My Fedora 8 Review

[afonic]

Here you can read my review for Fedora 8:

http://www.dvd-guides.com/content/view/224/104/

Let me hear your thoughts both for the review and Fedora 8 itself.

:guitar:

[tubasoldier]

Most of the issues you brought up at the end of your review still exist with other easy to use distributions as well. How many new users come to ubuntu and know that they need to add another repository to get DVD playback and WMV support? The problem still exists. The one thing about Fedora's Codec Buddy is that it legitimizes the codec installation for those who live in countries with patent laws. On the other hand, if I install codecs and pay for them once, and then reinstall later, do I have to pay for them again? Just a thought.

[afonic]

Ubuntu automatically adds the repositories you have to add and then installs the codecs for everything but DVD (not the codec, DeCSS actually) when it finds an unusable file. openSUSE also automatically adds repositories and then installs the codecs.

Fedora in the other hand has only one option which is Fluendo. And asking to pay in order to get MPEG4 playback (XviD) is simply disappointing. Besides that how do they know I live in a country that patents apply? And what about the users that have no means of making a payment online or that $16 is a huge amount for them? And on top of that it doesn't work well. (see the WMV issue).

In my opinion this "codec buddy" is something Fluendo made in order to make some money, and I don't blame them for that. I just feel that including it in Fedora was a terrible mistake.

[mivo]

I believe the Codec Buddy is "basically" a good idea, but could have been implemented a little better. The thing is: It really does not tell you that you can just enable a third party repository like Livna and download the codecs for free, so all the user sees is the price tag when they try to play a multimedia file.

It's a good move because it gives concerned uers a way to get these codecs legally if they live in a country where software patents are recognised (though it supports them indirectly, but people cannot usually choose their country's laws), but that only applies to some users, not to everyone in the world, and people are not used to getting asked to pay money to play a file.

I don't believe Fedora is doing this to make money. It's a community distribution.

[afonic]

I didn't say Fedora makes money, I think Fluendo tries to make money by forcing this application in Linux distributions. This app should be a SECONDARY ulitily, that should only come up if the user said no, I don't want to download the codecs from the repo I want to buy it.

And just tell me who in Windows BUYS a decoder in order to play a DivX or XviD file.

[Kingsley]

Is there a site to download the plugin archives for free?

[igknighted]

Is there a site to download the plugin archives for free?

rpm.livna.org. Install the rpm for the repo, then add all the non-free stuff you need.