[CS-FSLUG] Another SUSE complaint

[Schalk Engelbrecht]

Guys - I am from South Africa - and I do not know if we are in the same
situation as you guys with regard to libdvdcss and mp3 licenses etc.
But let me tell you what I experienced as an linux user...

I tried Suse at first because it was user friendly - there was a lot of
eye candy but no real "meat on the bones".  I struggled to get
multimedia support going.  I also discovered that using linux you must
be willing to "explore" and "learn" a little more than what is normally
required from an MS operating system.

It was then that I discovered Ubuntu.  Yes it runs gnome by default -
but I installed the Kubuntu (KDE) desktop and it runs sweet.  A couple
of apt-get's later I had mp3 support, libdvdcss, and all the rest on my
IBM T42.  Almost everything worked "out of the box".

The question is are you willing to pay for the software/OS or are you
truly supporting free and open source software.  I you are willing to
pay - by all means buy Suse, but if you are like me - you support those
developers that really to the stuff because they like to, not because
they have to!!

In South Africa, not everybody can afford buying Software left right and
centre.  We need options that are free and available to everybody.  That
is why I am a avid supporter of Ubuntu.  It just works!!! libdvdcss and
others are not officially supported by them (because of the license
issue), but they have it available in other repositories.
  
I can do everything on my computer - and it didn't cost me a cent! - DVD
watch/rip/write/authoring; mp3 listen/rip/write, dtp, etc, etc...


On Sun, 2005-10-16 at 11:18 -0400, Fred A. Miller wrote:
> On Sunday 16 October 2005 1:30 am, Nathan T. wrote:
> > Why doesn't SUSE do the same thing Microsoft and Apple are doing and buy
> > licenses, for that matter didn't Fred say they already bought licenses. So
> 
> No......I didn't. What I said was the the "ticket" for mp3s is covered in the 
> boxed set, but NOT to play DVDs, etc.
> 
> > then why is mp3 support cut out completely from the KDE multimedia
> > libraries if RealPlayer is used for mp3 support in the free download
> > version anyway.
> 
> Nathan, I'm going to walk away from this one. My patience is running very 
> thin, for a number of reasons, some of which aren't your fault.
> 
> Fred
>