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

[John Gruenenfelder]

>> 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?!"

I never said it was a *good* GUI.  Xine is significantly better, I think.
Better still for most people is MythTV.  I've even got my sister and
brother-in-law loving it.  So far none of the very few issues it has had has
been more complex than restart the frontend (button on the remote) or restart
the machine (button on the box).

> 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.

I'm afraid those are the chances you take.  Until the grand world of free
information and formats comes, much of the dirty work on Linux (or BSD) must
be reverse engineered.  You *can't* have it perfect in all ways.  You can
purcahse a DVD player which is region locked, you can buy Windows software
which will play nearly all DVDs and is region locked, or you can get a free
DVD player under Linux.  It's not region locked, it will play almost every DVD
(but not all), and it comes complete with faults.

Currently, I'll take the 99% nearly perfect solution.  If I needed more than
that, I'd pay.  If I was a non-technical user, I'd just buy a DVD player and
be done with it.

Same deal with MythTV.  I love it and it works great for me, a skilled user.
It also works great for those around me because I'm here.  Were I not, there's
other solutions.  There are companies which ship MythTV boxes with support,
and if not that there are things like Tivo.

>> 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, 

Well, my point here was a bit more narrow.  Specifically, I meant that when
dvdcss does something stupid, I find it hard to figure out why.  Unlike most
other programs which, in general, provide copious log output someplace.  For a
technical geek, that's usually enough.

>> 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.
>
>>   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.

For the sake of brevity, I was omitting some details here.  I wasn't naming
*a* solution so much as saying that there was one.  To be more specific, on a
64bit system currently I can use either the 32bit Flash plugin with wrapper or
the 64bit alpha/beta/whatever plugin.  For Java, no, there is no Sun supplied
plugin yet, but the icedtea (OpenJDK, I think?) plugin is 64bit and has been
working for all the applets I've thrown at it.

I'm still not sure why this is somehow Linux' fault.  If there's an issue with
the plugin, blame rests with Adobe or Sun.  The distros are just trying to
deliver *something* that has a reasonable chance of working.

In a critical setting, you're right that the best solution would be to ship a
32bit firefox and be done with it.  On the other hand, my guess would be that
most companies shipping distributions probably consider browser plugins to be
a non-critical component of a "workstation" OS.


-- 
--John Gruenenfelder    Systems Manager, MKS Imaging Technology, LLC.
Try Weasel Reader for PalmOS  --  http://weaselreader.org
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        --Sam of Sam & Max