What's all the hype over Ubuntu?

Rick Stevens ricks at nerd.com
Thu Mar 27 23:29:53 UTC 2008


vincenzo romero wrote:
> *sigh* ...
> 
> i guess either Xen it to run itunes on Windoze ..
> 
> or Windoze and VMWare to run your favorite linux distro ...
> 
> thanks then - if anyone know of any shareware or application that can
> manage mp3 that would allow me to migrate my home network into linux
> and bye-bye windoze and Apple for good!

If you're not worried about DRM (digital rights management for those who
don't know the acronym), almost any Linux distro will play almost any
media.  MP3s are burdened with a copyright thing so you'll have to go
offshore to get an MP3 decoder, but there's a bunch of them out there.
I've used several.  Currently, I use Xine and/or Amarok a lot (Amarok
uses Xine as its playback engine).

To get MP3 capacity, you need to install xine-extras-nonfree, but that's
no biggie.

Once you've got that, you're good to go.  One of my machines acts as a
big media server (HDTV tuner, MP3 repository, OGG repository, general
file stuff as well) and the rest of the house uses its features.

> 
> - V
> 
> On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 3:26 PM, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote:
>> vincenzo romero wrote:
>>  > Great thread ...
>>  >
>>  > Quick question - for those of you who deployed Ubuntu for your home -
>>  > ( i have played with it at work, indeed like a toy) ... does it have
>>  > availability of most applications that teenagers would like?  ....
>>  > itunes support?  etc....
>>  >
>>  > My son's Apple G4 is a victim of logic board issues and soldering bad
>>  > design - I want to just suck the info out into our NAS drive and just
>>  > get a cheap laptop - wondering what linux version would be a good one
>>  > to deploy for home use ..
>>  >
>>  > any thoughts esp vis a vis mp3 support would be greatly appreciated ..
>>  >
>>
>>  There's not a huge difference among linux distros in the applications
>>  that are available if you track them down.  Most won't include anything
>>  with patented or even questionable functionality in the base distro.
>>  Fedora won't publically admit that such stuff exists.  Ubuntu has it in
>>  repositories that easily be enabled.  There are several media players
>>  around but I don't think any will play drm-affected AAC files from the
>>  itunes store and playlist management probably won't quite match itunes.
>>
>>
>>  --
>>    Les Mikesell
>>     lesmikesell at gmail.com
>>
>>  --
>>
>>
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>>  fedora-list at redhat.com
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>>
> 
> 
> 


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