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Ubuntu

Cleon

King of the Pod People
Joined
Aug 28, 2001
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Location
Atlanta, GA
So I'm posting this via Ubuntu LiveCD, which I've never used before. Neat distro, all in all.

I decided to pop this in, because for whatever reason Windows' internet connection dies periodically (2-3 times a day), I haven't been able to fix it, so I got pissed off and decided to run off this for a while "just because." (Incidentally, if anyone knows why this happens, please let me know. Once the connection dies, existing connections still run--such as if I'm connected to IRC, or have a bittorrent running, etc. I tried resetting the winsock by using "netsh winsock reset" and rebooting, but it still happens. *grumble*)

First impressions of Ubuntu:

The liveCD didn't recognize my USB optical mouse, which mildly annoys me.

The network connection fired up immediately, as it should, but the initial connection was rather slow. I'm not sure why that is, actually, but everything is working ok now so I can't really complain.

Ubuntu detected my hardware a lot better than SuSe 9 did. When I installed SuSe, I had to fiddle with a number of settings--mainly monitor/video card stuff and the network. No big headache, but X Windows never *did* use all the monitor real estate. Ubuntu, however, worked straight out on all fronts.

I just popped a DVD into the drive; Totem movie player started right up, but generated an error when trying to play it--possibly due to copy protection, I'm not sure. But even though I exited from the app, it still tried to access the drive and won't let me open to try a non-copy-protected DVD. :mad: I just tried a non-copy-protected DVD, and it still won't play--says it can't find a decoder for it. Hrm.


All in all, I like it. Every Linux distro has it's quirks, so I'm not real worried about it. One of these days I'll try Ubuntu on an actual hard drive--running an OS off a CD is faster than I expected, but still pretty slow.
 
-says it can't find a decoder for it. Hrm.

Hardly unsurprising. The MPEG2 decoder IS NOT FREE. It is patented. Most people don't realise that when they buy a Winbox that copy of PowerDVD that came with it provides the MPEG2 decoder - a straight install of Windows will also be sans MPEG2 decoder.

Unfortunately you have to break the law to watch DVD on your Linux box - there is currently no MPEG2 decoder that can be legally bought for it.
 
Hardly unsurprising. The MPEG2 decoder IS NOT FREE. It is patented. Most people don't realise that when they buy a Winbox that copy of PowerDVD that came with it provides the MPEG2 decoder - a straight install of Windows will also be sans MPEG2 decoder.

Unfortunately you have to break the law to watch DVD on your Linux box - there is currently no MPEG2 decoder that can be legally bought for it.

Yeah, I know about deCSS. I'm just wondering why include a DVD player on a liveCD if it can't play DVDs?
 
It's not specifically a DVD player that's why. Totem plays many formats - just like all the major players do.

And it doesn't matter whether the DVD is encryped or not: the MPEG2 decoder is still a patented technology. Encryption, that is entirely useless for its stated purpose as copy-protection, is a separate issue.
 
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It's not specifically a DVD player that's why. Totem plays many formats - just like all the major players do.

And it doesn't matter whether the DVD is encryped or not: the MPEG2 decoder is still a patented technology. Encryption, that is entirely useless for its stated purpose as copy-protection, is a separate issue.

Yeah, I'm picking up on that.
 

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