Re: [tlug] FC5 Sucks: firewire drive/videos

[Al Hoang <hoanga@example.com>]

On Wed, Nov 08, 2006 at 06:27:15PM -0500, Scott Robbins wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 09, 2006 at 06:37:48AM +0900, Josh Glover wrote:
> > On 08/11/06, Darren Cook <darren@example.com> wrote:
> > 
> > Yes, but not outside of the package system. i.e. if you did not watch
> > the output of the emerge command, you could pretend that the packages
> > are binary.
> > 
> > 
> > >and debian doesn't include anything proprietary?
> > 
> > Maybe it doesn't out of the box, but it should be as simple as a few
> > apt-gets involving mplayer and friends, I would think.
> 
> Isn't that also the case with Ubuntu, which you listed as poor in
> multimedia?  

	As far as I know, yes it is.  Edit a few lines in 
/etc/apt/sources.list [1] and I now have mplayer and vlc and friends.
Add a line or two to sources.list [2], update and install and now I can play 
back all the same multimedia files that I could get running with Gentoo.

	I'm really curious what Josh means by Ubuntu's poor multimedia support.
Josh?
	Do you mean out of the box?  Do you mean bundled applications?
I really want to understand this.  Ubuntu is really really similar to
Debian in so many regards that to say Ubuntu is poor at this while Debian
isn't really peaks my curiosity.

	If we're talking about playing lots of different types of file formats
and codecs. You need to add a 3rd party repository if you want to 
playback certain file formats/codecs (I'm going to step aside from the whole 
distribution angle since I know that can spawn a sub-thread that can last
forever) but I'm pretty sure this is the case with Debian.
	Gentoo makes it easier to avoid searching the web since there is a
portage package that can get you up and running properly but I hardly
believe it's as simple as just emerge <mplayer and friends> without a *little*
bit of tweaking.
Here was my first time stumbling through process.  (I'm sure for 
experienced Gentoo users we can skip almost all steps except 1 & 2 since 
this seasoned Gentoo users already have this all setup in their configuration
tree):
1. emerge --sync if necessary 
2. emerge <some multimedia package>
3. Wait for the download of tarball and dependencies
4. Wait for compile (Even on a Quad Xeon processor with huge honking fast drives
   it's going to 'take some time')
5. Forget that you want version X which is masked so you need to unmask it.
6. Wow, other packages want to be unmasked because you want version X
7. emerge --unemerge
8. Oops USE options....  repeat steps 3-7
9. Repeat steps 3-8 until you actually have the right version.
10. Hey that wasn't so bad


[1] * Uncomment multiverse and universe (which are by default in 
      the sources.list)
    * Add an extra repository (like PLF [2]) if you want more codecs
    * apt-get update
    * apt-get install <stuff>
[2] Try http://packages.freecontrib.org/plf for Ubuntu packages