Hello,

I am very anxious to migrate to a linux environment. I will try using Gentoo.

However, I cannot migrate until I can find out something.

I need to be able to access any windows media stream or file under linux, and through a broswer, especially launch.yahoo.com music videos.

I love launch.com and I want to be able to use launch.yahoo.com just like I use it on my windows XP machine. I want to surf through videos, play my customized music video channel, and rate the videos with launch.com's rating system as I am watching.

Is this possible to do under the linux operating environment?

Which browser do I need to use? I hate Mozilla and Netscape. Which media player will I use and remember it must be "plug-inable" just like windows media will pop up when you click on a stream link when using internet explorer. What websites will actually recongize this linux browser, and allow you to view the page?

Many thanks.

-DF

Just a quick additional side note for you.

Here is some information I have found, which is hardly a full solution.


http://hacks.oreilly.com/pub/h/920

I've never used Yahoo! Launch, but I've generally had pretty good luck with embedded media stream using the following setup.

I'd reccomend installing MPlayer, which is generally a wonderful media player that, when properly set up, will play just about any stream format you throw at it, WMV included.

Then get the MPlayer Plugin for Mozilla. It doesn't have much of an interface, but it works fairly transparently.

Even if you don't like the cannon Mozilla distribution, I'd nonetheless heartily reccomend you give Mozilla Firefox a try. It's much more streamlined and nice looking than the old Mozilla, and IMHO, there's very little not to like.

I don't know of many non-Mozilla-based browsers for Linux. Opera is quite good, but I have no idea if/how well it supports embedded media, and it costs money (and only runs well on Intel based machines).

-Andrew

Andew,

Thanks for the good information.

I probably wouldn't hate Mozilla if more websites could recognize it as being "internet explorer-like"

I believe if you surf to launch.yahoo.com with mozilla you will be denied.

Is there a way to mask the browser so that it shows up as internet explorer 6 to any website you go to?

Thanks again.

-DF

It seems Launchcast is a bit more proprietary than I'd realized...they seem to only officially support Internet Explorer, which obviously isn't available for Linux.

This article seems to have examined your problem in a bit more depth than I can offer, but the outlook isn't very bright

Someone here on the forums seems to have had good luck with CrossOver, though.

-Andrew

I've found that the new Beta version of Opera for windows will allow you to mask as IE 6.

If there was an opera plug in for Mplayer, or XMMS we may be able to get somewhere with this.

XMMS supposedly is able to run windows media streams, however, I've tried compiling it and with no success.

mozilla allow you to hide your user agent, you have to download and extension. Yahoo's player don't support linux i think, they only care about windows users.

Interesting about Mozilla.


Here is the link to the Opera Beta for Linux. I assume it will allow you to mask as IE6.

http://snapshot.opera.com/unix/7.50-Preview-4/

Mozilla, Opera, and most other web browsers will allow you to mask your client ID string...that's fairly common nowadays (for exactly this sort of reason, sadly enough).
It seems though, that the problem with Lauchcast is a lot more fundamental than Windows Media streaming support or client rejection...Yahoo! uses proprietary player software. If it were simply a matter of WM streaming, you could use just about any browser.

What I'm saying is; it's probably not going to work

Beaucoup,

Thanks. You're right, launchcast is jacked up. I mean what's with the discrimination against Linux? Somebody over there must be getting handouts from Microsoft or something.

Well, I've decided to go ahead and invest in TWO (2) hard drives for my machine. One will be Windows, and one will be Linux. If I can achieve OS nirvana, I might go exclusively linux but, for now, Linux's got a long way to go.

I may set up a third hard drive FAT32. We'll see.

-DF

Sounds like the right idea. Of course, it's not strictly necessary to put every filesystem on it's own disk; you can partition a single disk into two or three independant partitions.

Of course, if you can afford to get seperate hard drives, you'll save yourself many a headache.

A common FAT32 partition is an excellent idea; it's a good place to put music and video files.

-Andrew

I have a small FAT32 partition for sharing files that must be shared, but I'd strongly recommend AGAINST a large FAT32 partition for long-term file storage. You're better off keeping your stuff on EITHER the Windows NTFS partition, OR the Linux ext3 partition, not FAT32. FAT is much more prone to major trouble. I personally keep my music on NTFS and play it from linux fine. You can also do the reverse, but you need to download a program for windows that will read ext3, which is not as nice as Linux's native ability to read NTFS.

Hello,

I wanted to ressurect this issue.

Has anyone been successful with playing launch.com music videos through, say firefox?

I read somewhere that some people were able to play launch.com music videos through linux under firefox and a plug-in of some type. I think it was most likely a XMMS plug-in, but I'm not sure.

I've been using Windows since my last posts, but I feel that it's time to fully convert over to linux. I'm still trying to decide between Gentoo and Fedora.... I feel that from a compatibility standpoint Fedora will be a better option, and it's widely used, not to mention actively developed by hundreds of thousands of users.

Is there any real advantage to Gentoo, like speed or something?

ANYONE?

I've been trying, but haven't figured it out, even using the User Agent Switcher to identify my browser IE6. The problem is that launch insists on playing their videos in WMP9+. Since there is no WMP for Linux, I see no way of playing Launch.com videos in Linux. You'd have to have some type of Firefox plugin that can maks itself as WMP. I don't think such a program exists. I emailed them suggesting they should make their content a more universal format so that non-Windows users can use their service. I suggest everyone else do the same. If they get enough emails, maybe they'll get the clue.