“SUSE 9.3 has the potential to be a serious contender on the desktop, but sadly I cannot recommend this release to anyone looking for a well-balanced desktop Linux system. While they score points for making use of the latest and greatest desktop environments, new peripheral technology, and usability enhancements, the way they’ve crippled the multimedia functionality of this one-time world class distro is hard to ignore.” Read the review at MadPenguin. UPDATE: Another, quick look at SUSE PRO 9.3.
First Look at SUSE LINUX 9.3 Professional
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
It is really strange that they include RealPlayer with MP3 support but Gstreamer, aKode and arts without it. As the author mentions you either have to recompile kdemultimedia or download a recompiled package from a third party repository. This is unacceptable for a desktop oriented commercial distro.
I also thought that the whole point of Gstreamer was that you can easily add aditional plugins for audio and video support by just copying a few files.
I wanted to buy Suse 9.3 but now I have to reconsider my decision. What is the point of including flash, java, realplayer but NO MP3 support?
>It is really strange that they include RealPlayer with MP3 support but Gstreamer, aKode and arts without it
No it is not. Real has already paid the royalties needed, the rest programs haven’t.
>This is unacceptable for a desktop oriented commercial distro.
I agree 100%. If that was a “free” version like the mdk-download edition or Fedora, I would think “ok, they might have a point to not want to pay royalties”. But this is the commercial edition, and a customer *expects* mp3 and other codecs to just work. That’s why you pay Novell.
>Gstreamer was that you can easily add aditional plugins
>for audio and video support by just copying a few files.
This is true. But it seems that the architecture of kdemultimedia does not use gstreamer the right way and so it requires a full recompilation to take advantage of newly installed codecs instead of being ad-hoc.
”
This is true. But it seems that the architecture of kdemultimedia does not use gstreamer the right way and so it requires a full recompilation to take advantage of newly installed codecs instead of being ad-hoc.”
not at all. gstreamer allows this but royalties are huge to consider doing it for every implementation
gstreamer does allow this, but kdemultimedia does not take advanage of it. Please read more carefully.
A pretty good review for a change…thanks
Judging from the screenshots he tried the 5 CD set instead of the normal DVD. I bet that Thunderbird, Eclipse etc are included on DVD just like in SUSE 9.2.
And the Novell Linux Desktop is not GNOME-centric.
screw mpeg. does it support ogg. ogg is open source and 100% free, we should just dump mp3 all together i think
If you kindly provide the super computer to find ways to transform my 20,000 mp3s to ogg quickly enough and without losing quality during the transformation, I would consider your suggestion.
i doubt that who like to use open source software want to use real player for their media player needs. there’s some things open source hackers don’t use. among them are flash, vb, wma files AND real player. these are not use for the good reason that there are alternatives which are so much better.
I thought software mp3 players were free from mp3 royalties? Only encoders and hardware decoders must pay royalties. And yet they still ship with LAME iirc. *rolleyes*
For a lot of people buying a commercial distro like SuSE is because of the official cd’s and dvd’s.No doubt about it that it’s less bug prone and more secure to install from an official CD/DVD than most net-installs.
Yet i’m increasingly becoming less enthusiast about SuSE to a point i might start to advise against buying a SuSE box these days.For me and a lot of other enthusiasts 90 euros is a lot of money.From a 90 euros box one might expect some multimedia capabillity in terms of at least no crippled packages,so one could easily install the remaining packages which would enable you to author dvd’s,watch your bought encrypted dvd’s,play your mp3’s.
It’s perfectly legal if you don’t cripple your packages/system out of complete overcautious paranoia.It’s the responsibillity of the end-user if he’s going to violate some laws with additional installed software.
This time i wouldn’t let me seduced by the less bug prone installing from dvd reason.The things offered simply don’t outweight the costs of a box anymore.Ther’e plenty of good some even better alternativs to SuSE.
Oh, go download a media app.
Remember when we all said that web browsers weren’t even supposed to be ‘part of the operating system’? Now we get all hissy if we have to spend 5 minutes to go download the (free) media player of our choice. (“I can’t listen to my MP3s with this distro!” *sob*)
This isn’t meant to be a troll. The tone of this review just bothered me somehow. I get all riled up sometimes. Like the tasmanian devil from bugs bunny.
Flagdannit! Have they STILL not learned after crippling Xine-lib!!?
Andy, please take a closer look at what you’ve read. It states several times that the distro has been crippled to a state that you can’t just “go download and install” any media player you like. The underpinnings that those media players depend on have been broken intentionally. It is fixable, yes, but to the extent that you have to rebuild many pieces from source… in a sense rebuilding media support for the distro. For a desktop release aimed at basic consumers this is not acceptable. Now do you understand the tone?
Andy, please take a closer look at what you’ve read. It states several times that the distro has been crippled to a state that you can’t just “go download and install” any media player you like. The underpinnings that those media players depend on have been broken intentionally. It is fixable, yes, but to the extent that you have to rebuild many pieces from source… in a sense rebuilding media support for the distro. For a desktop release aimed at basic consumers this is not acceptable. Now do you understand the tone?
Heh. Like the tasmanian devil. (Andy spins around, drools and snarls). Yes, I understand that it’s annoying when it feels like they’re trying to stop you from doing something.
The last time I had this problem was with Xine and redhat. I downloaded an RPM from freshrpms and force-installed it. That was the extent of the inconvenience. Maybe SuSE managed to make it more difficult than that? Basic consumers don’t generally install Linux boxes, and they’re not going to start doing so with this SuSE release — simple reality. People who read your review will know how to work around the problem.
Andy
I really hate this type of reviews: first: far too much attention to just one point, which you all know ave a juridical reason. Every time there is a new SuSE version there are reviews like this, full of fud, manuals which are not readed, and even the messages on the screen are ignored …
First of all: if all that debian people etc are really that pro open source etc, they didn’t have also mp3 support etc.
There is mp3 support, but not in every application.
Btw even Windows didn’t have every multimedia codec like divx …
to Anyd: why use rpm’s for redhat if there are sites like packman and guru ??
I purchased WinXp-SP2 for AU$85.00, which is roughly 50 Euros.
90 Euros for an OS with w/- crippled multimedia capabilities is defenetly too much.
Hey, it might be insecure and what have you,but at least i can throu any DVD at it and it will play it.
ah .. and in that winxp package was included all the office software etc. etc. … and i don’t think there is divx support in winxp, no ogg support etc etc
Realplayer (rm files) playing in WinXp without downloading something …
o my god .. get a life
I would like to know where you can buy WINXP for AUD85 – the OEM price is around AUD130 in Australia. XP *cannot* play any type of DVD, Quicktime, Realmeadia etc without downloading extra codecs.
I hear Windows Media Player 10, which is free, CAN play DVDs — is that true..? I don’t run it myself…
Why does this Beagle user application look differently than the remaining rest of the applications shown on screenshots ? The Buttons look differently, the Toolbar keeping these icons look differently ?
There is a very good mp3 player for KDE called amarok. they usually come with binary packages on their website amarok.kde.org, so all there is to it to go there and download and install and quit nagging.
And also if the realplayer of the Suse 9.3 is the professional one why do we need another mp3 player?
I would like to put my money on some other stuff than packaging of some costly programs that you can download yourself quickly.
I would rather pay to see a working good multimedia player browser plugin in linux that supports most of the formats like mplayer.
> Why does this Beagle user application look differently than
> the remaining rest of the applications shown on screenshots
> ? The Buttons look differently, the Toolbar keeping these
> icons look differently ?
This F-Spot doesn’t look right either. Toolbar, GUI, Interface, Fileselector, Themes etc. This app looks differently than the remaining rest of the KDE Desktop.
In the review it says “In the end, I had no issues with the installer, save for it not recognizing my monitor or its capabilities properly. I needed to manually adjust the settings myself, but that’s not a big deal”.
But that is a big deal. Why couldn’t the reviewer have said that this was a fault in the installation? I hate it in reviews when the author says XYZ doesn’t work, but that’s ok. No it isn’t. Funnily enough, this kind of crap always seems to be in Linux reviews….
But that is a big deal. Why couldn’t the reviewer have said that this was a fault in the installation? I hate it in reviews when the author says XYZ doesn’t work, but that’s ok. No it isn’t. Funnily enough, this kind of crap always seems to be in Linux reviews….
He did in fact mention the monitor not being detected didn’t he?As most novice users know *this isn’t a big issue to solve* (little configure issue,if you start using any OS as a tool you will likely have to configure more).
Look different because they’re both GTK-based applications. If you want a really capable KDE photo library application, try Digikam. With the new image restoration and inpainting filters it has become really good.
If you’re using KDE and Konqueror as a web browser, you should install Kaffeine. It is a frontend to mplayer and xine and it integrates very nicely into Konqueror.
This is a big issue for novice users. Everything’s a big issue for novice users, especially something as big as their screen looking screwy.
1. Mozilla Thunderbird is *not* missing, it is not installed by default because SuSE prefers Kontact, but it is included in the distro (and does *not* need to be downloaded separately).
2. On the Microsoft(tm) Windows(tm) platform, you get 1 (=one) licensed application that supports MP3 playback. On the SuSE(tm) Linux(tm) platform, you get 1 (=one) licensed application that supports MP3 playback. If someone complains that all the 100000 free Fedora and Debian clones have better multimedia support, you must see that these are *unlicensed* and cannot be legally distributed.
3. “SUSE has really done a thorough job at crippling media playback”, “SUSE has crippled their distro in such a way that it’s extremely difficult to fix” – Boah, this is embarrassing! – “The problem with this would be that you’re throwing off the balance of package management at that point, so future upgrades might have unpredictable results” – Boah, stop this embarrassing stuff! Does the reviewer not even know what Source-RPMs are (these are the .src.rpm files on the second dvd)?
I have rarely read such an embarrassing review before!
More (~100) screenshots of SuSE Linux 9.3 Professional:
http://www.hup.hu/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=8425
“The last time I had this problem was with Xine and redhat. I downloaded an RPM from freshrpms and force-installed it. That was the extent of the inconvenience. Maybe SuSE managed to make it more difficult than that? Basic consumers don’t generally install Linux boxes, and they’re not going to start doing so with this SuSE release — simple reality. People who read your review will know how to work around the problem.
Andy”
i use SUSE (9.1), and i have no idea how to do what you suggested, and no intention of learning how to. i just expect it to work.
check em out
http://www.linux-noob.com/screenshots
cheers
anyweb
In common with almost every other Linux review I’ve ever read, this reviewer neglects to identify the type of user SUSE is targetting. THat’s crucial to the design of a distributon, since there’s no reason to include components the intended market doesn’t want.
By this review’s over-emphasis on multimedia tools, it is apparent that the reviewer believes the primary purpose of a Linux distribution is to play mp3 files. I don’t agree, and I’d venture to say neither SUSE or most SUSE customers agree. Face it, mp3 tools that haven’t paid the royalties incurr a legal and financial liability for anyone who packs them into a distribution. This fact might be of no consequence to distributions hacked together by some kids, but it represents a significant and real risk for multi-million companies like SUSE and RedHat. Why risk a multi-million lawsuit payout just to satisfy a bunch of kids who aren’t going to buy your product anyway?
By the way, the kind of searching Beagle offers has not been available for years, contrary to the review.
has no one heard of the “w32-codec” pack from packman, i just install that and no more codec problems, runs every thing.
i use SUSE (9.1), and i have no idea how to do what you suggested, and no intention of learning how to. i just expect it to work.
Oohoo! It’s fun to reply to comments like this. So many snarky possibilities!
– Ignorance is a virtue! You don’t like uppity book-learnin’ either, do ya?
– It does just work. Use the app they included.
– “Boy, have I got the operating system for you!” -BillG
– “Wait, try mine instead!” -SteveJ
I take it you’re sorta new to Linux? If you’d started using it just a few years ago, and expected everything to “just work” right down to zippy multimedia, you’d have scurried back to wherever you came from in a hurry.
i use SUSE (9.1), and i have no idea how to do what you suggested, and no intention of learning how to. i just expect it to work.
…Point taken though, perhaps not all Linux users are very sophisticated nowadays, which is a good sign I guess…
> Look different because they’re both GTK-based applications.
> If you want a really capable KDE photo library application,
> try Digikam. With the new image restoration and inpainting
> filters it has become really good.
So why do they use this GTK Beagle and FSpot stuff instead of the KDE Digikam one ? Wouldn’t it make more sense using applications specially designed for one framework rather than mixing applications ? Having a quick peek towards Digikam shows that it has more potential than FSpot and looks&feels totally integrated inside KDE.
While I usually enjoy MadPenguin review, I found this review a bit hot headed…of all the things the distor does and did right, he blew his stack because he couldnt play MP3s. (For the person complaining of a way to convert hit mp3’s to ogg, have u every searched the web? maybe u shoudl try mp32ogg script, should be readily availble for all distros and because ogg has a higher fidelity, your ogg will probably end up soundign better than the mp3 even after the double conversion…) but back towhat I was sayin. I think he went a little on a rant this time and wouldnt recommend a distro soley on the fact that mp3s didnt come preinstalled, which they never did. What I find more interesting, is that he contacted him with a valid concern about it and the ACTUALLY MADE A CHANGE to the system and added new stuff to help alleviate his concerns…try contacting one of the other big distro devels and getting somethign actually added to the tree…HotHeaded Exxxxagerated review…if mp3s work in Real them the system can play mp3s, just no tin the apps you want them to (until you update now it seems)…cry me a river…
” It states several times that the distro has been crippled to a state that you can’t just “go download and install” any media player you like. The underpinnings that those media players depend on have been broken intentionally. It is fixable, yes, but to the extent that you have to rebuild many pieces from source… in a sense rebuilding media support for the distro. For a desktop release aimed at basic consumers this is not acceptable. Now do you understand the tone?”
This is not exactly accurate. No recompiling is necessary. All you have to do in order to make all multimedia features work is download and install all rpm’s starting with “libxine1” plus the “w32codec-all” rpm from Packman (I suppose they won’t be available before the official release).
Nevertheless, I agree this should not be necessary.
There will NEVER be a LEGAL distro that includes w32codecs and MP3 and DVD support and all you might want to have for free. Stop crying and learn that this is copyrighted and patented material. You must decide:
– PAY for licensed stuff
– install unlicensed stuff
If you decide for the latter, you will have to go to the packman repository and download and install the illegal and unlicensed stuff yourself. Is it really that difficult to understand?
Or get one of the 100000 RedHat and Debian clones that already includes this illegal and unlicensed stuff if you don’t want to install anything separately. But then please don’t complain about people telling that many linux users are using illegal stuff.
andy said – “Oohoo! It’s fun to reply to comments like this. So many snarky possibilities!
– Ignorance is a virtue! You don’t like uppity book-learnin’ either, do ya?
– It does just work. Use the app they included.
– “Boy, have I got the operating system for you!” -BillG
– “Wait, try mine instead!” -SteveJ
I take it you’re sorta new to Linux? If you’d started using it just a few years ago, and expected everything to “just work” right down to zippy multimedia, you’d have scurried back to wherever you came from in a hurry.”
————————————————————
andy said – “…Point taken though, perhaps not all Linux users are very sophisticated nowadays, which is a good sign I guess…”
————————————————————
lol, seriously tho, i am currently interested in two different distro’s for my new system; suse 9.3 and hoary.
i >was< prepared to pay for SUSE in order to get greater n00b-friendliness.
Windows XP Home and Windows Media Player 10 do NOT allow you to play DVDs right out of the box. If you try, it throws up a dialog and tells you that you do not have the software necessary to play a DVD in WMP. It then directs you to a website where you can _download_ DVD codecs from various manufacturers, starting at $9.99 a shot.
WMP will direct you to this page:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/mp10/getmore/plugins….
you have to pay for each one.
After trying many distributions of linux, I finally gave up
For one, the hardware support is not there yet (even at this time in age). I recently purchased a brand new Compaq Presario R3000, and right off the bat I had problems with the wireless card drivers, then the Nvidia drivers and finally USB problems.
It’s funny how I have to give up features found in the Windows world to be able to decently run my any Linux distribution. SUSE was my favorite of them all; however, it all comes down to linux as a whole – drivers, drivers and support.
I think I’ll try Linux, in general, again in a couple of years – maybe by then there will be more hardware drivers and either ATI or Nvidia will come up with some ‘decent’ native 3D drivers…maybe?
Has Suse/Novell agreed to RAND licensing terms with Microsoft for the reditribution of .NET related technologies?
Do they offer idemnification against IP lawsuits from MS for the use of this technology.
By purchasing Suse, have I acquired the necessary IP licenses to use, develop against, and distribute applications with mono?
Many people are missing the point here. Suse has gone the extra mile (fairly needlessly) to make it practically impossible for most people to play MP3s, and especially, DVDs. Suse and the NLD don’t just stop at not playing CSS encrypted DVDs but they don’t let you play any DVD. A nice helpful error message comes up that means practically nothing to anyone. The problem is they haven’t just left out the packages needed for MP3 and DVD playback – they’ve totally compiled it out of the system. RealPlayer can play MP3s, but quite frankly, it sucks.
Interestingly, notice that companies like Suse and Red Hat quite enjoy the awful RPM implementations they have because it makes it impractical to do anything with your system without upgrading fully. If you do anything serious with it, before you know where you are you’re building your own distribution. It’s an attempt at Microsoft lock-in from a reverse angle. I doubt very much whether we’ll see easy-to-install software (Autopackaged installation wizards) on such distributions ever.
They’re not even doing open source software and free standards such as Ogg Vorbis any favours by pointing you in the direction of RealPlayer for MP3 playback. If MP3 really is that much of a problem then they should have an option that would enable you to automatically convert all of your MP3s to ogg format. They should also offer to convert all of your Word documents to Open Office formats. Opening Word documents is a short-term (one-off really) solution, not something that will provide something permanent. They also insist on using Adobe’s (terrible) PDF reader rather than using the many great free PDF readers out there, such as KPDF. This just opens the door for widespread use of things like pointlessly DRMed PDFs out there on a Linux desktop.
Sadly, on this evidence Suse (and Novell etc. as a whole) are not a company with a vision of providing a unified set of open source applications but simply a company that will throw any set of applications together that they perceive to be fashionable (like just about every Linux distro company). Maybe Miguel de Icaza was right and maybe Suse are just a packaging division, but I don’t see any solutions coming from any part of Novell – or anywhere else to be honest.
Companies like Suse, Xandros, Linspire etc. are deeply insulting open source software by using it, for the simple reason that it would cost them hundreds of millions in investment to produce a desktop in the usual proprietary fashion. They’re just not behind it 100%, nor do they seem to understand it a lot of the time. If they can shove and promote pointless proprietary software on top of there, and ultimately hurt open source software, then they’ll do it. They’re unwittingly signing the death warrants of their own products in the future. By not using and fully promoting open formats that are fully usable by open source software projects, they’re ensuring that the very open source software they depend on for survival will continue to be marginalised. You have to believe in it fully, or not at all.
I think it’s high time a major open source project (somewhere) took the bull by the horns on that issue in a sensible fashion. No one is going to get any joy out of open source companies like Novell/Suse, Xandros, Linspire etc. and anyone who thinks the promised land will come from that direction are going to be very disappointed.
By this review’s over-emphasis on multimedia tools, it is apparent that the reviewer believes the primary purpose of a Linux distribution is to play mp3 files.
The reviewer mentioned the lack off mp3 amongst many other things.His main grief is not solely the lack of all in fact should be included in a commercial box which arguably isn’t the best of breed in anything.No SuSE went unnecesary a step or two further and crippled a lot off apps that deal with licences,especially the mp3 and encrypted dvd ones.
Not including xine and all it’s cousins wouldn’t be that bad.They could be easily installed via apt4rpm,etc.Since they have crippled multiple apps,libraries like libxine and a lot of other ones with many interdependancies you risk system instabillity or face harrasing dependancy hell.No problem when you install a average hacker-kid distro like your description but i think it’s not done when a 90 euros commercial box is concerned.
Most potential or existing buyers of a SuSE Linux box go for the cd/dvd install and features.They expect most apps to simply work and present.Why would you otherwise pay for a distro?Even if i would only code all day,which i don’t (now and then i like to watch a dvd to),i wouldn’t buy SuSE, ther’re better distros out there with much more control over juat about anything.
Interestingly, notice that companies like Suse and Red Hat quite enjoy If you do anything serious with it, before you know where you are you’re building your own distribution. It’s an attempt at Microsoft lock-in from a reverse angle. I doubt very much whether we’ll see easy-to-install software (Autopackaged installation wizards) on such distributions ever.
Care to elaborate about Microsof lock-in? I don’t understand that statement:
the awful RPM implementations they have because it makes it impractical to do anything with your system without upgrading fully.
Do you talk about dependency hell or what?
Amazing how bent ppl get about multimedia. Here is the answer to your problems: http://packman.links2linux.org/ Packman is to SuSE what FreshRPMs is to RedHat.
When 9.3 is released you can bet money that all necessary pre-compiled binaries for whatever it is you want to do with multimedia and/or dvd (kde included)will be available. Shouldnt take you more than 5 minutes to get it going.
Furthermore, as far as I know 9.3 isn’t final yet. I was just at Novell Brainshare and “its not done yet” was the tone. Lets cool our jets here and wait for the final and see whats available on packman afterwards.
One last thing I have to bring up is comparisons with other commercial OS. The reviewer is really quick to trample them on multimedia without even considering the fact that SuSE 9.3 actually trounces WindowsXP on Multimedia support out of the box. Not to mention that SuSE 9.3 can play MP3s. You just have to use RP10. XP gets wmv,asf,wav,mp3 support in WMP. DVD playback is extra. You want quicktime or real media then you’re downloading 2 more apps. Back to SuSE9.3….get support for most all major media formats in a single app by default. You want something else, then go to packman and get the binaries and do it for free and fast.
For the past year or so i’ve been a Suse fan when it comes to linux, so i can’t wait to download Suse 9.3 just hope it’s worth it, and that nothing goes wrong during update from 9.2.
http://bitsofnews.com
I’ve been using SUSE for some time, dutifully buying each new release, hoping that SUSE would someday free me from the clutches of the dominator Bill G. and the egomaniac Steve J.. Now it seems that Novell is letting the consumer desktop slide into oblivian. My next upgrade will be Linspire.
I am not a techie (though I sometimes play one at work), I just want a nice desktop and the necessary tools to work and play the way I wish. I know it is heresy, but anytime I am forced to use the command line I feel pushed back into the ’80s. I had thought that SUSE would be the one to free me, but it seems less and less likely.
SUSE will continue to give Windows a challenge on the corporate desktop (along with Sun JDS), and I credit them handily for that.
There will NEVER be a LEGAL distro that includes w32codecs and MP3 and DVD support and all you might want to have for free.
If the free download doesn’t include the codecs, fair enough.
SuSE Professional 9.3 costs 90 Euros though, and for that kind of money people are perfectly entitled to ask why DVD support isn’t included and why MP3 support (through RealPlayer) is lacking.
Of course many customers might not actually need those functions. But if that’s why they don’t include them, Novell would do well to offer a straightforward way to add them legally (and possibly pay for them).
From the licensor’s mouth, it’s $5.75 per unit to license mp3 playback and codec, and it’s cheaper if the encoding is embedded in a single app(rather than made available as a codec).
I hate patents but they do exist. Suse being a commercial distro I really can’t see why they didn’t go the route (maybe they will) of offering a multimedia option with licenses mp3 enc/dec and dvd playback.
> SuSE Professional 9.3 costs 90 Euros though, and for that
> kind of money people are perfectly entitled to ask why DVD
> support isn’t included and why MP3 support (through
> RealPlayer) is lacking.
SUSE is selling a Distribution, Support, Book. They are not selling the open source applications.
So if you call them up why there is no DVD support then the answer you would get is ‘Its related to legal and licensing issues’. That’s it and end.
“i use SUSE (9.1), and i have no idea how to do what you suggested, and no intention of learning how to. i just expect it to work.”
Then Linux is going to be a never ending series of disappointment, because there’s always going to be something that “just doesn’t work” for someone. Funny enough, the lower “just doesn’t work” threshold for that OTHER OS.
> Then Linux is going to be a never ending series of
> disappointment, because there’s always going to be something
> that “just doesn’t work” for someone. Funny enough, the
> lower “just doesn’t work” threshold for that OTHER OS.
You make it sound like everything works perfectly under Windows.
Many people are missing the point here. Suse has gone the extra mile (fairly needlessly) to make it practically impossible for most people to play MP3s, and especially, DVDs.
Suse 9.2 did support unencrypted DVD playback, and support for MP3s as well as encrypted DVDs could be added with a few PackMan packages.
What’s your evidence that this has changed?
>From the licensor’s mouth, it’s $5.75 per unit to license mp3 playback and codec, and it’s cheaper if the encoding is embedded in a single app(rather than made available as a codec).
That is not that much. I would pay that personally. But I see a problem with a linux distribution. I can install SuSE from the DVD on as manny system I want. So I guess the mp3 license fee must be payed for every system on which SuSE is installed and not per DVD, right? But SuSE can’t track how many installation I do. And I guess a lisence from Fraunhofer where they include this possibility would be very expensive for Novell.
I don’t think the license terms are that harsh. it is on the number of unit sold… If you duplicate the install, then you are the license fraudster, not SUSE.
Anyway, I am sure Novell would be able to get even better terms to be honnest if they even tried.
You guys are a laugh a minute since you really have no idea of what you’re talking about..
I received a copy of the SUSE 9.3 dvd’s last week. These are the gold disks, they’re being pressed and delivered right now. You can order them from Novell, but you’ll be waiting a few weeks.
I installed it on my wife’s new computer. Everything worked, unlike Windows XP which is installed on another partition (why can’t windows xp with sp2 install on a sata drive without needing a driver floppy??).
Yes, there is no mp3 support included in SUSE 9.3. This is because of licensing issues, and honestly I can’t blame Novell one bit for this one.
However, there are already 3rd party rpm’s which will be hitting the web as soon as the distro is released. A total of 10 additional rpm’s, which can be easily added through YaST, will provide full mp3, Mplayer + win32 codecs, and dvd de-css support. Heck even my grandmother could follow the following instructions:
download kdemultimedia3-mad-3.4.0-x.rpm
open a shell
type ‘su’ and enter the root password
type ‘rpm -i kdemultimedia3-mad-3.4.0-x.rpm’
SUSE 9.3 has a few warts, sure. For example I use xview, which is dropped from the distro. I’ll probably pick up the srpm and spec file from suse 9.2 and take over the support of this myself, just as I suspect there will be other third party rpms added in.
And for everyone whining about the few extra steps necessary to install mp3 support, what other linux distro do you suggest for people new to linux, gentoo?
Give me a break.
And for everyone whining about the few extra steps necessary to install mp3 support, what other linux distro do you suggest for people new to linux, gentoo?
Depends on the user you or i have in mind.But why not,it’s not more difficult than learning your first math lessons.
There’s a problem everyone’s missing with just licensing the MP3 support.
SUSE (and every other distro) include open source apps like amaroK, xmms etc *under their original, open source licenses* (usually the GPL).
These licenses permit unlimited redistribution.
Hence, SUSE can’t practically license MP3 playback for these applications. They wouldn’t just have to pay Fraunhofer the license fee per copy *sold*, as the MP3 playback functionality in that copy can under the license terms be freely redistributed without limit. SUSE (and any other distributor) have to somehow cover every single machine that the code would potentially be redistributed to. IANAL, but logically speaking, that would require them to pay a license fee for every single computer in every country that enforces the Fraunhofer patent (i.e., the U.S.A., basically). A few bucks a copy is no big deal, but a few bucks multiplied by every PC in America really adds up.
If it was as easy as just buying a license for each copy sold, they’d already do it – hell, either they or Real are already paying the license fee for the Real player.
Hence I can understand their decision. There’s nothing at all to stop Fraunhofer enforcing their licensing against a distro that ships MP3 support in the United States, and if they did, the liability would be huge. It’d be a nasty legal mess. Fraunhofer are showing no signs of wanting to *do* it right now, but I can understand why a large American company like Novell or Red Hat would not want to take the risk.
As the GPL states:
Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone’s free use or not licensed at all.
I don’t think most people realize that it’s actually not legally possible to distribute GPL software that contains patented technology that you don’t have the rights for as the original copyright holder of the code.
That means that even if SuSE bought a patent license, technically, you can’t distribute it under the GPL. Now, MP3 playback software if you had an MP3 patent license that was licensed under a BSD license would be ok or any other license that doesn’t have the patent requirement that the GPL does.
So to all those complaining about what SuSE did. Welcome to reality. RedHat realized it and so are other companies.
I just don’t seem to get this wave of people upset over the multimedia functions in 9.3.
For starters, do a comparison of Windows XP and Suse OS, as it stands without 3rd Party software loaded.
(That means no Amarok, no xine, no Kaffeine, no MPlayer, or RealPlayer for Linux)
Neither OS supports DVD playback out of the box.
It’s the 3rd Party software that’s loaded with a Windows machine when a DVD player is sold (PowerDVD, WinDVD, etc) that gives you the DVD codec to play DVD’s. (The cost is apportioned into the amount you pay for the PC from Dell, or whoever you purchased your system through) And it’s PROPRIETARY.
Novell gets that. Why is it that we have to download a Nvidia binary for their drivers; the driver is a closed driver, and Suse is an “GPL” OS. It has an agreement with Nvidia to allow their driver to be downloaded after the install, but not to be included in the install to allow for Suse to stay compliant with the GPL.
That’s why DVD playback isn’t incorporated into Suse, even if you pay for a copy of Suse. Suse runs based on open software with GPL licensing, so it couldn’t distribute that codec unless the codec holder allowed licensing the codec the same way Nvidia licenses their driver, which means you’d still have to download it after the fact.
Not to mention that I’m guessing the DVD codec requires payment for each system it’s installed on, which doesn’t allow for mulitple PC installs, like Novell allows with Suse.
Windows by itself doesn’t come with codecs for DVD and MP3 playback; you have to get them. I understand the community’s reasoning for wanting the codec. What needs to be done is to lobby the holder of the codecs (Fraunhoffer for MP3 and Macrovision for DVD (CSS) I think) and tell them that you want the ability to pay for and download directly the codecs to allow DVD playback, whether it be through them directly or a company that already distributes Windows software. Don’t blame Suse, or Redhat or Debian.
They’re trying to keep the software open. Your requests for this stuff is attempting to close it off, which isn’t what Open Source and GPL software is about.
I don’t think most people realize that it’s actually not legally possible to distribute GPL software that contains patented technology that you don’t have the rights for as the original copyright holder of the code.
That means that even if SuSE bought a patent license, technically, you can’t distribute it under the GPL. Now, MP3 playback software if you had an MP3 patent license that was licensed under a BSD license would be ok or any other license that doesn’t have the patent requirement that the GPL does.
So to all those complaining about what SuSE did. Welcome to reality. RedHat realized it and so are other companies.
I think we can all agree on the legal difficulty of shipping codecs that require licensing.
However adding support for these codecs should be just a download away (e.g. meta-package avcodecs.rpm). I thought that was GStreamer’s goal, add additional codecs to a base-system that can be shipped without any codecs by default.
The problem with Suse is that you have to REPLACE core packages (libxine, kdemultimedia, etc.) with third party packages instead of just adding some files.
SuSE is not disabling or dictating anything. The only difference between 9.3 and any previous release is that you will need to download one or two extra KDE rpms along with your dvd, mp3, win32 codec rpms.
Whooptie doo lets all boycott SuSE for this autrocity. Somebody call the Hague, they are going down.
teknishn… hmmmm obviously you are not ! hahaha
LIKE 9.1 and 9.2, 9.3 has got Xine and Mplayer disabled, so that even removing them and reinstalling them will still not allow them to play.
it is not simply a matter of downloading libdvdcss2 anymore, they have screwed around with the players themselves.
can someone send me a link for Mac Os 8 on a hardfile for an emulator ? I been trying all over the net and can’t find one anywhere.
and since Apple have released Mac Os ver 6 thru 9, dont start bitching about illegal etc etc
Yes, I know old news. You simply download the fully enabled rpms for said media players from packman. Takes less than a minute and you have the real mplayer and xine. Been doing it on every version of SuSE since 7.3. Yawn
Not to mention that I’m guessing the DVD codec requires payment for each system it’s installed on, which doesn’t allow for mulitple PC installs, like Novell allows with Suse.
Shouldn’t realy be Novells problem.Like all propietary software you buy and install on any propietary OS,like a anti virus application.With buying that certain application you also purchase the right to only install it on one PC unless the (payment) conditions are different.If you still copy the install CD and your neighbour installs it on his PC he’s violating certain laws and not the store who sold the box.
I wonder how Turbo Linux arranged it all when they shipped powerdvd for Linux with it’s 10F version release.Analogue to that isn’t it applicable to mp3’s as well?
How often should licence been paid?
Exactly. That is precisely why Novell can’t ship with support for this stuff. If they decided to give in to those unwilling to spend 5 minutes on the net to get some RPMs, they would have to change their licensing terms to only allow one installation per boxed set and no more free ftp downloads. But the licensors of the css, mp3 and more will cry foul because its too easy to install on multiple machines regardless of licensing. In comes long serial numbers and product ativation. No thank you, I like it just the way it is. Everyone that runs any Linux distro has to do the same thing.
Those of us buying Linux for our home PCs generally know a thing or 2 about linux and the rinse lather repeat of getting multimedia going. For grandma, they will have to wait til the likes of HP, IBM, Dell, Gateway etc start selling Linux desktop machines and those companies will be responsible for media licenses. Same way it works with Windows.
Ogg is nice, but I couldn’t afford an MP3 player that supported it so I’m stuck with a large MP3 collection. From that perspective I honestly believe that paying nearly $100 for a distro with crippled support is a lot, SUSE does offer upgrade versions but they are still in the $50 range. This amounts to $100 a year or about 5 times the cost of XP over the lifetime of the product. Sure I could download it for free, but no books, no support, and a three month wait where thankfully they now offer a DVD for download instead of a FTP install.
I see here a lot of comparison with Windows XP, well the truth is that on XP I need only download winamp a simple .exe file and I’m done. MP3 now works. Nothing is crippled and I have a nice product to listen to Digitally imported radio in.
I have an install of SUSE 9.2 on my laptop now and MP3 worked in XMMS out of the box, and I have a pre-order in for 9.3, but if MP3 is crippled in XMMS I’m done. I don’t like real player and I don’t use real player. I haven’t used any version of it since 8.0 because I personally think it is crap. So then it will be to Fedora Core III where everything is a simple YUM command away.
Does Novell have any reason to cripple the media players? I mean, I understand that they can’t include the codecs with the OS, but why must they cripple the programs? I know it’s not a big deal to download them and the codecs, because they are still _totally_ legal in most parts of the world, but I’m just curious. Wouldn’t it make more sense to just leave the codecs out, because now it feels like Novell doesn’t want its customers to watch DVDs, which most likely isn’t the real case?
Now that Microsoft had to ship the media playerless version of XP in Europe (talk about good media support), Novell should release an European version of SuSE, which would include all video codecs, legally of course, since we’re still without software patents. I would find that extremely amusing.
Is there a way I as an end-user could buy I license of MP3 patents or whatever and then I could run whatever MP3 app I want legally?
I don’t think SUSE crippled the players, they are probably just not shipping the codecs/libraries, and several people gave very good reasons for this.
Just saw this thread on the SUSE forums,
http://lists.suse.com/archive/suse-linux-e/2005-Apr/0665.html
so SUSE are already providing an easy way to get multimedia capabilites, if legal in your country of course.
So stop raving.
So it’s not true they crippled mp3. I’d like to apologize for my hefty reaction, but it was believable seeing as what they did in 9.1/9.2 with xine-lib.
Sorry Novell/SuSe :—)
Care to elaborate about Microsof lock-in? I don’t understand that statement:
Microsoft has a totally closed OS you cannot do anything, but makes it easy for people to install and develop all kinds of software on top of it. Suse/Red Hat/Xandros etc. have open source operating systems that people can do anything with because they know what’s in it, so the only way they can protect themselves is to make things difficult to install – which they do.
Do you talk about dependency hell or what?
Yes, along with the fact that certain packages are built in a certain way or have certain things compiled out. Try installing K3B on Xandros – an excellent free burning tool that Xandros would rather you didn’t install because it gets around the 4x burning limit on their free version. Why are no distributions enthusiastic about AutoPackage? Red Hat insists that it is just a replacement for something like RPM, but it obviously isn’t.
Don’t expect to see easy to install software on any distribution. That will ensure desktop Linux gets no further.
Suse 9.2 did support unencrypted DVD playback, and support for MP3s as well as encrypted DVDs could be added with a few PackMan packages.
The Suse based NLD most certainly doesn’t. No one who this OS is aimed at will download Pacman packages.
if the price is out of your range, then just wait a month or so and you can download it for free. SuSe has made their distributions available for free on the net after a short period of selling boxed versions.
As for the MP3 whiners, stop creating mp3’s and start using ogg – its been available for quite a few years now. If you want to use proprietory software by choice, do the decent thing and pay for it (in time, effort or cash) instead of trying to freeload.
Is boot time better then the versions before?
Boot times getting always slower since Suse 7.3
And I read after Novell buys Suse, that they want to boot as fast as WinXP…???
(and yes, I optimized my daemons at startup, but it’s getting slower every version…)
captainpinko: practically speaking, no. I’m not sure it’s even possible theoretically speaking, as you’re the user, not the producer of the infringing product. Imagine it in the physical realm – Bob has a patent on the can opener, Jim makes a can opener, and Terry wants to use Jim’s can opener. I don’t think Terry can buy a license off Bob. Jim has to do it. This is certainly how things work practically speaking (the producer / distributor buys the license and passes the cost on to the customer as part of the price of the product).
i never had any multimedia problems with suse 8.2 9.0 9.1 9.2
always went to http://cambuca.ldhs.cetuc.puc-rio.br/xine/
went step by step
and had working dvd
just a habit a lot easier then tryin to find a torrent for a new power dvd in xp
if you have to install in mp3 codec in 9.3 so be it..takes just as long to install/download winamp in xp so no time loss there, because most people i know dont use windows media player for mp3s
just my opinion
“i never had any multimedia problems with suse 8.2 9.0 9.1 9.2”
Same here. The answer: apt4rpm for suse:
http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm/home.html
yous are all muppets.
over and over you say SUSE did not disable anything and that the “proper” files can be downloaded from packman..
news for you
PACKMAN is a 3rd part repository, they are not SUSE, this is someone else fixing SUSE for you
SUSE did disable the multimedia players and now it is up to YOU or some repo to sort it,
no thanks, I stick with Mandrake
Muppets?
There’s an update in the review on page 3, which kind of nullifies this point:
http://madpenguin.org/cms/?m=show&id=3851&page=3
Now Mandrake was my 1st distro, but I have to say for desktop usage I still find SuSe satisfies my needs better.
“I would like to know where you can buy WINXP for AUD85”
> OfficeWorks. I purchased WinXP Pro SP2 for $125.– and got $40.– back from MS.
“XP *cannot* play any type of DVD, Quicktime, Realmeadia etc without downloading extra codecs.”
>I haven’t had any issues with the DVD’s i trough at it. My son playes all sorts of games, listen’s to MP3s and whatches movies ….. he never complained. I don’t know about divx and ogg.
“XP *cannot* play any type of DVD, Quicktime, Realmeadia etc without downloading extra codecs.”
>Downloading the codecs is no problems. I play Realmedia and Quicktime with no complaints.
“and in that winxp package was included all the office software etc. etc. ”
> I run OO.org, Firefox, Realmedia, Winamp etc.
“o my god .. get a life”
> This is excactly what i’ve got. No reason to start a flame war, mate. I find Xp with all OS-Apps to be better value than Suse.
MS does not ship a single copy of XP without WMP in europe. They only made one available, just in case anybody ever cared – but nobody does.
Dell will not offer it, either. Why would you buy XP without WMP? It’s got the same price and WMP does not hinder you to install as many other players as you like.
It cost the european tax payers millions and millions for this moronic “victory” over MS, huh, why am I not impressed?!
Does Novell have any reason to cripple the media players?
They’re not crippled. At least not in the sense that they deliberately try to stop you from adding MP3 and CSS support.
The players have simply been compiled and linked without the necessary libraries, because they can’t legally distribute them.
If the media players were linked with those libraries regardless, they wouldn’t work at all without first downloading the libraries from somewhere, even if you don’t actually need MP3 or DVD support.
Of course there are ways around this technical problem, e.g. gstreamer. I don’t know why they don’t use that, perhaps gstreamer itself or its integration in the media players aren’t good enough yet.
“yous are all muppets. ”
We’ll see.
“PACKMAN is a 3rd part repository, they are not SUSE, this is someone else fixing SUSE for you ”
The same can be said for PLF. So what’s your point?
“no thanks, I stick with Mandrake ”
Way to reenforce your argument.
my point was this….
SUSE intentionally removed multimedia support from its distro, 3rd party repos added the missing parts.
People on this site got up in arms about the claim it was SUSE crippling the software and defended them by saying the missing parts are on packman…
BIG DEAL
packman are not SUSE
you are correct in saying that PLF is exactly the same thing, and that is where I always get the missing parts for Mandrake
Mandrake do not include libdvdcss2 with the distro, I need to get that, and win32-codecs, but that is all I am missing….
Xine and Mplayer work fine, they have not been screwed with..
Know what I mean ?
The missing multimedia packages are available through YaST Online Update (which is Novell’s by the way). They just can’t be included as default, because the users must be made aware that the packages may be illegal in where they live. So, no. I don’t really know what you mean.
Even though the author of the article edited it later stating Novell now provides the missing files via YaST Online Update he is still correct with his original comments. Meaning if Novell wishes to seriously compete with other competitors whether in the Linux community or others such as Microsoft then they need to provide multimedia support working out of the box, not leave it up to consumers to download missing packages through YOU. What if a consumer reads a SuSE Linux Pro 9.3 boxed set in a store mentioning multimedia support, purchases the software based on this and later finds the only way to get codec support for something like mp3 is to have internet access. Sorry but for the cost of the software sold in North America and overseas doesn’t justify making customers go through further steps to have media support that’s implied by Novell prior to purchase. My hope is that Novell will correct this issue prior to releasing the software to retailers/distributors for sale. Whether they actually correct the issue and if it will also pertain to the free ISO DVD download only time will tell.
As for the DVD codec support issue this is understandable due to developers such as Microsoft don’t even provide this out of the box. Typically consumers must pay for a third party software that provides DVD support. In the Linux community it’s nice to find developers such as for MPlayer that offer this for free but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s legal. I highly doubt an open source project pay licensing fees for codecs that are not there’s to begin with.
“packman are not SUSE”
Before you talk, get your facts straight: you can find Packman here:
ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/apt/SuSE/9.2-i386/
Which in case you didn’t know, is in the primary SUSE mirror.
“MS does not ship a single copy of XP without WMP in europe.”
Beautiful. Of course they want to keep their monopoly for as long as they can.
I am furious because RaiClick, which is the broadband service of the official Italian television, now works only with WMP.
It used to work with RealPayer.
Not only it worked a lot better with RealPlayer, but as a linux user I can’t use it any longer. I duly pay my TV subscription.