> something stupid (I am only a one year old SuSE user after all, and not
> a community organization expert) but I wish to call SuSE user and
> developer's attention to this issue so that:
>
>      I. as a best solution, motivate opensuse to enable mp3 by default
>         on bmp, xmms, banshee, rhymbox, gstreamer (including totem) and
>         all players;

Here you go: 

http://www.novell.com/company/contact.html

#
Corporate Address:
404 Wyman Street
Waltham, MA 02451
#
Phone:
800-529-3400 (toll free) or 801-861-1329 (Monday–Friday, 9 a.m.–8 p.m. EST)
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crc@xxxxxxxxxx 


>     II. as a fall back solution, let's collect solutions on how to
>         enalbe mp3 on various players and make sure end users can easily
>         find these solution, and these solutions are not too complex.
>         These solutions must make their way on the web so that users can
>         find them very easily, things appear in second google search
>         result won't be a lot helpful for users. (I knew there are
>         already a lot of "solutions" but they are often either not easy
>         to find or doesn't work. Check my ealier post.)
>    III. if OpenSuSE decide not to enable mp3 support because it's not
>         "Free" by GNU definition, at least we can try to submit some
>         patches and make these patchs gets into opensuse so that when a
>         music play failed to play mp3, it prompts with some
>         user-friendly message that you need to look up this and that
>         webpage for solutions on how to enable mp3 support.
>
> I myself am still looking for solution to enable mp3 on either Banshee
> or Rthymbox. Looks so far Banshee it's easiler to find a solution for
> Banshee. I am still working on it.

check above.

HTH!

>
> Study shows not every "ordinary users" actually use google to search for
> a solution when they got a problem. So if people have to search for how
> to enable mp3, we already know many people has given up. And also study
> shows even in opensource world, only 1/7 people go ask questions on
> forum or mailing list. So if a google search doesn't leads to a workable
> solution, 6/7 people perhaps give up, only 1/7 will post something like
> me. Well perhaps only a very few percent will have a true hacker's
> spirit and hack down a solution when questions on forum/lists doesn't
> get a solution.
>
> P.S. I read some forum threads saying SuSE Enterprise Linux Desktop have
> mp3 enabled by default. Is this ture? If so I'd like to try it and
> recommend other people to use that one in place of opensuse provide it's
> not too expensive for most users.
>
> P.S. "If it's not working, source is there and why not work it out
> yourself?" Well, I'd be glad to hack the source to solve it myself IF
> THE MUSIC PLAYER don't support MP3 NATIVELY. But the mp3 problem we are
> facing is already solved by all Linux music players, the situation is
> music players support mp3, SuSE removed it. So this is a non-technical
> issue.

It is more of a licence than a technical issue. Somebody sliipped through the 
pathetic idea that software should be patentable. This has - of course - 
ruined many lives and generally been regarded as a poor decision. 

-- 
kai
www.perfectreign.com || www.4thedadz.com
www.filesite.org || www.donutmonster.com

closing the doors that surround me
so no one will ever penetrate
complete my retreat just to wait for the day
that never comes so i will laugh alone
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