Multimedia support?
 

How about the multimedia support in JDS? Is it packages avaliable so that one could play MP3, videos (w32codecs)?

Any avaliable BitTorrent packages (client software) for JDS?

From what I've seen there's a JDS 3 comming out (I think it's in beta testing). Any timeline for this release?

Multimedia support in JDS is somewhat limited by what Sun is legally allowed to ship-- so, for example, it doesn't support the playing of encrypted (i.e. most commercial) DVDs, or the native win32 video codecs. You can find the relevant bits to do so on the net, but their downloading and/or usage may well be illegal in your country, and is therefore neither recommended nor supported in any way by Sun Microsystems.

JDS comes with Java Media Player, Real Player and Totem, which between them will play most common audio formats and several video formats (although I'm afraid I don't have a list to hand). Other media players such as XMMS, which support some additional formats, are available as RPMs on the JDS Community Website, http://jdshelp.org.

No release date has been announced for JDS3 as yet, so I'd get into trouble if I posted one here :) The Solaris version is in beta as you say (not sure if the Linux version is or not, yet), so the bulk of the development work is done... stay tuned :)

You could also download rpm packages for SuSE 8.1 from http://packman.links2linux.org/ . They work flawlessly with Sun JDS. Unfortunately, mplayer did not want to install, but Xine works without a hitch and with all win32 codecs (also available in the link above). Same goes to XMMS, just get the SuSE 8.1 package and have fun :)

Regards!

Just to add my .2 cents to this, I can tell you that Mplayer works as a dream for me, although you will have to use MPlayer v1.0pre4 source code instead of MPlayer v1.0pre5 source as I also had some issue with the latest code.
I do have all win32 codecs working with Mplayer too. So I recommend finding the old source code, mean while if I have time I'll pack my compiled source code of mplayer-pre4 and post it on jdshelp.org as soon as I can including all the wine32 codecs and the rest.

If it all works well all you'll have to do is rpm -i <package name>.rpm

I'll post a note when I've done it.

Regards,

Ricardo W.