As noted in my profile I finally settled on Fedora Core 5 as what I wanted for my spare computer. This computer is now the only computer so it needs to do pretty much everything I require of it.

I prefer KDE, but don't mind having Gnome so I have the best of both worlds. I have become somewhat accustomed to yum and RPMs. I would like to go through some progamming (C++) in the near future, so KDevelop or a similar alternative should be on my system. I am happy to use OO for any complicated "office" writing requirements. I would like to use Cedega at some stage to put games on, though at the moment I can waste an entire day playing an old favourite on DosBox. DosBox being the only programme I have managed to install from source, as I am such a newbie. Here comes the problem...

All my distros come on DVD courtesy(sp?) of Linux Format, the British version. There is no Australian version. Anyway, due to copyright laws, they cannot send out (in magazines) software which would allow viewing of any licenced(?) movie clips, or the use of DVD movies which would play on a a licenced DVD player. (area 4 here) The formats which don't work, or are reproduced in a very corrupted fashion are: mpeg, DVD, asf, wmv, mov, pretty much any video clip that should be played by a video player.

Over the last few weeks I have tried using yum to find some upgrades/packages/anything, even using google to find missing files required to get xine/gstreamer to work. I'm giving up!

I'm thinking about doing a full re-install, but then I could also install either Fedora Core 6 or Ubuntu 6.10 both of which are on DVD from the latest issue of the magazine.

Here is the question. Which of these two distros covers my needs (as listed in second paragraph) and will also allow me to play DVDs or videos without too much complication? Please remember that they will be (I assume) modified versions to prevent use of video.

Fire away with your replies...

Perhaps you should be asking the list for a good dvd player for FC. I don't do much in the GUI, so I can't help, but as I recall, people just download libdcss or something like that and then go on their way.

Can anyone recommend something fo Mickey?

Here is one place to check out.

That looks like just the ticket 2dc

Thanks for your help with that link. I now have VLC to use as a video player.

I hangs mysteriously not long after starting. I'll have a look tomorrow morning to see if it can be easily fixed.

Okay, I had a bit more time to play with VLC this morning and here is the thing:

Immediately upon choosing a video file to open the window just closes down. No warning. Nothing. (but thanks for that link; it could become really handy when I reformat and start anew)

Anyway, I've had breakfast so I'll go out and buy a USB drive to backup my personal folder. I'll be back in a while. Could you please list which distro I listed above would be best?