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What is your point in posting this thread? You tell us that you're using Windows to watch a DVD because you had problems with Slackware, and that you don't want to know what the problem was OR how to solve it? What does this accomplish? The fact is, mounting DVDs and floppies is very easy in Slackware and in any other Linux distro you can find. In Slackware, you can manually mount either in the terminal using the `mount` command (see `man mount`), or you could mount it graphically through HAL. I don't know how much reading you've done (if any), but you must be in the floppy, cdrom and plugdev groups to accomplish what you ask graphically (eg. through Konqueror). During the `adduser` setup of a new, non-root user, IT EXPLICITY SUGGESTS THAT YOU ADD YOURSELF TO THESE GROUPS. What more do you want? It also suggests that you add yourself to the audio and video groups for other reasons (the audio group is essential for getting your sound card to work properly). The following commands (as root) would probably get everything working in a default install:
Code:
# gpasswd -a user audio
# gpasswd -a user video
# gpasswd -a user plugdev
# gpasswd -a user cdrom
# gpasswd -a user floppy
Yes, it's that simple. And if you followed the suggestion in the `adduser` script when setting up your non-root users, you wouldn't even have to do this -- you would just have to press the up arrow, WHEN IT TELLS YOU TO. As for watching DVDs, I've found Xine to be the best DVD player that ships natively with Slackware. VLC is also pretty good, but you'd have to install it separately.
You are saying that it is ridiculous that you can't mount a floppy disk now when you could ages ago. That's your problem. Floppies are all but useless now anyway, but they still work just as well today as they did 20 years ago. In Slackware, even.
don't you have to install extra software for slackware to play dvds? http://slackbuilds.org/result/?search=dvd&sv=12.1
like...
libdvdcss Libraries 1.2.10 12.1
libdvdnav Libraries 4.1.3 12.1
libdvdplay Libraries 1.0.1 12.1
libdvdread Libraries 4.1.3 12.1
DVDs have all those nasty encrypted vob files to keep us from rightfully making backups of software/media we own. you shouldn't need to region lock your drive according to libdvdcss. I find that slackware generally never works 'out of the box' for many tasks. But I'm thankful for the little things like the rc.mysqld start up script and the little advisories everywhere. For example, like reminding me to NOT use redhatisms with my start up scripts. Unless you know everything there is to know about linux, always assume user error first.
Well, this just shows that slackware might not be for you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by everal
I just know that I got yesterday a message that i had no permission to mount the device: THE FLOPPY !!!!!!!
(With bored-to-death voice)
read "man mount", open /etc/fstab, and make sure that mount options allow non-super-user mount floppy. Default options provided with slackware 12 are good enough and allow mounting floppy with normal (non-super-user) privileges. But you could break them somehow.
Quote:
Originally Posted by everal
how to watch the DVD
(With bored-to-death voice)
Never had a single problems with watching DVDs on slackware.
DVDs can be watched using mplayer or Kaffeine and probably also with other players like VLC. Kaffeine is better at handling DVD menus, so I recommend using it instead of mplayer. Automounting/autoplay of DVDs might require additional steps in some cases, but they are easy enough to solve with the help of google.com.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tuttle
Try Ubuntu, your problems will be minimal.
Nope. You'll just get all kinds of new, very fascinating problems.
This is not funny because i could use floppy in my Atari ST 2600, 20 years ago.
If like me, you really are old enough to have been around in the early days of home computing, you'll remember buying computer magazines (you know, the real ones full of interesting articles and program listings, not the modern variety that are little more than marketing tools for the vendors that advertise in them).
You'll remember sitting for a night or two typing in the program listings in order to run the programs.
You'll remember typing "run" for the first time, only to get the response "syntax error at line ##". You'll remember fixing the error, typing "run" again only to get the same result from a different line a little further on.
You'll remember spending hours repeating this process until you'd found every last typo or misprint.
If you remember any of those machine code listings, you'll remember entering page after page of hexadecimal data statements and "checksum error" messages from the small BASIC loader program that looped through them and "poked" those values into memory. You'll remember spending hours working through hexadecimal values trying to find the typo that caused that checksum to fail.
Hell, you may even remember writing your own from scratch.
For anyone who really dates back that far to be stumped by something as simple as getting the floppy to mount or a DVD to play, and worse still, to fly off on a rant instead of showing a little patience and asking for advice in a reasonable way, well, its just beyond me....
Compared to how it used to be, Slackware really doesn't take that much effort. But then, perhaps you're not quite as old as me and belong to the "cover disk generation" rather than the "program listings in the back pages generation".
Last edited by GazL; 11-16-2008 at 07:52 AM..
Reason: typo
This is interesting. In my case, I could never get DVD's to work in Windows.
Slackware, though it did not work out of the box, was much easier for me. You do need to add some software as mentioned above. I would also add mplayer and mplayer codecs (installed to /usr/lib/codecs and /usr/lib/win32 (or symlinked)). Mplayer will need configuring, as will Xine and maybe xorg depending on the vid card.
To the OP: You are hardly the first person to have problems doing this. This is a good thing because there are so many howto's out there explaining what to do as a result. I suggest googling Slackware/Mplayer/DVD as well as doing some reading on permissions.
Linux has a steep learning curve - Slackware somewhat steeper depending on your experience level. This curve will start somewhere different for every person, but it will still be there at some point. No amount of pissing and moaning will change that.
Read, try, fail, ask, and then post what you did with results. That's how you get answers here.
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I am using my kids windows to watch a DVD
