LinuxQuestions.org - Xine and RH 7.3

In case anyone's wondering how to get Xine to work...

My device setup (this is on a Dell Dimension XPS B1000):
Primary Master: Seagate Barracuda IV 40GB 7200PRM UDMA100 (/dev/hda)
Secondary Master: Pioneer 106S 16x DVD-ROM UDMA66 (/dev/hdc)

Many mentioned that you needs to use hdparm to enable DMA. I found that my settings weren't retained, even with keepsettings=1, so I dug around, and found a file I had to edit: /etc/sysconfig/harddisks. Since I had two different devices, I needed to make two copies of this file: harddiskhad for the hard drive, and harddiskhdc for the DVD-ROM. I uncommented the lines as necessary (like USE_DMA=1).

When I first installed RH 7.3 I chose Workstation Install, and Gnome only as part of the 4 package groups. So instead of installing Xine from my RH CD's I went to FreshRPMS for 7.3 and downloaded the latest version. You need aalib, xine, and xine-libs.

After downloading the RPM's, I ran GnoRPM (which I find confusing to use at best) and installed the RPM's, aalib first (because xine needs aalib). When it was done, I rebooted and prayed.

It worked!

Okay, it wasn't perfect. But the video was smooth, no choppiness whatsoever. I tried with "Enemy at the Gates" and "A Knight's Tale" and it worked fine. Now the problem: Sometimes when the DVD plays it goes right to the movie without going to the menu first. I don't know how to bring up the menu while I'm watching the DVD.

I'm still happy with the results though. I thought that the only way for me to watch DVD's on my Dell was to use Win2k (which was what I had previously). Not anymore. I'm so excited about the strides LInux has been making, and you can be assured that I'm free from Microsoft. Doesn't that feel good? ;)

BP

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