KDE RedHat project

[Rodd Clarkson]

On Thu, 2005-08-18 at 18:12 +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote:

> Doesn't change a thing at all. GStreamer in Core is reduced to the free
> media formats. It can't play MP3, MPEG and others and needs a a non-free
> plugins package for that.
> 
> Other functionality in KDE cannot be added via plugins, but must be
> compiled in. That leads to the requirement of upgrading packages in Core
> with custom packages provided in a non-free repository. Keeping the custom
> KDE packages in sync with patches and security-fixes in Core's KDE is
> rather boring and tiresome. And there are enough users who don't like it
> when packages from Core are replaced/upgraded by a 3rd party repository.

Actually, the beauty of gstreamer is that is not only supports non-free
formats, but they can be added as plugins.

In fact, gstreamer has done this so nicely that they actually compile
free and non-free stuff into two different packages by default so that
distros that don't want the non-free stuff included don't have to do
anything oher than not use the non-free stuff.

If people using fedora core want the non-free stuff, then all they need
to do is following the yum repo instructions at gstreamers website and
then install it using yum.  This works fine making it quite easy to add
all the non-free stuff you mention above without the need for a
recompile.

xine-lib, on the other hand, does need a recompile which makes adding
support any codec awkward.  However, it's worth noting that gstreamer is
working on supporting xine-lib so that it can also play any codecs
xine-lib supports.

Keep in mind that gstreamer goes way beyond what xine-lib does.
xine-lib is really just for playing various codecs.  gstreamer is a
multimedia framework useful for any application the reads or writes
multimedia codecs.


Rodd
-- 
"It's a fine line between denial and faith.
 It's much better on my side"