I'm trying to find a free linux distro that has really good out of the box multimedia support. So far, the only distro I've spent the time to set it all up exactly how I like is debian. But I really can't be arsed to go through all that again (new computer, fresh format etc, that debian install is gone). So basically, what free distros are there out there that can;
1) Play loads of differnet audio files. wma, mp3, ogg etc all in the same player. I don't want to have to keep swapping between say, XMMS and amarok.
2) Plays loads of different video files. divx, xvid, wmv, avi, mpg etc. Again, all from the same player.
3) Comes with a decent firefox plugin that works 100% of the time. In my experience, they tend to be a bit hit or miss whether or not the plugin loads.
4) Will fully support my surround sound (Onboard NForce 4 sound chip)

and will do all of that out of the box without any fiddling around?


I've tried a lot of distros and none of them (Suse, mandriva, ubuntu, debian, slack) have decent out-of-the-box multimedia support and only 1 (suse 10) has sorted my surround sound out properly. Which is quite disappointing really. Any ideas?

I've heard Mepis and PCLinuxOS do these things, but I've never tried them out.

If you want to give Ubuntu a shot again, they've created some automated installers and packaged them as a program called "automatix". Google for Ubuntu & automatix to see if they have everything you need....

I think I might give Mepis a try.


I forgot to mention in my first post that if the distro is 64bit or has a 64bit version that's a bonus too, although aslong as it works, it doesn't really matter too much.

PCLinuxOS has the best "out of the box" multimedia support. It is only 32-bit but, once installed, you can install a 64-bit kernel. Not that it makes it 64 bit, it just takes advantage of a few extra features that Athlon64-type processors can do in 32-bit mode. You only have to add "libdvdcss2" from the PCLOS repositories (not on the disc for legal reasons) and you're away!