red hat has again ignored us that are heavy into mutimedia applications. the bad news with red hat 9, this is why i don,t buy it-

1.xmms is included, BUT NO PLUG-IN FOR MP3
2. no xine player to watch dvd, must install it and not that easy
3.no java support
4.no shockwave support

wonder what eles i didn,t find out it,s missing

personally, i can,t figure out what the people are red hat are thinking, are they going after the server market, and that,s it????????????????

I would agree. I personally like Redhat 8.0 (And Redhat 7.0 served my well for ~4 years), The MP3 thing is a non issue since I use oggs, but it is probably time to go to a distro that builds all the multimedia in by default and that has fully integrated KDE (my preferred desktop) functionality. Redhat seems to focus on Gnome, which is fine, but I don't use it. Probably look to the next release of Suse. About time I spread the 'donations' around anyway. I buy the boxed sets when I find what I want.

I was also dissapointed in gnorpm being dropped. The new tool, in redhat 8.0 left a lot to be desired. I am totally comfortable with the command line, however, it was nice to have the GUI to find all the files in packages instead of continually piping to more. For KDE users, gnorpm for Redhat 7.3 works, at least for me. Don't try it with Gnome though.

RO

Seems like a pity. I am getting a new machine and was looking to install it. I think it looks smooth, elegant and wasy on the eyes - however I don't really know a lot about what is underneath.
I have redhat 8 disks and mandrake 8.1 disks, so perhaps I'll just stick with rh8?

The Reason why Redhat does not include the plugin for Mp3 is because, It's patented by Fraunhofer And for RedHat to distrobute it, they have to pay Royaltes to The German company. http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/amm/

may get me the suse 8.2 and give it a try. got kde 3.1 and gnome 2.2. as for red hat and the minus multi-media support, the other distro,s have it, why not red hat??????

Because it's non-GPL software. Red Hat is a completely 100% GPL-compliant distribution. The other distros that are including this software are violating the GPL.

All the items you mention are easily available in RPM's packaged for Red Hat. You just download the RPM and install and you have it working. Not a big fricking deal if you ask me.

It's a simple download and install. Very simple. Very easy. By the way, it's been this way since RH8. Nothing new here.

How would you know this? Have you installed RHL9? (Note: It hasn't even been released yet!)

There's plenty of Java support. You just download the JRE from Sun and install it. Very simple. Very easy. By the way, this is how it's always been with Red Hat. Nothing has changed in this regard for RHL9.

Again. This is supported easily. You just download the plugin from the Shockwave site and install it. Very simple. Very easy. Again, it's been this way alwasy with Red Hat. Nothing has changed in this regard for RHL9.

Your brain?

They aren't violating the GPL by adding packages that aren't GPL software. The only way they would be violating the GPL is if they made some changes to existing GPL software, released it or sold it and didn't offer the source code, etc, along those lines.

And ronss,

These are really small problems or not even problems your mentioning in my opinion.

Installing a mp3 plugin is nothing, installing xine or even better video player "mplayer" is not hard at all.
All these plugins, not hard. They only seem hard cause others make them seem harder than they really are.

But as far as I know, like glock19 mentioned, its always been like this with Redhat and many other distro's with shockwave, java.. etc. That's why there are many different distro's, they all have their slight differences in what they offer or have right out of the box.

I sit corrected. You are right.

To restate: Other distros that includes this non-GPL software are not 100% GPL distributions.

Red Hat has made the decision that it will be a 100% GPL distribution. There is no non-GPL software included with Red Hat.

I bought the 7.3 pro edition and it comes with java, xine, xmms/with plugins, and just about any other program you can imagine for linux.......
and im sure that SUSE 8.2 PRO has alot more...........

not trying to push any buttons .......just an opinion

heh mp2 support very easy to install like someone already said. And redhat focus much more on gnome more than kde is becasue gnome is not such a memory hog like kde, even though gnome is getting slower heh. xine is out for rh9 and is as easy to install as doing a apt-get install xine, apt installs it for ya .


you can get apt at apt.freshrpms.net on that site and if you want to install it manually you can also get xine there.

Well, Java, mp3 support and xine are all easy to install as mentioned before...for mp3 and xine just go to http://www.freshrpms.net/...
Only Flash is supported under Linux...so no http://www.shockwave.com/ games for now...

If everything was so simple you wouldn't have to download it. I had always been a Redhat fan until recently (7.2) since which I have not been able to get my sound card working. Just download the ALSA drivers and install them everybody said. Well it is only simple if you know how to modify the config files. I have now made the move to install Mandrake 9 on one of my drives and I have never had an install run so well. I even have sound that works with out downloading a thing.

Judging from some reviews with RH9 on the net, I will not recommend this distro for newbies or someone that just about migrating from windows evil regime.

Those simple things are really easy peasy for us to be done but eventually it will add up into uneasy for newbs. Very easy in terms of newbs are like a few clicking on mouse bottons and done ;-)

Go with SuSE 8.2 newbs!


Have a lot of fun :-)

go to http://www.xmms.com/, dowload the mpeg 123 plugin and install it with rpm -Uvh <filename>.rpm, don't forget to configure your xmms correctly.