everyday multimedia not supported in Ubuntu (Re: 3 days from the release, 3 machines, a few issues.

[Kenton Brede]

On Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 08:05:47PM +0200, Philippe Landau (lists at mailry.net) wrote:
> >Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> >I think that's a bit extreme, don't you?  Most every other Linux
> >distribution on the planet is in an identical situation, and this is not
> >cause for placing a disclaimer on the front page of the website.  That just
> >doesn't seem reasonable.

> many small distributions are proud to offer working multimedia,
> including proprietary codecs out of the box.
> the most popular distro for simple users
> has a parallel infrastructure for them,
> and i never saw them say "we don't support this"
> on the users mailinglist.
> additionally, ubuntu prides itself in being different,
> so why not be honest right from the front page ?

But those small distributions must be lacking something or you wouldn't
be here.  Do they display what they lack on the front page of their website?  

On the front page of the Ubuntu website you will find -
"Ubuntu is entirely *committed to the principles of free and open source
software development;* we encourage people to use free and open source
software, improve it and pass it on."

>From reading the opening page of the Ubuntu website I really wouldn't
expect much support for proprietary formats, given they are "committed
to the principles of free and open source software,"  and that is their 
right.

You are obviously disappointed and probably a person trying to find the
perfect free OS, for you, which includes out of the box multimedia
support.  I've been using open source for a while and I can tell you
I've never found the perfect distro or perfect window manager, for me.  
But I'm happy to use what is provided to me by the many thousands of
developers out there and I don't expect them to create the perfect
distro or window manager, for me.  Reality is, if you don't like the way
something works in OSS, either learn out to tweak the config, or learn to
program.  Demanding and complaining rarely works.  

The Debian crew has done a wonderful job over the years and the Ubuntu
team is doing a great job.  And they didn't charge you or I a dime.
Kent

-- 
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
  - Martin Luther King Jr.