[Tfug] Audio and Visual in Debian

[Charles R. Kiss]

for a  very long time I was having absolutely no problems running .wmv, 
.avi, .mov, or .mpg/.mpeg files through either totem or mplayer (or 
gmplayer) using then 2.6 k7 debian kernel... including was a Windows XP 
partition, and other linux kernels through the grub boot configuration.  
I even had thumbnails, and everything worked fine until I decided to 
open a video file, and then, in the dialog box, decided to click the "do 
this all the time with this type of file."  Then all hell broke loose, 
and my thumbnails disappeared and totem (codecs) never worked again (or 
could be found, even though they are there) for anything but .mpg's.  
I've read about that particular bug, but I haven't worked it out yet. 
I'm lazy.

ALSA works great; through RealPlayer, I have "whatever-internet-radio" 
pumped loudly throughout the apartment.

debian is fine; I love it.  It's only as good as the current programmers 
are; and someday ubuntu is going to run into the same problem: lack of 
disgruntled programmer interest; then it will morph into some other 
distro based on debian code that some wiseguy decided to give some other 
name.

It's interesting to see ubuntu gain so much sudden popularity; when 
instead, it couldv'e been - just as well- an improved debian distro, and 
gain even greater ubiquity.

But im patient, IO understand opinions, for certain though, and linux 
will never die.  Some day I'll have to learn more about and try ubuntu.  
But to me, the names really are... purely rhetoric.

Charles