cyberciti.biz — This question is asked again and again. Short answer — copyright/IP laws prevent shipping all the software and technologies/plug-ins with each Linux distro. Some distributions come with all these goodies but they are not free. So how do I get mp3s and other stuff working? The following shows you the work around in most distributions!
Nov 10, 2006 View in Crawl 4
craterburnsuNov 11, 2006
Gentoo gets around this since you're installing via portage they have all the packages in there, while the core itself doesn't contain any of them. This works out magnificently because you're already installing everything else anyway from portage.
hineyNov 11, 2006
Let's face it - Linux is nothing more than "hobbyware."
buelldozerNov 11, 2006
Uh huh, that's why half the internet runs on it.
lostsNov 11, 2006
Windows XP SP2 Doesn't come with a DVD decoder out of the box ./configure && make && su -c "make install" slackware FTW !
aickieranNov 11, 2006
Yeah, use automatix because god forbid having to actually use a package manager or learning how to compile from source :-O
dicerandomNov 12, 2006
"Check Spelling" won't catch the grammar mistakes. We're gonna have to send this one back to 3rd grade.
blackadderiiiNov 13, 2006
You have to install more 3rd party software to get the same stuff working on windows, Einstein.