[Tfug] Hate to say I told you so..

[Rich]

On Feb 4, 2009, at 11:41 pm, John Gruenenfelder wrote:

> Good points, but a few corrections...
>
> Mplayer has had a GUI for a very long time now.  It's gmplayer and  
> it's usually in the same package as mplayer.

Okay, little clarification. I was being facetious. Mplayer's GUI is  
perfect for people who know the structure of a DVD. I do. But like I  
said, it has to work for *everyone* in the household. And it only  
plays one DVD title before it coughs and wails "what do I do now?!"

> Personally, though, I do my DVD playing with either MythTV or  
> Xine.  Xine handled DVD menus long before mplayer, too. Of the many  
> DVDs I've thrown at the system, only one has had problems playing  
> that weren't related to a lousy disc (scratches, rental, etc.).

And there you go. A non-standard DVD which you simply cannot play on  
Linux. Whereas on a Mac, I can pretty confidently say it would play.  
Put it to the test, if you get chance.

> Still, when something *does* go wrong, I've found it very hard to  
> determine where the problem is.  This is fairly atypical for Linux.

Nonono. It's *always* like this. There are "supported brokennesses",  
and unsupported ones. I've run against this "unsupportedness" in  
Linux many, many times. Where's my statically-linked 32-bit Firefox  
for 64-bit workstations? It's been asked many times on forums, and  
*never* an answer (unless it's me adding weight to the discussion).  
And it's not like I don't try. I just want a solution that works out  
of the box, and preferably something multi platform. Shame on VLC.

Same with the unsupported slightly-nonstandard DVDs: the usual  
response is along the lines of "It doesn't conform to the standards!  
Your problem! *smug*"

On the other hand, I have a Mac. Why should I struggle with the  
imitators? Shuttleworth said it has to be pretty. Well, I say it has  
to bloody well work first! It's like those Web designers that mock up  
a page in Dreamweaver, and then turn red and panic when you ask them  
how the CMS is going to work.

>> Linux Workstations, on the other hand, are very different animals,  
>> and they're all but invisible to usage metrics based on the  
>> browser user agent, because the browser is 64-bit, so the plugins  
>> aren't available, so people don't use it. They'll use a Windows  
>> box running Firefox, or maybe a VM.
>
> I don't think this is really true. Not now and maybe not even for a  
> year or more.
When did you last try this? Me, I was on it yesterday. I've been on  
it (and off it) since well before it was announced that JDK 6u12  
would include a 64-bit plugin.

> Both Flash and Java plugins are either available in 64bit varieties

Ones an alpha release, the others a beta. Flash certainly isn't  
production-ready. Can you imagine delivering a high end workstation  
with *alpha* release software on it?

The plugin from JDK 6u12 b03 doesn't work on RHEL; possibly because  
Firefox is backported to GTK+2.4, but I haven't got to the bottom of  
it. I haven't investigated all options yet, but I'm getting there,  
and it still doesn't work.

> or can be made to work through wrappers.
Okay, this is illuminating. The Java plugin is not NSAPI compatible,  
so it cannot be used through nspluginwrapper. Plus, the Flash *alpha*  
test release breaks nspluginwrapper. This loses you Acroread (no  
biggie) and Helix (biggie).

>   The wrapper solution isn't perfect,
Beautifully weaseled around. No, it isn't perfect, because it doesn't  
work for one pretty damned important plugin! Yes, it's Sun's fault  
for not making it NSAPI compatible. No, that doesn't make me feel  
warm and fuzzy inside, unless you mean like with an infection.

> but I'd argue that at least 2/3 of people using it have it working,
Maybe true, for a given value of "working".

> especially if running Ubuntu where it's all setup automatically for  
> you.
Please, go back to my claim: I'm talking about workstations, not  
personal boxes. Ubuntu is not a workstation OS. Yes, I know you can  
pay for Canonical support, but precisely which workstation  
applications can you get *vendor* support for on Ubuntu? In this  
world, it's RHEL or XP64. To a far lesser extent, SLED. Ubuntu  
doesn't even begin to figure, and believe me, I wish it would.

> Are there other plugins that are used or required by a large enough  
> group to be statistically significant with regards to 64bit Linux  
> workstations?
Helix. Acroread. There may be others, but I'm shooting for the big  
targets first.

Yeah I'm being mean. Sorry, but you didn't do your research.

R.