Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth
People can find a reason to complain about anything, even if it's free and especially if it's software and especially if it's me trying to show off Ubuntu to a friend.
People always like Ubuntu at first, the install is fast, all this software comes right with it, no need to make that stupid floppy boot disk to get your SATA hard drive working with Windows and there is no need to worry about installing extra drivers. Things look pretty good until they try and check out a video or play some music.
"Why can't Linux play my video?" or "Why can't Linux let me listen to a Friggin' MP3?" are always common complaints usually followed by a "Linux sucks!" or some other remark.
The reason that Ubuntu cannot play MP3s and most videos 'out of the box' is because Ubuntu was designed to be Free ( as beer and as in freedom ). The developers wanted to make sure that anyone would be allowed to start developing software without having to worry about legal obligations or proprietary software. As a result some audio and video codecs are required to be downloaded separately ( and every time I try and figure out the legality behind why we need to download them separately I always get confused ).
When you get anything for free you can expect a few catches, and these problems with the audio and video codecs are one of them. And really, you are going to spend more time installing Windows, getting your sound drivers installed then you are to download, extract, install and run something like EasyUbuntu ( and you're going to save yourself a few hundred dollars while you are at it).
People always like Ubuntu at first, the install is fast, all this software comes right with it, no need to make that stupid floppy boot disk to get your SATA hard drive working with Windows and there is no need to worry about installing extra drivers. Things look pretty good until they try and check out a video or play some music.
"Why can't Linux play my video?" or "Why can't Linux let me listen to a Friggin' MP3?" are always common complaints usually followed by a "Linux sucks!" or some other remark.
The reason that Ubuntu cannot play MP3s and most videos 'out of the box' is because Ubuntu was designed to be Free ( as beer and as in freedom ). The developers wanted to make sure that anyone would be allowed to start developing software without having to worry about legal obligations or proprietary software. As a result some audio and video codecs are required to be downloaded separately ( and every time I try and figure out the legality behind why we need to download them separately I always get confused ).
When you get anything for free you can expect a few catches, and these problems with the audio and video codecs are one of them. And really, you are going to spend more time installing Windows, getting your sound drivers installed then you are to download, extract, install and run something like EasyUbuntu ( and you're going to save yourself a few hundred dollars while you are at it).
posted by Paul at 1:52 PM
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