playing DVDs with totem

[Alan]

> Peter Lauri wrote:
>> On Wed, 2007-12-26 at 07:23 -0600, lostson wrote:
>>
>>> If fedora is not 'plug n play' what distro would you reccommend for
>>> one's mother then ?
>>>
>>
>> I am sad to say it, but with 99.99% chance Windows XP :)
>>
>>
> Also Ubuntu is catching up these days and I won't be surprised even if
> they come up with a distro for moms specially...tux4mom lolz :-)

Actually I use Fedora with a handful of rpms from other less authorized
sources.  It plays 95% of the media I want to play.  (I still see problems
with some wma files.  Some I question as to if they are trojaned anyways.)

Windows XP on the other hand plays very little.  If it does not understand
the codec (and that happens a lot) it does a web search and then errors
out with a "cannot find a codec for this media".  VLC on Windows does a
much better job than Windows media player, but that is an extra download,
and also available for Linux and OS X.  With Windows it might work if you
buy something.  Then again, it might not.

Somehow Windows got a reputation for "it just works".  It is total
nonsense.  Most of the time you have to track down obscure pieces to make
things work.   And sometimes the options it provides are less than useful.

The claim that "Windows is easier to install than Linux" is also pretty
bogus.  I spent the weekend getting Windows XP Por installed on a machine
for my wife.  It was my old desktop machine that had run Linux with no
problems for the last year.  Windows could not find the Ethernet driver,
the sound card driver, or the correct video driver.  I had to download
what I could find.  With Linux I can find out what something is without
opening the case.  If Windows does not have a driver for a device, it
gives you no clues as to what it is.  You have to open up the box.  (And
then hope you can find a driver on the vendor's site.  Not always
possible.)  With Linux, all those devices "just worked". I never did find
a correct driver for the EMU10k1 sound card.  (Creative Labs Live 5.1
Digital.  None of the drivers would load.)