On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 3:45 AM, Martin Schlander
Fredag den 21. januar 2011 21:52:26 skrev todd rme:
A new phonon version is now out:
http://apachelog.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/phonon-family-4-4-4/
This part was particularly significant in my opinion:
"Last but not least we changed the default priorities of backends on Linux. To get the best experience you should now either use GStreamer or VLC. The former preferred choice Xine is as of now considered unmaintained and should not be used anymore."
The openSUSE version, however, defaults to xine, and the VLC version is not available from the openSUSE or KDE:Distro:Factory repositories at all.
I know that there was some talk about moving the phonon-VLC backend and the stripped-down VLC components from playground to KDE:Distro:Factory for 11.4, but I think this makes it more pressing. The way they mention indicates they think it is ready for use.
Either way, should we change the default backend to gstreamer (or VLC if it is moved)?
It might be a good idea to have Phonon prefer VLC backend _if_ installed.
This would require it be available for installation, which it currently is not from the mainline repositories. I think it should definitely be moved to KDE:Distro:Factory, the developers say they think it is ready for mainstream use now.
But as for defaulting to gstreamer I have some doubts. Xine worksforme and we need libxine1 for Kaffeine anyway.
Also what good is it if the gstreamer phonon-backend is theoretically "better", if gstreamer itself is b0rked. I'm not a gstreamer expert, but I often heard about issues with Packman gstreamer packages. Isn't gstreamer an unmaintainable, steaming pile of sh*t from a packaging point of view?
Gstreamer is a freedesktop.org standard, used by a number of multimedia players and required by the telepathy project for voice and video chat, also a freedesktop.org standard (which is what KDE is moving towards for their chat systems). It also looks like Qt may be moving away from phonon and towards Gstreamer as well.
And either way, making gstreamer the default phonon backend will complicate codec installation substantially. Now you just need libxine1-codecs from packman and Amarok and Kaffeine will "just work" - if phonon uses gstreamer people need libxine1-codecs for Kaffeine and 5.000 gstreamer packages and strange libs constantly breaking compatibility with each other.
The Gstreamer phonon backend will detect when there are missing codecs and ask to install them, I think using kpackagekit. It is sort of like the openSUSE system that does the same thing, only integrated directly into phonon so every media player gets it for free.
Also I'd like to know what the problems with xine are supposed to be, before I just take someone's word for it, that I shouldn't use it.
That is your decision, and certainly we should continue packaging it, but as a distribution if the developers as a project say we shouldn't use something it is probably better to at least not make it the default anymore. -Todd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kde+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-kde+help@opensuse.org