Sat, 08 Jan 2011 14:34:19 -0800, Walter Bright wrote: > Michel Fortin wrote: >> I know you had your reasons, but perhaps it's time for you upgrade to a >> more recent version of Ubuntu? That version is what comes with Hardy >> Heron (april 2008). >> <https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/meld> > > I know. The last time I upgraded Ubuntu in place it f****d up my system > so bad I had to wipe the disk and start all over. It still won't play > videos correctly (the previous Ubuntu worked fine), the rhythmbox music > player never worked again, it wiped out all my virtual boxes, I had to > spend hours googling around trying to figure out how to reconfigure the > display driver so the monitor worked again, etc. > > I learned my lesson! Yes, I'll eventually upgrade, but I'm not looking > forward to it.
Ubuntu has a menu entry for "restricted drivers". It provides support for both ATI/AMD (Radeon 8500 or better, appeared in 1998 or 1999!) and NVIDIA cards (Geforce 256 or better, appeared in 1999!) and I think it automatically suggests (a pop-up window) correct drivers in the latest releases right after the first install. Intel chips are automatically supported by the open source drivers. VIA and S3 may or may not work out of the box. I'm just a bit curious to know what GPU you have? If it's some ancient VLB (vesa local bus) or ISA card, I can donate $15 for buying one that uses AGP or PCI Express. Ubuntu doesn't support all video formats out of the box, but the media players and browsers automatically suggest loading missing drivers. At least in the 3 or 4 latest releases. Maybe the problem isn't the encoder, it might be the Linux incompatible web site. >> Or you could download the latest version from meld's website and >> compile it yourself. > > Yeah, I could spend an afternoon doing that. Another one of these jokes? Probably one of the best compiler authors in the whole world uses a whole afternoon doing something (compiling a program) that total Linux noobs do in less than 30 minutes with the help of Google search.