On Fri, Feb 21, 2003 at 09:32:34PM -0500, M. Kirchhoff wrote: > Another site I frequent uses streaming Windows Media. Am I totally out > of luck there? I know there's this Crossover package that will run WM, > but it's definitely non-free.
As a couple of other people mentioned, mplayer can handle this (and most every other format around). Go to http://marillat.free.fr/ and see the wide variety of stuff that Christian has packaged, including mplayer (which itself is mostly Free) and the codec packages, like w32codecs and quicktime (which are pretty much non-Free). You can of course build it from source, too, if you really want to. > I haven't run into needing RealPlayer > support yet, but I wonder if there's a free clone of that that works > under debian-mozilla. AFAIK, there is still no Free Software that can play RealMedia at all. Real did make a Unix client, but it's fairly old and unmaintained, and they even try to hide it on their site...Anyhoo, if you're on one of the support architectures, you can get it from http://huxley.real.com/real/player/unix/unix.html. There's even a 'realplayer' package in Debian's non-Free archive that handles installing it for you you. Once you've installed it, then you can use also use mplayer to play RealMedia stuff. > Please understand that I'm trying to wean myself away from Microsoft > products after years of frustration at their software despotism and my > lack of control over their annoying software, but I'm having a hard time > adapting to the Debian way of life. Good on you! Everyone was a newbie once, and it's bloody hard to learn enough to enable you to start learning by yourself...it's a steep hill at the beginning, but it's sure worth it in the end. > If I start plugging in all these non-free, non-stable packages into a > stable Debian build, then is it really a stable system anymore? This is a good point. If you're worrying about your system actually getting 'unstable' though, then please don't; all this things, while they integrate nicely into your system, do not overwrite or otherwise destablise anything else on your system. Programs should not (and this is very rarely broken, it's quite a serious kernel bug if it is) be able to crash each other, and installing things like Java will not cause problems for any programs that don't use it. Unix and Unix-like systems have been around for decades, and they're designed to not let separate programs (easily or accidentally, I guess) bother each other, and to make it impossible (aside from kernel bugs) for other user's processes to bother each other. > Yet it > seems like I need to add a lot of these additional packages just to > function. I'm confused! Believe me, I'm really, really drawn to Debian > and can tell already after just a few weeks of use that I'm a user for > life, but I wonder if there's some way to achieve a stable balance. I > can live just fine with Gnome 1.4 and Mozilla 1.0, but the other stuff I > mentioned earlier is harder to do without. And with all the backports > for newer versions like Gnome 2.2 and such, I wonder: is there anyone > out there who truly runs a stable-Debian only system? This is a good point, and one that the Debian Developers, er, 'discuss' on d-d quite frequently. Because of the volunteer nature of the project, and the fact that it incorporates so much software (as far as I've been able to tell, Debian is the largest OS ever created...) and runs on so many architectures (eleven at last count, which makes it, arguably, the most portable Unix-like OS around), it's sometimes very hard to get everything to work, everywhere. For instance, testing has basically not got a single updated piece of software in many months, because the new version of the C library (which every single program on your system depends on) was broken on one or more architectures...This seems to have just been fixed this week, and testing could start moving as soon as next week. Um, so basically, Debian releases slowly because it a) includes lots of stuff, which all has to work properly, b) runs on lots of different types of computers, all of which have to work properly, and c) values technical excellence above things like 'release dates' and 'timeliness'. On the plus side though, Debian Stable is solid as a rock, and is a stable OS to run for the two or so years between releases. Sarge is usually a nice middle ground for people who want newer stuff, but don't want to deal with the (possible) brokenness of sid. Well, usually; the past few months have been an unfortunate exception. And then you have sid, for those who like their meat still warm, and are willing to deal with things not working, and to help fix bugs when they come up. -- Rob Weir <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://ertius.org/
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