So a workmate just had some baby snaps on his Sony Cybershot he wanted to send to his relatives. But all Windows XP (fully patched) wanted was a disc with the drivers on it, even when it was switched to use USB mass storage.
No problem for Fedora Core 6 (with no updates I might add). Booted it up, logged in, plugged in. There it was, copied the right photos to a thumb drive and problem fixed. Again.
On a competely unrelated note, what happened to totem to have it asking me for euro’s to play a dvd? Hmm, what happned to the GNU in GNOME.
That would be Codeina, which isn’t actually part of Totem at all.
Do note that it’s not really an insane thing to do, as – thanks to the EUCD and similar legislation – the use of dvdcss is technically illegal not just in the wacky world of the U.S.A. but in much of the rest of the world too, these days. So there really needs to be some kind of solution for vendors who have to cope with the pesky inconvenience of obeying the law.
I don’t think Totem asking for Euros is GNOME behavior. I think it’s Fedora behavior (just like refusing to tell you how you can download codecs). Debian has never once bothered me for money.
…and they say windows has better hardware support.. tsk, tsk, tsk.
@Adam:
Your explanation is right. But i don’t agree with the conclusion. I have followed the Codeina discussion at the Fedora mailinglists and i’m disapointed how it works until now. It’s a shame for a distribution who talks that much about freedom. And i’m also said that this kind of software/support comes from a community which is part of the GNU project (GNOME/Gtk+).
Educate people about the problem? Yes!
Say that the only solution is non-free software and one special commercial entity? No!
I neither like the idea of pointing people to one special webshop and so support a special commercial and non-free software company nor the general idea of pointing people to non-free software.
Tell them about the problem and why Fedora can’t do it and that’s it. People than can decide by their own if tehy want to install free software codecs which might be illegal or questionable in some countries or if they want to buy non-free software to do this task.
PS: I still use Fedora and GNOME but i hope they will fix this bug in the future.
In newest Fedora its removed anyway. But you can install libdvdcss from 3rd Party Source and Play. But check if this is legal in your country.
Ever since the “age of decadence” post a couple of weeks back I think there’s been a trolling competition on pgo.
For ten years people have whined like little children about DVD support not working without complications in Linux. Every single person in the community knows why this was the case (that it wasn’t possible to ship a free CSS/MPEG 2 implementation in any territory where licensing fees were enforced). Every single person in the community knows what the only workable solution was, short of Mark Shuttleworth buying everyone in Europe and North America a license. And even then, someone would have whined about it.
– Chris
i’ve written a few times on the subject, so here we go again: there is a lot of confusion in the community between copyright and patents, which are very different things.
the mpeg/css/whatever-codec license tax is not on the user – if you have the codec that can play the content, then no law will stop you from doing so. the license requirement is on entities that distribute the patented technologies in territories that enforce these patents (btw – the EUCD has only bearing on decss – it does not affect patent encumberance of software codec as its about copyright protection and not patent protection, and patents on software are illegal in europe).
fedora’s decision to not support proprietary codecs should be applauded, but it is muddied by codeina which encourages people to download proprietary implementations of patented and non patented codecs, instead of offering free implementations (ffmpeg) of the same. ubuntu btw offers the free codecs with a codeina style user interface which allows a user to consume any content with just a few clicks and without paying a dime.
in my opinion fedora can enhance the user experience of their operating system by letting people know about the availability of such free codecs from distributers outside the US that are legally allowed to offer such free codecs.
My previous comment is not shown (still moderated), but in any case I wanted to plug my post on codec issue which is here: http://geek.co.il/wp/2008/03/15/those-silly-americans-or-the-codec-problem . I hope it will clear things up.
Blame Fedora, don’t blame GNOME. :)
Get a better DVD ;)