Need a bit of help choosing a distro...

silverbullet · 09-14-2005, 08:11 AM

Ok guys, im sure this question is asked about 20 times a day... but I believe im looking for something in particular. I have used ubuntu, red hat, and suse. None of these are what i am looking for. Ubuntu was the closest.

I want a media happy distro. I want to be able to play dvds, listen to music, surf the web with java, etc. Can someone help me with a distro?

I am hoping i could find one that uses apt-get as that is the best package manager i have ever used. Thanks!

cuiq · 09-14-2005, 08:46 AM

I may be wrong on this, but every distro I have used I've had to configure it to play DVDs, and have Java capability. The tools needed for DVD playback is not included because of the laws in different countries regarding Decss (specifically the US). Java is not included because it has a proprietary license of Sun Microsystems and therefore can not be included in most distros afaik.

peace V

aysiu · 09-14-2005, 09:18 AM

Blag has libdvdcss installed, I believe, and it's not too difficult to get it running on Mepis.

halo14 · 09-15-2005, 12:38 PM

umm.. SUSE has by far the best multimedia support out of the box.. you just need to download the 4 "Multimedia Options Packs" after install... it also includes java and flash and such from the install... Dunno what your issue there was.. maybe try it again... use 9.3 Pro.

SkyEye · 09-28-2005, 06:59 AM

Why didn't you try Debian? If Ubuntu was your closest you should certainly try it. It's the distro who introduced apt-get (and it's the mother of Ubuntu). And on GUI synaptic does a good job with apt-get. And Debian has around 16000 packages officially (more on non-official sites)

There's a nice live CD distro based on Debian called Taprobane. Check this post too.

sleeplesscitizen · 09-28-2005, 08:09 PM

I agree with whoever said suse... but out of the box, no distro is perfect for media

What you should do is load suse, and install a program called mplayer
The program can seem slightly hard to install because of all the dependencies, but once installed, you will NEVER want to use anything else. Believe me, mplayer is perfect in EVERY way possible!

bigmetalrabbit · 09-29-2005, 12:03 AM

I really like suse 9.3, but I have sort of a paranoid "big-evil-brother-is-watching-you" feeling that makes me kinda uneasy when I use corporate sponsored linux distros.

Is it even possible to get all multimedia running in suse 9.3 pro w/o yast going back and disabling stuff again?

(BTW, I have no idea what i'm talking about)

SkyEye · 09-29-2005, 06:04 AM

I also find that no distro had out of the box perfection for me. I do manual configurations in whatever distro I use.

Debian worked for me. And MPlayer - yeah, that's my favourite multi-media palyer on any platform, to date.