B Wooster wrote:
> I think Ubuntu is exactly the same - they don't ship proprietary code - in
> fact, by default, they don't even install the nvidia drivers (which fedora
> i386 install seems to do automatically),.
No, Fedora does not install the proprietary NVidia drivers. It installs the
Nouveau driver by default, the Free community-produced driver which
provides accelerated 2D and is working on 3D/OpenGL support (but that's not
available yet).
> So Ubuntu does not have DVD or MPEG support off the bat.
> There is something called the "Update Notifier" that asks if such software
> should be downloaded, with appropriate warning about non-free code.
> Seems like a good model to me - ie., a third-party writes a tool for
> Fedora that automatically checks what modules are required for DVD
> playback, prompts the user for permission, and goes whereever needed to
> get the stuff.
Some third parties have written such tools, but they cannot be included in
Fedora for the exact same reasons the code itself can't. Ubuntu gets away
with it because they're headquartered in the Isle of Man (and don't seem to
care about exposing their US-based contributors to legal risk).
> Given that many (most?) people probably expect and need DVD playback,
> seems worth having such third-party automated tools bundled with fedora -
> not the non-free code, just the thing that checks what is required and
> knows where to get it.
That would still be contributory infringement.
> As it is, everyone probably does this manually - and I'm sure I followed
> the fedorafaq.org instructions - yet, no video.
Most likely the instructions you've followed were outdated or not taylored
to KDE. As I wrote, you need xine-lib-extras-freeworld and libdvdcss. If
they told you to install some GStreamer stuff, that won't work with the
current KDE because the default Phonon backend is the xine-lib one. (This
is likely to change in Fedora 12 because the Phonon-GStreamer backend is
much more reliable now than in the past, but for now Phonon-xine is the
default.)
Kevin Kofler
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