I thought I'd cracked it!! Actually got MCNLive mandriva installed and it recognised my broadcom wifi (albeit with ndiswrapper and Windows driver files). Installed Opera and Firefox - painless! Easy sailing ... then the Nightmare on Plugin Street!!!! The realplayer plugins just don't work. Not do mplayer or xzine work as embedded players with the BBC website.

here's the 'help' at the BBC for RP and Opera:

Many users have emailed us how they got things working on their system:
Many users have found that they were able to use the BBC Radio Player after installing Real Player 10.
The files nphelix.so and nphelix.xpt must be in the browser's plugins directory for Opera, Firefox and Mozilla
You may need to log out and back in again before the changes work.
Some users have commented that they had to install the player and plugins as root. As root, in plugins directory, make soft links to nphelix.so and nphelix.xpt ("ln -fs /opt/RealPlayer/mozilla/nphelix.so /opt/firefox/plugins/nphelix.so" . Same for nphelix.xpt). Add whichever user(s) want to listen to group "audio" in /etc/group (more secure than giving world permissions to /dev/[sound device, ex. dsp]
One user has said that when running on a non-root area, disabling artsd got it working
One user has said that using the command artsdsp /usr/bin/realplay got it working
One user found using the command ln -s /home/me/applications/RealPlayer10/realplay /usr/bin/realplay got it working
A user on Suse 9.1 Professional found that the most recent update (0.9.3-1.2-i586) got the plugin working.
A user found that making sure the 'realplay' binary is in the PATH when FireFox starts up got things working.
One user suggested that any Linux users having problems with the Radio Player in Firefox should try using the Konqueror browser instead (assuming Real Player for Linux is correctly installed).
One user reported that Totem could not play Real Player live streams at first. He ran an 'aboutlugins' command in Firefox, and discovered two plugins bound to the 'audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin' MIME type:

Helix DNA Plugin: RealPlayer G2 Plug-In Compatible (compatible; Totem)
File name: libtotem-complex-plugin.so
The Totem 2.16.3 plugin handles video and audio streams.
MIME Type: audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin
Description: RealAudio document
Suffixes: rpm
Enabled: Yes

and

Helix DNA Plugin: RealPlayer G2 Plug-In Compatible
File name: nphelix.so
Helix DNA Plugin: RealPlayer G2 Plug-In Compatible version 0.4.0.622 built with gcc 3.2.0
MIME Type: audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin
Description: RealPlayer Plugin Metafile
Suffixes: rpm
Enabled: Yes

He then located libtotem-complex-plugin.so in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins and renamed it to libtotem-complex-plugin.so.old. After restarting all Firefox instances, he ran aboutlugins again and the first Totem plugin mentioned above was no longer present. The BBC Radio Player worked fine.


THIS IS JUST COMPUTER VOODOO !!!

Why oh why does every distro fail in some major respect as a usuable system for the average user???

Hmmm. The distro I use hasn't failed me in any respect as a usable system.

ahem! I did mention the 'average' user - cross-linux hardly qualifies as an 'average' distro, IMHO.

I consider myself an average user. And you DID say average user not average distro. But, I'm just bustin' your chops.

Right then! Can you make head or tails of the quoted material? How is an average user going to get any purchase on a 'broken' realaudio install from the comments above?

In Windows it all works automagically (well sort of, with reasonably understandable messages).

So far, I've had grief trying to get wifi working, installing additional programs, plugins not working, hardware icons with a life of their own (eg. loudspeaker icon crossed out, but audio blasting out at 100%), wonky screen resolution settings, non-existent help pages, technospeak information messages, etc.

Okay, linux is fast. Beyond that, I'm not too convinced it really can be described as a real-world alternative to the other OS for everyday real-world users. Upped the ante from average!

castalla;

There are a minimum of two ways to approach this group:

1. Come out swinging, rant on all the shortcomings, and challenge the community to prove you wrong. Many of us will ignore this--we know what Linux will or will not do for us, and we've made our decisions. Trying to respond to negative diatribes is often too exhausting.
2. Ask for help on a specific problem--supplying as much information as possible. This typically results in LOTS of help.

While I will confess to doing #1 a few times, I generally get better results with #2.

Linux meets my needs to the extent that Windows is not installed on either of my office computers. The home machine boots into Windows maybe once in every 2 months.

YMMV

For video on the BBC site, try installing the VLC mozilla plugin and choosing WMV media type when the BBC site prompts you. Works for me.

I always has hassle with the real player plugin (although I did manage to get it working in the past with a little fiddling). Heh, that's proprietary software for you.

IMO the worst thing about realplayer is that it uses OSS for audio, which means that on my single channel sound card it requires that no other audio is playing else it is silent, and when it does work it grabs the whole soundcard and nothing else will work. VLC uses ALSA and do the software mixing plays nicely with other apps.

Hmmm, I'm just an average computer user. I'm a long haul trucker not an IT professional or programmer. While I prefer certain distros over others, mainly Slack over all of them, I've been able to install a fully functional system with every single distro I have tried.

If every distro is failing for you, I would examine the one common denominator.

If it really frustrates you that much, maybe you're just one of those people for whom Windows really is the best option. There's nothing wrong with that, and it is true for some people.

In my opinion things are rather easy now Ubuntu desktop, for example, offers to install drivers for your proprietary hardware like Broadcom 43xx wireless card, ATI or nVidia graphics driver (the 3d accelaration drivers), and so on. Select the devices you like and hit OK, and in a moment they work. And codecs - I open a video file that the system does not have a codec installed for, and the player tells me this. Right below it says that if I like, it can search for a suitable codec - I click OK, wait a moment and it presents me with a solution. Click of a button, and the file starts playing..

Not bad, huh? Compared to Windows - manually search for the drivers, check which one of them is the right one, download, get a corrupted file, re-download, run, tell Vista that you really really are who you claim and do want to run the file, follow instructions, reboot, fix settings back to normal, ... and when it comes down to codecs, spend days hunting for the right codec package that works with your players, the video formats you want, and actually with the rest of the system. Have more than one installed, and they'll interfere with each other, causing all media to stop playing. After some tries your system is so mixed up you wonder yourself how it ever managed to get into that state..

Ok, that's just Ubuntu which is (or I found) easy, but remember that they're not Ubuntu-only-programs. They're open source, and available to you if you like. For Windows? No

It can use alsa via alsa-oss. You install the alsa-oss library and when starting RealPlayer use the command "aoss realplay" or edit the realplay script and change
to
I think the OP would have been better off seeking help about the problem instead of posting a rant which many will just ignore.

I tried aoss in the past with little success, but that was a few revisions of Ubuntu ago, and I shall try it again. Thanks for the reminder.

It works! Yay, another small irritation has gone away. Thanks reddazz!

If this trend continues I'll have no reason to look forward to future releases of Linux...

Yeah, there's nine things BBC users have done to get RealPlayer working with BBC content. Start with #1 and work towards #9. If it doesn't apply (e.g., you don't use SuSE 9.1 Profesional), then skip it.

1. The files nphelix.so and nphelix.xpt must be in the browser's plugins directory for Opera, Firefox and Mozilla. You may need to log out and back in again before the changes work.
2. Some users have commented that they had to install the player and plugins as root. As root, in plugins directory, make soft links to nphelix.so and nphelix.xpt ("ln -fs /opt/RealPlayer/mozilla/nphelix.so /opt/firefox/plugins/nphelix.so" . Same for nphelix.xpt). Add whichever user(s) want to listen to group "audio" in /etc/group (more secure than giving world permissions to /dev/[sound device, ex. dsp]
3. One user has said that when running on a non-root area, disabling artsd got it working.
4. One user has said that using the command artsdsp /usr/bin/realplay got it working.
5. One user found using the command ln -s /home/me/applications/RealPlayer10/realplay /usr/bin/realplay got it working.
6. A user on Suse 9.1 Professional found that the most recent update (0.9.3-1.2-i586) got the plugin working.
7. A user found that making sure the 'realplay' binary is in the PATH when FireFox starts up got things working.
8. One user suggested that any Linux users having problems with the Radio Player in Firefox should try using the Konqueror browser instead (assuming Real Player for Linux is correctly installed).
9. One user reported that Totem could not play Real Player live streams at first. He ran an 'aboutlugins' command in Firefox, and discovered two plugins bound to the 'audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin' MIME type etc., etc., etc.

None of them may work for you, but it's not Voodoo it's just reading instructions. I tend to agree with masonm, you need to look for the single point of failure.

If you don't like linux, then don't use it. Just go back to your wonderful world of virus/malware of windows. Sure your hardware will work in windows, thats because the hardware vendors provide drivers for windows and not for linux.

Linux is NOT for everyone. If you can't hack it, go back to your windows.

I agree with dv502, if you don't like it or want to learn don't bother, but don't bother coming to kick off about it. I'm an average user, just media and internet but i understand what the bbc are saying. linux fails is not a question. there's a sticky post at the beginning of the forum that explains what a question is, read it. If you want to complain about life, the world and free peace there's a general forum. Real player works fine for me on the bbc website or the mplayer plugin, the only website i've ever had trouble with is the abc news website. As for windows offering helpful error messages, when has "there appears to be a problem with the device" or "Error" ever been remotely helpful to anyone, my linux box always gives me some reason for the error. Try asking your question properly and there'll be allot of ppl helping you, they've always helped me, the ppl on linuxquestions are some of the most helpful ppl on any forum I've come across