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I recommend Ubuntu or Kubuntu. If you installed one and want to switch, you can install the desktop manager and everything for the other.

I don't know if it will read iTunes backups or whatever, but i think there are converters from AAC to OGG if AAC isn't supported (you'll have to do the burn and reimport trick for purchases),  but I think both versions has a media application like iTunes.

For starters try Ubuntu Gusty Gibbon. There's a program that will load music onto and off of iPods. It's in the Ubuntu online installs. Take a look.

Heh, yeah, I currently have Ubuntu up booted from a CD.  I like it quite a lot.  There are a lot of features here that remind me a lot of Leopard.

And from my reading, AAC, Apple lossless, WMA, MP3, etc are not supported by Ubuntu because they are proprietary formats. Go fig,  I think I may do a full install of it, since I don't think I have any use for Windows.

Rhythmbox uses GStreamer.
You need the appropriate GStreamer plugins.

Upstream - GStreamer packages those codecs in -

gstreamer-plugins-bad
gstreamer-plugins-ugly

Note that "bad" and "ugly" do not necessarily reflect on the quality of the code, plugins with good code but patent issues are also put into those packages (such as mp3 support)

I do not know what 3rd party repos for ubuntu exist that would package them, but I would search for ubuntu gstreamer-plugins-bad - it may point you in the right direction.

ubuntu seems the distro that most newbies like the best.
Some experienced users like it too. I personally don't care for it.

Before you do a full install of it wiping your HD, back up any windows fonts you have that end in .ttf - they should work in Linux. .otf fonts only partially work (most apps can display them, few can embed them for printing)

Ubuntu has release points they certify for long term support so you can choose one of those and be assured of updates for years. I think 3.

resedit wrote:

Rhythmbox uses GStreamer.
You need the appropriate GStreamer plugins.

Upstream - GStreamer packages those codecs in -

gstreamer-plugins-bad
gstreamer-plugins-ugly

Note that "bad" and "ugly" do not necessarily reflect on the quality of the code, plugins with good code but patent issues are also put into those packages (such as mp3 support)

I do not know what 3rd party repos for ubuntu exist that would package them, but I would search for ubuntu gstreamer-plugins-bad - it may point you in the right direction.

ubuntu seems the distro that most newbies like the best.
Some experienced users like it too. I personally don't care for it.

Before you do a full install of it wiping your HD, back up any windows fonts you have that end in .ttf - they should work in Linux. .otf fonts only partially work (most apps can display them, few can embed them for printing)

Yeah, I'll have to look into the program, i've not had a chance yet. 

Looking for a plugin that intentionally has "bad/ugly" in the title makes me nervous for some reason or another.

Supposedly, if you know how.

CrashingtehWarehouse wrote:

Looking for a plugin that intentionally has "bad/ugly" in the title makes me nervous for some reason or another.

I know. I think it is intentional - some of the developers for GStreamer work for a company called fluendo which is marketing commercial GStreamer plugins.

The real issue for the packaging split was patents - it use to be everything was in a single source tarball. Some distributions, like Red Hat, would remove the patent infringing code from the source tarball - thus, their source no longer matches upstream source.

So GStreamer split their plugins package into three tarballs -

GStreamer-plugins

no patent issues

GStreamer-plugins-bad

good code w/ patent issues + plugins that may not work as intented

GStreamer-plugins-ugly

code that needs a lot of work.

Note that most of the plugins work well, they just could work better. IE mpeg2 decoding etc. is in ugly, and sometimes you may get artifacts depending upon the video.

gstreamer-ffmpeg has always been separate and is a better plugin for most video that's in ugly, and gstreamer apps will use gstreamer-ffmpeg first if its available. So having the ugly plugins installed doesn't hurt anything, and they often work adequately.

But I think the "bad" and "ugly" were chosen to encourage people to buy the commercial plugins fluendo is working on and selling. That's pure speculation though.

https://shop.fluendo.com/

They have
mp3 decoder, mpeg2 decoder, mpeg4 decoder, WMA decoder, WMV decoder, AAC decoder, etc. - but they don't have encoders.

But that's why I think they did the "bad" and "ugly" thing in the free GStreamer plugins. Marketing for the non free products.

I just tried to put in a DVD movie to see if it would play, and it errored on me.  Asked me to install a GStreamer for the codecs so I did, It's still not behaving.  Does Ubuntu not do Hollywood DVD's because of that proprietary stuff?

Last edited by CrashingtehWarehouse (2008-01-12 10:02 pm)

For DVD - I suggest ditching totem (default gnome movie player) and using xine.

You will have to install some xine libraries beyond the basics - but xine is really much better.

There is a xine backend build of totem (in fact that's what I use for most multimedia) - and it is better than the GStreamer backend of totem - but it still is not as good as plain old xine.

I really like the GStreamer model, but right now, xine is just better at doing things.

For most DVD's you'll need to install libdvdread and libdvdcss. libdvdcss is only needed for the css protected DVD's.

Yeah, unfortunately I think Ubuntu still has some issues. I put it into hibernation last night to see what that's all about, and this afternoon when I came back to it, it just would not want to boot back up.   Ended up having to do a hard shut down and restarting the box. But I suppose it could also be something weird with my hardware (though I doubt it).

Thanks for the DVD help!

CrashingtehWarehouse wrote:

Yeah, unfortunately I think Ubuntu still has some issues. I put it into hibernation last night to see what that's all about, and this afternoon when I came back to it, it just would not want to boot back up.   Ended up having to do a hard shut down and restarting the box. But I suppose it could also be something weird with my hardware (though I doubt it).

Thanks for the DVD help!

Laptop?

Laptop and proper hibernation can be difficult on Linux.

Mine is an IBM Thinkpad T20 - not exactly a new model when FC6 released. Putting it to sleep did not work properly then. By the time FC6 reached EOL it did properly work, but in CentOS 5 - it doesn't (acts like it did under early FC6 kernels).

It will sleep, but when waking, the sleep light continues to flash, it can not establish a wireless connection (but it can establish wired), etc.

You may find that stuff often doesn't work with a vanilla install of Windows either - the laptop makers do their own thing, and install their own drivers to handle it. Unfortunately, they don't make their own drivers available for Linux.