Robert Barnett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > My wife and I have a shared computer at home, however, I seem to be > facing a loosing battle for her experiences with linux to remain > pleasant. I am running fedora core 9 with additional packages from the > Livna repository > > Some nuances: > > * We've not been able to find a way to purchase songs from Yahoo or > iTunes. I've tried foxy tunes and wine without much success.
You are extremely unlikely to succeed, and if you do I wouldn't expect that to last for long, since you have to circumvent the security of the software to run it under Linux. Being unable to buy the music may be bad, but I assure you that it will suck an awful lot /more/ when you lose access to it after laying out the money. Personally, I would seek one of the unencumbered vendors who will sell you music /without/ DRM, allowing you to use it on any platform. Your wife's millage may vary on that, though. > * We've had some difficulty with video codecs. Channel nine or ten is > using a codec which includes advertisements but only works for > Windows Media Player 10+. > > * I've also played a few DVDs in MPlayer and other players and just > get the "Downloading movies is stealing" on continuous repeat. You will probably find another media player is much better suited to DVD playback; I find Xine works well, but more or less anything but mplayer should be fine. On the other hand, you will have a lot more joy just using an appliance to play back the DVD, in my opinion. > Is there a distro which is more likely to work with proprietary > codecs? Other than the ability to license the Fluendo codecs, no. That would be because, other than that avenue, you are stealing the codecs, so you get no vendor support. https://shop.fluendo.com/ I can't vouch for the quality or utility of the Fluendo kit, or how well it might or might not integrate with your distribution. > Or am I just better to stick to FC or possibly Ubuntu and use 3rd > party packages as i have been doing? Well, Fedora Core is never going to satisfy your desire for non-free software, by policy. I doubt you would get /much/ more joy out of Ubuntu, although I understand that licensing the Fluendo codecs is possible there. > I've been toying with using vmware and running XP SP2, but I think > that it would leave me with two systems to maintain rather than one. Also, unless you want to pay for the commercial VMWare Workstation then video playback under Windows is unlikely to satisfy you. > I may also have to buy a new machine (dual core) to meet the system > requirements. I can't really see why that would be needed. > Any suggestions? If your wife isn't willing to accept the trade-offs of running Linux then you are unlikely to satisfy her easily -- because what she wants are (in my opinion) the "short term convenience" options: For example, buying DRM encumbered music from the stores you mention is easy under Windows, and only hurts later when (say) Walmart shut down their DRM servers and you lose access to your collection. In any case, my response would be to shrug, and let her purchase a computer and license all the desired Windows software out of whatever discretionary spending she has. That way she can decide if these conveniences are worth the thousands of dollars it will cost her to achieve. Regards, Daniel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
