Fedora's way forward

[Paul F. Johnson]

Hi,

> > Those expectations include, without any doubt, multimedia playback,
> > web streaming, and never seeing the broken-puzzle-piece icon in
> > Firefox more than once per media type (if that often). When those
> > expectations are violated, it's not the content provider who gets
> > blamed for shipping a proprietary format.  The customer interprets
> > that kind of failure as a bug in the client, *and the customer is
> > right*.  All the idealism in the world about Ogg and Theora and
> > whatnot will not change this.
> 
> Fedora needs to explain to people better why they don't include these
> things. 

But with an alternative out there which provides these "out of the box",
who is going to listen? Look, Joe Public gets a machine without anything
on it. He decides to bung in FC5, install is happy, he's pleased there
is no "hunt the driver" issue and all goes well. But then he can't play
his MP3s, the DVD isn't showing the latest movie, his massive collection
of DVs won't play as there isn't any AVI support and worse than that,
his hardware isn't supported by Macromedia flash (he's on say an x86_64)
and despite downloading it, RealPlayer 10 doesn't work (as compat-libc
++-32 isn't installed).

Sure, it looks nice, but it's not functional. What does he do? Will he
carry on with FC5 or ditch it for that dodgy copy of XP he has in his
top drawer. Answers on a postcard.

TTFN

Paul
-- 
"Logic, my dear Zoe, is merely the ability to be wrong with authority" -
Dr Who