[Website Poll] Feature holding back Linux adoption

On Tue, 2004-02-10 at 20:45, Ted Gould wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-02-10 at 08:48, Michael Havens wrote:
> > Could you possibly explain what you mean when you say
> > that there is a "lack of multimedia"? My sound and video
> > work (and your too so I suspect).
>
> Well, I think that things don't 'just work' as far as multimedia goes.
> If I install standard Redhat I can't even download an MP3 and play it (I
> understand Redhat's reasoning here, and infact, I agree with it). But
> that's just the tip of the iceburg, there are quite a few formats that I
> can't play.
>
> Basically, it just comes down to - there are lots of proprietary formats
> out there, and Linux can't play them. I don't think that this complaint
> will be going away anytime soon, but some people have claimed it is a
> problem with general Linux adoption.
---
The problem is with education.

I am on a good number of mail lists. One of them surrounds a now
deceased rock artist of the 60's/70's

They had a video clip on MSN which not surprisingly had a clip that
could only be views on Windows with Windows Media Player 9. Even a Mac
running OS X 10.3 with the latest Windows Media Player was incapable of
viewing the clip. Here I am, 2 pushes of the scroll lock and 1 push of
the number 1 key and I'm running Windows XP with Windows Media Player
and I decided to hell with them.

Now that I've gotten savvy enough to make
xine/gxine/mplayer/W32codecs/xmms-mp3 to all work I think I am less
inclined to use them and much more eager to simply ignore the content
that is built on proprietary standards with crappy viewer applications
(can anyone say realplayer?).

And then there's the issue of telling your browser to impersonate a
different browser to fake compatibility which also serves to reinforce
their stupid decisions about composition, content and delivery methods.
Phooey.

Anyway, on that list, all the Mac users whined about not being able to
see the content and I exhorted them all by saying (off topic of course),
that as long as you don't tell these content providers that they are
missing your eyeballs because the content providers don't follow
industry standards, they aren't gonna get it. Of course, MSN obviously
has their own view on industry standards.

As more and more people start using Linux and the tools provided on
Linux, the standards will become more important and the proprietary
content delivery methods and clients will become less important. This
will not, however, happen overnight but over time.

;-)

Craig