bjornredemption

Linux has been quite a serious somewhat passionate hobby for me over the years – i've lost more time trying out various Linux flavors and tinkering with them than i care to think about. Most of the releases would be impressive within their targeted purpose – but none impressed me or gave me the featured i required to give up Windows fulltime.

Ubuntu however is a very impressive distro – i gave it a spin back in Ver 4 and was struck by how it seemed to know what was needed from a non-techie point of view. Developing software with the traditional Linux community in mind will unfortunately not help linux become mainstream. There's just more technophobes out there than techophiles. Although building vertically(introducing bleeding edge features) - is needed its also good to have people working horizontally (documenting, testing usability ) and generally making the new technology accessible.

Here's an example : X now supports rotation on my new Dell XYZ laptop - however i need to edit xorg.conf manually and restart X to get it working. This is no good – a feature which is only accessible to 1% of PC users is not a feature.

Another issue which really gets my noodle is multimedia support – i understand the need to keep Linux 'Free' would mean mp3 support can't come bundled with the distro. However freedom to choose should also mean the freedom to make my linux installation 'non-free' if i want to. There should be tools whereby the regular PC user could easily enable mp3/dvd support etc... if required.

So with that i come -rather long winded – to the point of all this.

The new fawn-beta makes it very easy for various non-free multimedia plugins to be installed. Firstly directly through the add/remove programs app and also in a much more helpful way, when a user tries to play a file.

Simply searching for 'mp3' lets you easily install Ubuntu restricted extras as well as Gstreamer mp3 and video support with just a few clicks. You will however have to agree to some conditions to use the the restricted software – which is a small price to pay.

Great work from the Ubuntu team. Again.