On Sun, 2003-02-23 at 03:16, Paul Johnson wrote: > On Fri, Feb 21, 2003 at 09:32:34PM -0500, M. Kirchhoff wrote: --snip-- > > Another site I frequent uses streaming Windows Media. Am I totally out > > of luck there? I know there's this Crossover package that will run WM, > > but it's definitely non-free. I haven't run into needing RealPlayer > > support yet, but I wonder if there's a free clone of that that works > > under debian-mozilla. > > Not a plugin for it, but mplayer will play them. It's non-free and > only in unofficial packages. >
Actually, mplayer proper is free (GPL'd). Some of the codecs that you may choose to use, however, are non-free. And there is actually an mplayer plugin available that works pretty well. http://mplayerplug-in.sourceforge.net It's currently up to 0.40. It even plays Quicktime movie trailers and the such right in the browser window. I'm working on making it my first Debian package actually. :) > Then you'll want to get the mplayer-<arch> package appropriate to your > CPU, w32codecs (which also includes the DivX ;-) codecs among others) > and if you also want quicktime support, qt6codecs. When you get the > prompt of how you want to handle the movie, open it in gmplayer. Your > movie will play in a seperate window. > I, for one, still recommend compiling from source. You just download a source tarball (or, for more fun, get the CVS version :), add in any codecs you might want, and run "debian/rules binary" from the base mplayer directory. The documentation on the site (www.mplayerhq.hu) is really quite good. > > If I start plugging in all these non-free, non-stable packages into a > > stable Debian build, then is it really a stable system anymore? > > Well, if you're using unstable, things will break. This is the active > development branch and is not the tree to be following if you never > want to encounter reliability issues. > Unstable is only for those of us who like to fix broken systems for fun. :) However, if you want to be closer to the cutting edge without actually cutting yourself, just run testing. Testing hardly ever actually "breaks" and it tends to be much more recent than stable. Stable, IMO, is only for servers. It's entirely too old to be used as a desktop system. > > Yet it seems like I need to add a lot of these additional packages > > just to function. I'm confused! > > Did you ever get by with a base install of Windows without installing > any additional software? At least here you don't pay anything for the > additional software. > A good case in point here. A full install of Windows XP is a little over 1 GB. A full base install of Debian (including XFree86 and all the other necessary goodies) will run you around 300 MB. From that point on, you're free to pick and choose which packages you want and leave out the ones you don't. Ever look for the command-line MS ftp program in Add/Remove programs? How about their telnet client? Or the god-awful GUI? Nope, you're out of luck. :) Hopefully that will help to clarify things a bit. :) > Welcome to the brave GNU world. Enjoy your stay. You've got to love a good pun! :) I second that! :) -- Alex Malinovich Support Free Software, delete your Windows partition TODAY! Encrypted mail preferred. You can get my public key from any of the pgp.net keyservers. Key ID: A6D24837
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