megamind5005

Now, before you start reading the next sentence, I want to reassure you that this isn't yet another "which is the best distro" thread.

Basically, I''ve now tried a few of the "popular" distros including: Ubuntu, FC 5, Mandriva 2005 LE, and also the LiveCD's Knoppix, SLAX and PClinuxOS. My complaint is a little one, and that is that of all of these only knoppix and the out-of-date Mandriva supported propriety stuff like MP3 and DivX codecs. Now, I understand why that is and everything (OpenSource etc), but I don't understand how some distros support these and some don't. I'm not an expert with linux either, so I don't know how I can get these capabilities on Fedora Core 5, for example.

I just wondered whether anyone could explain the discrepancy. Do some distro makers pay the MP3 people or something (I think Mandriva have a licence)?
And also, which distros have the codecs installed out of the "box"/CD? Does SUSE?

P.S. My friend has already told me to use Ogg Vorbis for my music, but its a bit of a pain converting 19GB's worth of files into ogg... plus, its not compatible with my "mp3" player.

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a thing

Yes, and some are based in countries that don't have crazy software patents. The latter are illegal in countries that do have software patents, like the US.

IIRC SUSE does have them. Most don't.

So do it over time.

Which is why you don't get them. Hardware Vorbis players.

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commodore

I'm sure it's possible to have mp3s playing on Fedora. Just ask some forums.

a thing

He was asking what comes with MP3 support, not how to get MP3 support.

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Arevos

Generally speaking, it's fairly easy to add MP3 support to any Linux distribution. Ubuntu doesn't come with MP3 support by default (due to patenting issues), but one can install it from the package repositaries without difficulty.

megamind5005

I doubt I'll go for the convert everything over time and pay for a new music player (should have bought an iRiver in the first place, i know), but thanks for the rest What's IIRC SuSE btw, never heard of it before?

Arevos: OK, I've gotta be honest and say that one of my problems is that I can't get online with any of my linux distros, so I can't use the package managers to download but is it possible to download packages from websites directly using XP and then installing manually? (I have a FAT partition for this)

ONE EXTRA THING: Is it possible to make Fedora Core read NTFS drives like ubuntu does?

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Tetris is so unrealistic

a thing

1. "IIRC" is just an acronym for "If I Recall Correctly."
2. NTFS is another patented thing. You can get the Linux modules at here.

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megamind5005

Ah, I see. That was pretty noob-ish of me #slaps self#

Oh, and thanks

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Arevos

Yes, it's possible, though a better solution might be to get net access working - how does your computer connect to the net normally?

It should do automatically, I would have thought.

megamind5005

Well if you can download manually, it's not in a very obvious place lol

I connect to the net with a USB ADSL modem. Its a sagem 800-840, and I have a tarball that supposedly has the driver for linux in it, but I cant get it to work on any of my distros and a lot of people on the linux forums have told me to give up and get an ethernet or wireless connection so I have 0_o. A couple had had the same problem, you see.

Fedora Core unfortunately doesn't even recognise the NTFS partitions, unlike ubuntu. a_thing's link looks good, tho. I need that capability so that when I do work out how to play mp3's on FC I don't have to have duplicate files.


P.S. [To a_thing, mainly in regard to his post in Kilo's thread] I started this thread in "The Lounge" so hopefully it's ok to discuss linux here, cos I have this idea that a lounge is where you can talk about anything. and seeing as most of the people here know a lot about it and this is my favourite forum, why not?

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Tetris is so unrealistic