[svlug] Fedora or Ubuntu for novis

[Don Marti]

begin Alan DuBoff quotation of Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 12:13:33AM -0700:

> When I installed Ubuntu recently I was missing a bunch of stuff, and I 
> had to start adding some things, and/or running into stuff that wasn't 
> installed by default. As an example, codecs, some media didn't seem to 
> work...but it's been a while and I don't remember exactly what was 
> crippled, but to me it was. It seemed it required that I get them from 
> somewhere else, do you know if that's true?

Yes, there are independently maintained repositories
for patent-restricted codecs and some software whose
license doesn't allow redistribution.  Depending on
the juristiction, it could be a legal risk for a
mirror operator to host that stuff, and Canonical as
a company can't go near it.
  https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats

Same for Red Hat and Fedora.
  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems

Fedora has a tool that lets you buy a license:
  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Multimedia/Codeina

There are scripts out there, called "Automatix" and
"EasyUbuntu" that will add this stuff with one click.
Unfortunately their method of interacting with the
package manager is like doing brain surgery with a
Garden Weasel, and you could destroy some important
data or mess up your ability to do future upgrades.

I think Rick Moen posted a link to a script that will
do the necessary changes safely, but I don't see it
in a search.

-- 
Don Marti                                               +1 510-814-0932
http://zgp.org/~dmarti/
dmarti at zgp.org         Linux device driver unconference: http://freedomhec.org/