So you are considering Linux but multimedia issues have been getting you down. Never fear, there is help out for you…

Linux has all kinds of multimedia abilities, it’s had them for years. The trick is to get it all working. My install of Fedora Core comes with a variety of media related goodies: a CD audio player, something called the Helix Player, the Totem Movie Player, the Rhythmbox Music Player, and a simple CD audio extractor called Sound Juicer.
As I mentioned a couple of times before, a typical install of Linux can’t play things like MP3s out of the box. This isn’t for any technical reason, it is because of patents that many distributors of Linux, including Red Hat, won’t ante up for. Not only does this make good business sense if you are giving away a free operating system, it is also more compatible with the spirit of the GNU Public Licence that Linux is released under. The GPL is all about sharing stuff freely. Software patents are not. I’m not all hard core about the GPL but I understand why Linux distributors heed its wisdom. Their integrity will only inconvenience me temporarily.
Dan tells me the Livna library will solve my multimedia problems. Livna is a third party software library, built to serve Fedora Core Linux, but not affiliated with Red Hat in any official way. Hosted in a country where scary U.S. patents have no teeth, Livna is a kind of a Skunk Works for Fedora Core, hosting all of the dodgy, hush-hush stuff.
Adding Livna support to Fedora Core 5 is easy. You need only to download and install their configuration package. It adds itself to the list of software repositories so the powerful yum command can download Livna packages too. You can even read their news and browse their repository to get a better idea of what they offer and what the things are called…. Source: cobolhacker.com

[tags]linux,gnu public licence,livna[/tags]