On Sat, 1 Feb 2003, [iso-8859-1] C Harland wrote: > there are no OFFICIAL packages because it uses some non gpl codecs to > run things like Quicktime. Those codecs can not legaly be included in a > free distribution of linux. Thats why it's rather hard to get up and > runing. > You could still consider compiling your own version its not that hard > and does support more movie file types.
It's a bit more complex than that. The MPlayer license specifically excludes distributing binary versions of MPlayer. That's why there are no official binary versions (and why MPlayer is not in Debian). They do this because MPlayer is so bloody complex that it really needs to be compiled on the machine it'll run on. Seems strange, but the comments I've seen on the net go something like this: "Help, I'm having trouble with MPlayer." "Did you compile from source or install a binary?" "installed a binary." "try compiling from source." "Thanks, it all works now." Tim
