Saturday, July 01, 2006

Gonna get me some codecs

One of the things that first time Ubuntu users are going to find frustrating, is that all the things a typical Windows user might expect to work................ don't. For example, Ubuntu will not play mp3 files 'out-of-the-box'. Nor will it play encrypted DVDs (most new DVDs are encrypted with CSS). This isn't because Ubuntu is broken, it's because the codecs required to play various media just aren't supported. I won't bore you with the legal mumbo-jumbo, safe to say that if you really want to enable these unsupported media in Ubuntu, you have to go get those codecs. That's the hard part. Until now. I found this site that made a script available to get a nice little app called EasyUbuntu. Follow the instructions and in no time you will have installed your choice of codecs and other must-have add-ons like Flash, Java and official ATI video drivers. The first time I tried it, it actually had difficulty connecting to one of the servers to get all the files. So I just started over and it was smart enough to take over where it left off. Now I can play DVDs in Ubuntu. Here's proof. I took a screenshot of Syriana while it was playing.........

Ubuntu isn't going to be as hard for newbies as they might think, as long as we have wonderful people who come up with one stop solutions like this.

1 comment:

Karl Plesz said...

I knew Jon would come to the rescue and explain the legal mumbo-jumbo side of the issue.

My apologies for using the word 'unsupported', I was at a loss for the proper term - which in this case was 'unlawful'.

I feel so dirty.