Re: Just some questions I had.

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On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 21:03:40 -0500, Kyle Lagonegro (Student-Lagone37)
<Lagone37@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> First off with these other disks, CD 3 and 4, I've commented on them and got a few responses, but I'm just curious as of what they are, and how do I use yum (or whatever I'm suppose to use) to put these programs on my computer.

The easy/graphical way to do this is to go to your dektop menu
  Applications -> System Settings -> Add/Remove Applications.
If you choose to install an application that's not installed it will know
where to find it, and may prompt for a CD.

yum is a command-line updater.  You don't need to worry about
it right at first, until you get a little more comfortable with Linux
(coming from Windows I assume you'll stay in graphical mode
for a while).  When you're ready for the command line (which you
SHOULD learn at some point), come back and we'll teach you
yum.   (the rumors are that FC4 will come bundled with a Yum
graphical front-end)


> Another thing I've been reading about OGG files instead of using MP3's.

Ogg Vorbis (http://www.vorbis.com/) is a great lossy format.

It's also completely *free*, and it works under Windows too.  Unless
you're a picky audiophile, MP3 and OGG are more-or-less comparable
both in file size and audio quality (although many would probably
argue OGG is the better technical format, while MP3 is the most
widely portable).

However, there is a very important reason why almost no Linux
distribution comes bundled with MP3 support.  Despite what you
might think, the MP3 format is patentend and requires royalty
payments to use.  Under Windows you don't realize this, because
your software vendors have choosen to pay this fee for you.  But,
obviously, non-free software can't be legally bundled with a free
operating system.

You can, however, add additional software yourself which adds
MP3 support, etc.

If you can, re-encode your CDs directly into OGG, rather than
trying to convert your existing MP3s.  In Fedora, the easy way
is to go to the desktop menu,
   Applications -> Sound & Video -> Sound Juicer CD Ripper
It's default is to encode into OGG format.

The only down side to OGG, is that it's not well supported in
hardware devices (yet); such as in-car CD players, iPODs, etc.
But it IS supported in most Windows MP3 software, so OGG is
a great format for sharing the same files between Linux and
Windows.

> WMV (Which was obvious), MPG and AVI files all won't play, as of
> now I think Helix is the only video playing program I have,...

Fedora Core is rather light on video players.  Again, most of this can
be attributed to proprietary/patented video formats.  Some of it is
just the sheer size of the software.  And it can be legally troublesome
to bundle some of this into Fedora (you can't blame Linux).  Supposedly
the upcoming Fedora Extras discs will add much more software of
this nature.

But video support under Linux is possible.  Perhaps the best all-around
program is called Xine (http://xinehq.de/).  It can do AVI, WMV, MPG,
DVDs, and all kinds of video quite well.  About the only thing it can't do
is play video which is cryptographically restricted (with DRM licensing).
It can however play DVDs without any worry about CSS encryption.
Do some Googling.  Xine isn't too hard to install, but it may be
fairly complicated for a brand-new Linux newbie.

Hope you have fun in the Linux world.
-- 
Deron Meranda


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