What I want is a system that has a web browser that can display the streaming videos included on many websites, including the different news services like Reuters, ABC, CNN, etc at Yahoo.com and the trailers at film.com. Basically the same functionality that a Windoes user would have on the same websites.
As everyone keeps saying, you do have that.. MPlayer and the w32codecs from Packman combined with Firefox (and with a little work, also Opera and Konqueror). It works first time every time on every single SUSE 10.2 install I've put together... not just on my specific hardware, but on multiple systems on completely different hardware. Even on remote machines half way around the world where I've walked a family member through installing those apps from Packman... and it worked for them too. And as for getting the same functionality... I've seen time and again where it actually works BETTER in Linux than Windows. Case in point. JumpTV is a website where you can subscribe to TV feeds from stations from around the world. I want to watch the news from Kenya on KBC, and this in the only site carrying the feed. I set it up and watched it in Firefox on SUSE 10.2 using the mplayerplugin. Works perfectly. My partner wants to watch the feed on her laptop (running Firefox under XP). She pulls up the exact same video feed... and it will not play... at all. The embedded WiMP refuses to start playing the stream. We finally figured out that to get the feed playing, we have to start IE6, get the feed playing there, then close IE6, and opens the feed in Firefox then WiMP will play the stream correctly (and will play it from then on too... this only needs to be done once per XP install). This isn't a one time situation. I stumble on silliness like this all the time between using my SUSE10.2 desktop and my partner's laptop running XP. The trailers, news feeds, YouTube etc. all work fine in Linux IF you add in the latest Flash form Adobe, and add in MPlayer, w32codecs, and mplayerplugin from Packman.
In my opinion, this is critically important to get a Windows user to want to swap to Linux. After all, why make the change if you lose features?
What features are being lost? I'm gaining features.. not loosing (with the exception of a much smaller choice of expensive commercial games which may or may not be a bad thing)
that breaks the bank is full-featured web browsing. If that can be made to work correctly then there is really no need whatsoever to retain Windows, other than maybe a virtual machine for the reasons mentioned above.
I don't see where this is an issue. Seriously... At least since I've installed 10.2, I DO have full featured Web Browsing. No wait, I lie. There are some sites that I go to that have highly annoying advertising animations and overlays that do not work, and in some cases become totally unreadable due to bad placement of the ads and how Firefox, Opera in Linux etc handle the layers. But.. I don't really consider that a loss of functionality, or a loss of features.
My goal is to be able to sever the Windows umbilical that so many people are attached to. I want the stereotypical blonde to be able to turn on the computer and run it just as easily as she does Windows. I cannot do that with the tools I have now.
If you do the setup, and you do the preconfigure on a Windows machine, you can turn a blonde brained person loose onn Windows and they will manage. You can do the exact same thing with SUSE, and they will manage just fine. If you hand this same person a computer with an empty hard drive (no partitions, no OS) and some DVDs, they will be just as lost installing Windows as Linux. I'm not saying all is happiness and butterflies. Far from it, and SUSE has a long way to go to become a mindless point and shoot OS. But what OS is? Other than maybe MAC OSX...
As for my location, it's about 50 miles out of Dallas, TX.
Ha, that explains a lot :-) I lived for a year in Lewisville TX... in another life, long long ago. Haven't been back since. C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
