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41 Comments
- holymoses, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Skip the story and read this summary:
1) Install mplayer - macewan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1http://www.youtube.com/?v=xml3kiYLYP4
- macewan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1also, why is this guy root the entire time?
- astinus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Doesn't cover things like x86-64 platforms, which tend to be a little more tricky for WMA/WMV stuff under Linux - otherwise it's really basic stuff, ie: emerge mplayer :) Nonetheless, useful to Linux newbies I guess!
- alterself, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1on gentoo...be sure that your win32codecs USE flag is set first :) THEN emerge mplayer
- wetelectric, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0*cough**mplayer**cough*
-lame - LeeVal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This is the same guy that had a tutorial on his other website on how to run Windows 2000 on 32mb of RAM
- catdog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Useful for learning how to install mplayer / xine etc manually but many Linux distributions should provide support for this via whatever package management system they have. If you're using a 64bit install of Gentoo, for example, just emerge mplayer-bin :) Digg++ nonetheless.
- DickBreath, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I'll digg. But I thought everyone already knew how to do this? I've been watching every type of playable media in Linux for over a year now.
- cdmarcus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Wow, this is lame. VLC works great on Linux, opens almost any file or stream format, and can even record them. Works for DVDs, too.
- ramsinks.com, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1its called VLC.
- jarva, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0vlc
- xerox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0im with the other 2 or 3 people that said it, VLC.
www.videolan.org/vlc/ - Brightside, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Man I just wish gstreamer had win32codecs!! Would be so much easier. But ya, I surprised this got so many diggs, thought most knew how to do this.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0*cough* xine *cough*
*cough*mplayer *cough*
*cough*vlc*cough*
As you can see, this type of media is not a problem for Linux....however, the rampant chest congestion among users is a problem.
>about any DRM'd music that you may have on your XP partition.
As if I care about any DRM'd music... people are fools for buying it in the first place.
Use this http://www.hymn-project.org/, or live with the fact you were stupid enough to buy a ***** product with limited usefulness.
BTW, there IS a much store for Linux users:
http://www.mindawn.com/
And, Real is announced they will be targeting Linux users for all their new much store stuff, not that anyone with half a brain is interested if its DRM'ed. - mancat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This would never be a problem if so many distributions weren't so hell-bent on keeping me "free" from these "evil proprietary" formats. News flash, GPL zealots: I don't have an OGG collection, I have an MP3 collection. I don't keep all of my videos in XviD format. This goes out to user-friendly distributions like Ubuntu: You need to support these formats out of the box, or you are not worth many people's time.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I am so sick of these posts that make it all sound like 1-2-3 and it's done. It's complete and utter BS of the greatest reverse FUD I've ever heard. Load Ubuntu 5.10, the win32 codecs and mplayer, or totem with the xine compatibility (cause gstreamer really sucks). and see how well everything REALLY works. Like the FF plugins or the fact that some AVI's for one reason or another just plain don't work. Plus, add to that the horrible frame rates etc... that you end up getting while trying to view wmv files etc....
It's just half baked...... I would never have one of my customers deal with that. I'd loose more business than ever... In a world where media is all important to the home user, more important than the spyware/virus issue, why would you give someone an OS that doesn't work properly. Sorry MAC or WIN for this, not Linux or Unix, or BSD... - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0OMG, NONE OF IT WORKS COMPLETELY. VLC, MPLAYER, XINE, TOTEM, ETC... all have issues with either web based streaming media or the files in question... Yeah, you can get it to work, but forget about any DRM'd music that you may have on your XP partition. You still need the win codecs for any of the players, and most distro's don't make it available so you have to get it from source etc... Once again, you can get it to work, but its always half baked. When will a linux distributor pay the damn fees to license the technology so they can incorporate it into their distro.........
- nonsequitor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The article neglects to mention that on 64 bit OS's like lets say...Linux x86_64, that you need to use a 32 bit version of mplayer or the 32 bit win32 codecs won't work. Thankfully distros like gentoo where you might end up with a 64 bit version of mplayer, you also have the option of grabbing the 32 bit version as well.
- pfunked, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0'This would never be a problem if so many distributions weren't so hell-bent on keeping me "free" from these "evil proprietary" formats.'
That would make these free distributions impossible. Maybe some group should look into packaging a spinoff of Debian/Ubuntu that includes all of the proprietary formats. It may cost the end users $50 in licenses though (or put the distributors or end users at risk of litigation). - sadsac, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0As others have stated above, it's all about mplayer. Mplayer is even better than vlc on linux.
- voltronbot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Normally I don't leave comments but this is an argument I can really relate to. In Windows, getting almost any media to play or stream was as simple as installing the K-Lite Mega codec. It even handles Quicktime movies, and Real (though it won't stream real media). That was IT. No need to install an additional player, emerge or apt-get anything. I was using Ubuntu as my main OS for about the past 8 months or so, and getting streaming/local media was FAR from being as easy as installing w32codecs and mplayer.
To be fair, I had no MAJOR problems playing back local media, though I always seemed to need at least two media players to accomplish this. Totem-Xine, was what I used mostly, and mplayer for whatever Xine didn't feel like playing.
Streaming is an entirely different story (read: a bitch). It took me the better part of two weeks of working at it EVERYDAY to get things working properly (sort of) with mplayer. Ran into issues with mplayer where it would intermittenly load video then crash after about 5 seconds. VLC would sometimes load video, but never sound. Totem-Xine would freeze whenever attempting to load anything. End result was installing w32 codecs from the mplayer site the /usr/bin/w32codecs, then creating a symlink to /usr/lib/w32codecs. This was after puring over enough tutorials and forum posts to make a grown man cry. This got mplayer streaming media with about a 85% success rate. It would STILL crash sometimes.
Maybe this was just an Ubuntu thing? I don't know, but in my experience Linux still has a ways to go in terms of user friendliness. I'm not implying this should be an "out of the box thing" because that isn't so with any OS, Windows included.
Though there HAS to be an easier way to get media working properly. - FireRabbit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0oops, "considering ubuntu is completely free"*
- indizen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0vlc doesnt have real media codecs
so using mplayer - FireRabbit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0If you are using ubuntu, check out http://eric.extremeboredom.net/2005/12/29/243/.
Guys, remember that the reason that it is "difficult" to get these files to play on linux is that they are a proprietary Microsoft format. Ubuntu would have to buy a license to include these codecs in the distribution, and concidering it is completely free, you cannot really expect them to do that. - BlueStarr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0No don't. Let it wither on the vine. The more people use it the longer it will take to get rid of it.
- wyngnut, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Only a windows idiot would say step 1 format (especially NTFS), step 2 install.
- DrSkrud, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Anyone following the MPlayer installation instructions (and everyone _should_) should know this.
Now, show me support for WMV on a PPC Machine (without spending money or using Windows Media Player itself) and I'll be a little more impressed. - masterofshadows, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0lindows/linspire has had support for all that stuff through the licencing for years, if you wanna go pay the $40 or something for all that crap instead of issuing ONE command, ONCE, be my guest.
- macewan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0sure it's ok to dick around with xine-totem or just
sudo apt-get install mplayer w32codecs mozilla-mplayer - iSEPIC, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"No don't. Let it wither on the vine. The more people use it the longer it will take to get rid of it." - what a stupid half/brain troll
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Just use VLC for Linux
- mistermachine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0i've tried all linux media players, and all variations thereof ... my top 3 placegetters for comprehensive video/browser-streaming support:
1)xine w/totem and totem mozilla plugin - perfect plays anything, really
2)vlc - mozilla plugin is not quite good enough yet
3) mplayer - mozilla plugin hopelessly broken, doesn't seem to play as many codecs anymore. - dynamx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0vlc
- FireRabbit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Hey psylence - I didn't know about pitfdll, thanks. I've updated my blog post.
- RogueJediX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0How is this news? I thought every Linux user knew this already? They either use codecs from mplayer's homepage or they use VLC.
- psylence, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Man I just wish gstreamer had win32codecs!! Would be so much easier. But ya, I surprised this got so many diggs, thought most knew how to do this.
Sigh... http://ronald.bitfreak.net/pitfdll.php - psylence, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0^^^ was intended to mock Brightside who cannot use the Googlenet. Laugh with me children of the night. Laugh with me.
- masterdebater, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Wonderful,
NOW YOU TELL me after I just reformatted from Mandriva and went back to XP... - dharm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0no go for 64bit, as windows dont even have their ***** ass proprietary codecs on windows in 64bit (still 32bit codecs, and 32bit WMP)
but otherwise, this ***** is obvious...
MPlayer plays most of its ***** on its own.
cough cough cough... is it really hard to emerge win32codecs, or apt-get it...
this install is basic of these players, and most ***** to install on linux is easy, so why are nubs on digg are like oh ya, this is helpful
./configure && make && make install
people using linux shouldnt really be looking on a news site for linux tips and how tos... just goto your distro support forum..
you use gentoo? goto http://forums.gentoo.org
ubuntu? http://ubuntuforumss.org
get the point?
and then for general linux howtos, not distro specific, might wanna hit up http://linuxquestions.org
-lame for being obvious, shame on you *nix nubs - intelmustdie, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0Want your Linux box to handle multimedia? It's a simple process.
1. Reformat in NTFS.
2. Install Windows 2000/XP.
3. Enjoy.
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