Hi!

I just want to use this thread to say something I wanted a long time to say, but never had thought on the right place to do it..

I realy dont imagine Why Ubuntu a such fenomenal distro has always come with this sucking media player called Totem!
There are TONs of much more elaborated players that play out of the box almost any format, like vlc, mplayer, xine, kaffeine, and I neve understood why totem is the choosen one to come with ubuntu!
I never could play any Avi, Mpg, Wmv, Mov and even a common format like mp4 is not always that plays, of course someone will say - "but you can apt-get the right plugin". Well, I can, if the box Im using trhought the live CD in the moment had internet (Im posting this from other pc), I can if wasnt necessary stay looking for one of the many codecs available with gstreamer and stuff, so if I had my entire life for searching the right codec the answer is: Yes, I can download with apt-get, OR I can simple install VLC, or mplayer and his essencials package and play anything without worry.

But if is so simple Why all this angry? Because is nonsense totem come with gnome/ubuntu and everytime you want to play something you have to do an open with, to avoid see another time totem saying that he wont plaY because dont have the right plugin...

This is a kind of relief, and sometime ago I searched in the net trying to see if Im so crazy with my opnion, and like is suppose, Im not! There are many other people who have the same feeling, and the worse part is when you have Windowzer friend next to you, waiting to you to open that media and you always have to explain "Ops, I opened with the wrong aplication, let me go to the terminal, or make 10 clicks more to open this file and let you have this wrong feeling that linux just dont work like is mean to be.".


Yeah.. that is it, if someone want to crucify me for my opnion, good! But I stand with it and hope that sometime, maybe someone responsable for this could change the way things are (if at least totem had already out of the box support for the codecs without the need for fishing then, would be already a good step.)


[]'s
PS: Now im a litle more relief, and lets go again remove every totem package and install every vlc package, oh, was just two, firefox plugin and the app itself...

it's a gnome problem, not a problem from ubuntu or every other distribution for that matter

Okay, so half appologies to the ubuntu crew, I said half cause why not include some other option?
...

But when you install other programs you also install the codecs right? So what is the difference between using totem or vlc(mplayer ... etc)?

not exactly.

if you install vlc (apt-get install vlc) is all you need to play most formats (to be honest, I havent found one that vlc doesnt play yet) in the other hand you can install mplayer and with ONE package you could have all codecs ready to play most videos, withou saying that mplayer packager works for other applications like kaffeine and xine.

give a try with vlc, you'll see that it plays everything without problems, and Im talking about VCDs and DVDs too

[ ]s

Personaly Totem isn't my fave either but it keeps getting better with each new release of Gnome. I don't see the big deal. Linux has many choices for any application. Ubuntu's choice of the Gnome set is very logical since they all share common librarires, themes and look & feel. Many users are quite happy with that -- some aren't. So be it. Along with the open source free thing comes the ability, and many options, to taylor your system to your liking. You even have the option to install non-GPL software like many of the codecs and video drivers. Horror of horrors every user doesn't after a new install get a unique system exactly as they'd like it without having to lift a finger.

You see, my big deal with Totem isnt Totem itself but the lack of built in capability just out of the box, I think very frustrating to have a new system installed (specialy if you see from the point of view of a new user) and won't be able to play nothing besides ogg files. Its realy complicated for new users, comming from systems like windows to get used to apt-get (synaptics) and all his concepts envolved, maybe for me is just the angry of knowing that a simple command can fix a lot of thing, but for other isn't. So why to complicated? Why not come already with I gstreamer libraries and all stuff needed to play at least the most common formats like AVI, MPG and WMV? This is what realy piss me off, you know...


[ ]s

It has something to do with GPL licensing and what physicaly distributed on the CD. In the case of Ubuntu these items are bundled into installable package "non-free-codecs". These codecs will be retrieved from a repository on the Internet. FYI Apple doesn't come bundled with Microsoft codecs either but they are downloadable in a similar fashion as for Ubuntu.

hmm I see. Thanks for explanation.

Oh yeah, in the end you're right, isn't gnome, totem or ubuntu the guilt of all this, but the license that prohibit this kind of distribution... well, nothing to do when come to this point.

But you know, I'm not the kind of person who don't know anything about these licenses and you see the kind of miss judgement I made, maybe this is because of the lack of an explanation, the kind of when you try to play something you get a message saying why that won't play and how easy could be to make it work, maybe something so simple could avoid others miss judgement too.


best regards [ ]'s

PS: Seens that the angry is now gone...

And if at all you want to show your friend an out of the box playing distro, I suggest you try Linux Mint. It works out of the box with almost all media formats and is based on Ubuntu. And hence, you can also use the same Ubuntu repos for other apps.

Install Ubuntu, remove totem, install VLC, it just becomes a habit after a while!