Hi, Thanks for all the great answers everyone. As is generally true for a lot of these threads, I wish I would have used slightly different wording in my original email, but that's OK as I think we got at least part way to the answers I was looking for. The 'Out of the Box' comment comes more from my marketing side than my technical side. I have no problem getting a little bit dirty and being hands on to make it work. I'm just looking for the Gentoo page that explains what to do!
To summarize what I think I heard: (Please correct me if I'm wrong) 1) There are a number of additional packages that a user can install under Gentoo to make Mozilla more capable of handling the data type I run into. Jason gave a starter list as: emerge netscape-plugger emerge netscape-flash emerge mplayerplug-in While (for me) this didn't work for even mp3 files (Mozilla just hung saying something about loading a movie player or something like that) the response gets right to the sort of answer I wanted, which was: "emerge these packages, change these settings here and there, and enjoy!" 2) We need a better list somewhere on what should be emerged to operate more at the Windows level when browsing. It may not be perfect, but we should be able to say something like Audio links - emerge XXX & edit these preferences (mp3, ogg, etc.) Video links - emerge YYY & edit these preferences (avi, mpeg, etc.) File links - emerge ZZZ & edit these preferences (pdf, txt, etc.) 3) The comments on security and about why it cannot work automatically today are really great, and I hadn't even considered that part. Linux does provide extra security. Sometimes it gets a bit in the way of the simple user types like me, but that's OK with a good list like in #2 above. 4) I'll add that after reading here, I do get that comparing Mozilla to IE6 isn't a fair comparison. I understand that IE has billions of dollars behind it. A more fair comparison would be Mozilla on a Windows box, or Netscape on a Windows box, with Mozilla on a Linux box. Can these two be brought into parity? Again, I wasn't looking to find out anything other than does web browsing really 'work' for others in the Linux world. It doesn't work that well for me, but more because multimedia support in Linux just isn't as advanced as other platforms and it's hard to know, not being a developer, what to load and how to get it all tied together. I do think this would be a useful HOWTO for a Gentoo page some day. Thanks, Mark > -----Original Message----- > From: Stroller [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Monday, June 16, 2003 5:41 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Can Linux web browsing be a complete > experience? > > > On 16/6/03 12:14 pm, "Tom Allison" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Alan wrote: > > > >> Yes, and no. In windows it seems a little nicer because it's a lot > >> better (IMHO) about installing the plugins... you get a prompt saying > >> "hey, install xyz", you click ok, it grinds for a few minutes, goes > >> through an install wizard, and then you go back to the original window > >> and voila! it's there and working. > >> > > > > Some would consider this a security problem. > > Not my mum, tho'. > > >> ... Mac > >> OS/X seems to have it right with running as a user with SU privileges > >> all the time and then popping up a "please enter your user password" > >> whenever a program needs to be installed. Not running as root, but > >> running close enough to it that you can tasks like installing software > >> much easier. I wish linux was a bit more like this... > > > > First, this is a security item in Linux that you will not > easily get around, > > nor should you. > > Second, what you are referring to smells a lot like SUDO only > wrapped up in > > something "cute". > > This is *exactly* what it is. The "something cute" is just a Cocoa > implementation of the same sort of thing that KDE (ksu?) & Gnome supply. > > IMO user privileges is one thing Apple have managed to get very right with > OS X - for home & SOHO installations, the user to install the o/s > automatically has sudo privileges, but directory services (LDAP?) is also > supported out of the box for larger installations. In the former case, all > other users can be granted user-only access & in the latter the > sysadmin can > make sensible decisions regarding network policy. This > http://tinyurl.com/ef5b manual would appear to provide quite a decent > overview. > > > No, Linux is usable as a browsing platform. It works fine on > so many sites > > that it's really a minority. Java applications puke. That's > not the fault > > of Java... > > I find this story interesting: http://tinyurl.com/ef5u > > Stroller. > > -- > Enjoyed this post? Thanks for reading - please consider employing me! > Technical support / system administration - CV available on request > Linux / Unix / Windows / Mac OS X - UK or anywhere considered > > > > -- > [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list > > -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
