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Play MPEG Movies Under LinuxPPC 75

Posted by timothy from the thanks-to-linuxppc.org-and-loki dept.
Jason Haas writes: "We now have instructions for playing MPEG movies under LinuxPPC, and they're posted on our Web site on this page. Sam Lantinga of Loki Software wrote a number of the utilities we use (thanks!), along with one by Jan Hubicka. Happily, they're all in RPM format, which shouldn't be a problem for anyone to handle. We also have instructions for editing Netscape's setup to automagically play MPEGs when they're downloaded. It is most cool to see and hear your LinuxPPC box playing a movie." Maybe I can find a nice cheap green iMac to try this on.
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Play MPEG Movies Under LinuxPPC More

Play MPEG Movies Under LinuxPPC

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  • Jason Haas (Score:3)

    by Rayban ( 13436 ) on Saturday May 27, 2000 @02:25PM (#1042350) Homepage
    Glad to see Jason is back on his feet. :) After the status updates on his progress stopped, I started wondering what was happening. Welcome back, Jason! :)

  • Good (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It's great that they got this working. Now I won't have to switch back to MacOS to watch movies I download (I can sometimes do it using MOL [maconlinux.com], but not if the movie contains a sound track.) However I'm still waiting for Apple to get on the ball and release a QuickTime player for Linux.

    Fuck karma. Post anonymously.

  • xanim? (Score:4)

    by vectro ( 54263 ) <vectro@pipeline.com> on Saturday May 27, 2000 @02:31PM (#1042352)
    Why couldn't they use xanim? I realize some of the proprietary codecs only come in binary form but my understanding was that MPEG was unencumbered...
  • Finally - i hope this will put a little bit more effort into the development of a full good movieplayer for all kind of distributions. If there's one point where i still use windows, it's in fact for using the media player, which has to be one of the best things ever to come from microsoft :-) I've used MTV a bit, but it's not free (which media player infact is. :P) .. and that has kinda bothered me. What we now need, is a way to play mpeg4/divx and hopefully DVDs. As long as we're not going to get to play our DVDs under linux, we'll still have to boot windows. Currently my windowsbox is restarting about every 2 days, so naturally, this is not something i want to continue running - at least not when it freezes in the middle of playing a DVD (kinda boring when you're watching it together with a couple of good friends on a 3x2meter projector on the wall :-).
  • I've been using linuxppc for a long time now, and Xtheater has always worked perfectly fine for me.

    I'm not so sure the superfriends mpeg is a good test movie to see if the software is working, it's just skippy and jumpy by compression:)

  • /. (Score:2)

    by Jose ( 15075 )
    hmm thought I went to slashdot.org not freshmeat.net...
    its kinda funny how stories like this get posted, but useful ones get dropped..

    way to go Tim.

  • Re:the Ninjas Have Won! (Score:4)

    by Penrif ( 33473 ) on Saturday May 27, 2000 @02:45PM (#1042356) Homepage
    Two answers to your delema:

    #1: If you mean "Why would you run Linux instead of MacOS?" Well, a myriad of reasons actually. MacOS is rather nice in many respects, but programing on it ain't the best experience in the world. (Yes, I've done it.) Also, it plays very well with MacOS (as in can be put on any partition regardless of position and won't (read: won't unless you screw it up) ruin your HFS/HFS+ partitions, so there's no need to ditch MacOS.

    #2: If you mean "Why would you run Linux on PPC instead of Linux on Intel?" Well, besides the hardware being more expencive... Linux on PPC is the easiest install/maintain that *I've* ever done. I was shocked at how much of a pain in the arse it was to install on an x86 compared to the absolute breese on PPC. Some of this is starting to go away though, ie LILO cylender restriction gone by-by, so this might not be the case in another year or so. But anyway, that's a good reason.

    Yummy, pancakes.
  • I wonder if it can play that weird vcd format that
    is popular in some foregin countries.
  • Um, yea.

    Hint #1: Whenever you ask for help like that, at least say what kind of computer you have.

    Hint #2: Whenever you say something didn't work for you, say why. If you don't know why, either speculate or explain what happened.

    Hint #3: When you ask for help, don't post anonymously. It prevents people like me from getting in touch with you personally, instead of throwing something out in a public forum.

  • Re:xanim? (Score:3)

    by adamk ( 67660 ) on Saturday May 27, 2000 @02:51PM (#1042359)

    I don't know about playing xanim on linuxPPC, but on my 500 mhz, AMD K6-2, with 128 megs of RAM, mpeg playback under xanim is really crappy. smpeg is *much* better.

    Adam
  • Not really a new solution...

    But anyway, I've found mtv to be a very good player. Install mtv and it comes with another program called mtvp that doesn't have the timeout (or the gui) of mtv.

    Full screen mode is very good and all of that.

    ~Chris

  • Happily RPM?!? (Score:3)

    by hemanman ( 35302 ) on Saturday May 27, 2000 @02:54PM (#1042361)
    Happily, they're all in RPM format

    I for one, can't understand this favoring of a distro's packetmanager instead of just plain old .tar.gz source code.

    Even if it needs to be a binary package, then USE THE STANDARD TOOLS(tar + gzip) so people that don't want to infest their system have a chance.

    -H
  • the way freshmeat (and other software sites) are set up, they're often better as places to nab software from when you already know what you're looking for (netscape 4.7375a) than as a place for interesting news about platforms you don't run yourself.

    And when you say "stories like this get posted, but useful ones get dropped" ... which useful ones are you thinking about? I've heard lots of people complain about the disparity in available apps under Linux running on PPC (and Alpha) hardware vs. Linux on Intel. Could be useful to them.

    timothy
  • Well, it's not just _a_ distro anymore. It's Red hat, Mandrake, SuSE, and many, many others.

  • ...try Tripping the Rift [trippingtherift.com]. It's MPEG format.

    (Warning: it's for mature audiences, analogous to an R-rated movie. And it's five minutes long. You may break out in uncontrollable laughter.)

    -- Sunlighter

  • Still, you don't have to like it. I once tried to download it, just around when it was released from Redhat, but somehow the FTP site didn't allow overseas(Europe) people in.

    I wrote an email to Redhat complaining about this, never got an answer, and I even kept trying to download it for a few weeks.

    So, why should I bother with a packagemanager that dosen't work the right way, that I couldn't download, and thoose who made it didn't even care to reply on my mail(It was even polite)?

    -H

  • Re:xanim? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Because xanim does not do mpeg decoding very well. Earlier versions used to convert the whole mpeg into xanim's own format before even playing - at least now, it does it peicewise. But it still sucks for mpeg.

  • decent free mpeg player? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I read from the smpeg page that a pentium II system is required for playback with sound. Does there exist a decent mpeg player for linux that works on older machines (a pentium)? There's mtv, but it isn't free (i know, i know, the command line version is, but there're no playback controls).
  • One of the libraries listed there is aalib - isn't that the one that renders stuff in ASCII Art? Can you actually render an MPEG movie in ASCII Art in real time?

  • still... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    it's going to take quite a bit to keep me from going back to apple when mac os x comes out. linuxppc is quite fun, despite the overall slant to lintel, there is some realy great stuff out there. but can this compete with mac os x? something which is reported to have a gui at least a step ahead of anything around right now, coupled with a complete cli. (now) normal mac apps, running with awesome mac os x native apps, and anything i get off of freshmeat that i wish to compile? the best, the better, and the open! linuxppc better be able to offer at least dvd, and quicktime by 2001 to compete. the only thing that could posibly stop me now is not being able to replace aqua with something that does not make my screen look like a sticky mess.
  • Linux, always on the cutting edge of technology, is now supporting a movie a new format called "MPEG". This latest advance, promises Linux advocates will continue to widen the gap between other competing operating systems, which have a far smaller portion of the OS market.

    "With this new addition to LinuxPPC, I expect Apple to abandon any further development on any OSes they may be researching. Clearly, the ability to play MPEG movies is something else nobody can boast." said Sam Lantinga, who wrote some utilities used for this technological leap. "Luckily for our competitiors, nobody is using such new technology... it should be ages before anyone can harness this new power," Lantinga contiuned.

    In the Intel market, Linux also continues to dominate, due to its ease of installation, consistent interface and clear documentation.
  • You can render an entire screen in full frame rates with full color with ascii. If you have a Mac, try out AsciiMac, which was created for MacHack.

    It's especially entertaining if you have a TV card; you can watch TV in ascii!

  • Re:Happily RPM?!? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well, first off, why weren't you using a mirror. :-). All the sunsites in Europe (eg. sunsite.org.uk [sunsite.org.uk] or sunsite.auc.dk [sunsite.auc.dk])mirror all of RedHat's stuff...

    Also, RPM is just an ar (cpio) archive of a few .tar.gz or (new versions) .tar.bz2 files, with some junk (configuration data that's presumably irrelevant to you) before the beginning of the ar archive.

    ar and tar have been part of unix since time immemorial, so it's not like RPMs are are mysterious new format, or anything - the junk at the beginning is also fully documented, but does very little in RPM 3.0 other than say "this is an RPM, not an ordinary ar file".

    Find rpm2cpio [rpmdp.org] (it's in the RPM source distribution) and it will convert the rpm to cpio. Or get alien [linuxburg.net], and use it. It's not hard.

    (For more details: man ar, man tar, man cpio)
  • Why is this "news" for slashdot? I have had this setup on my Linux box (PMac) for months now since there was a decent port of AA.
    Is Slashdot now going to start posting every Linux newbie-config page that gets submitted? Of course not. This is News for Nerds! Timothy should re-check his audience.

  • huh? (Score:1)

    by nester ( 14407 )
    i've playing mpegs for years on ppc linux. this isn't news.
  • MPEGs...how 1995!

    For a more broadly useful video format, Apple will have to port QuickTime to Linux. For a company that used to officially support MkLinux, you'd think they'd get off of their collective ass and at least release binaries. Hell, you can even stream Quicktime [streamingserver.org] from Linux, but you can't watch it.

    There used to be, as of a few months ago, a petition up at neutron.resnet.gatech.edu/qt-petit ion.html [gatech.edu], but that appears to have gone away. (As has the server.) Maybe the guy graduated and took his server with him.

    I'm told that xanim plays Quicktime, but I've never tried it. Still, I'd like to have a plug-in, and something that supports that full functionality of Quicktime. I wish Apple would do something about it.

    -Waldo

  • Re:hmm... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    #1 Commodore 64

    #2 Must be a defective cd the 1541 Won't read it

    #3 I can't install email on the 64 so how can I get an account on /.

  • umm... no

    I am a happy used of debian/powerpc and there is a slackware/powerpc too I think
  • no, loki wrote it and it's open source (BSD or BSD-like license I think)? I think there is a page on the sdl somewhere at http://www.lokigames.com/development

    no exact url handy, but smpeg is deginitely open, hopefully you can find it. It works nicely (WAY better than xanim). If you want a nice frontend, I have a debian package called gtv-smpeg that uses it and wraps a small, but nice, gtk interface around it.

  • Re:Another solution (Score:3)

    by adraken ( 8869 ) on Saturday May 27, 2000 @04:14PM (#1042379)
    this is a x86-only binary solution, since LinuxPPC isn't for x86, you can't run mtv or mtvp on LinuxPPC

  • Re:Why not QuickTime? (Score:4)

    by puetzk ( 98046 ) on Saturday May 27, 2000 @04:15PM (#1042380) Homepage
    xanim can already play quicktime's file and stream format, and most of the codecs through cinepak. Unfortunately, almost all quicktime content on the net now uses the sorenson codec, which is patent-encumbered and so can't legally be implemented.
  • not sure why it's news though. I apt-got it from debian/powerpc (where it got built by the standard debian autobuilder) almost a month ago on my Powermac G3, it runs very much more nicely than xanim. I guess someone finally did rpm --rebuild on it...
  • (Jason being the person who submitted the story)

    Interesting that Jason is back at the keyboard after his very bad car crash. I'm wondering how that experience has affected him....
  • I use MTV on my Linux i386. Only the GUI based app is time limited, the command line based app is free. for example u could use mtvp or mtvp vcd: for vcds. With plugger myv works fine. P.S I registered and received the reg key so I can use forward, rewind etc etc. But since the only VCDs we can purchase are porn ones .. I doint think I should have bothered :)

  • Re:Jason Haas - sorta OT (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I guess they noticed someone (moi) uploaded the RPM to their incoming FTP directory several weeks ago. Maybe it's just a coincidence :-)
    Glad to have you back, Jason.
  • Why was this moderated offtopic? We should be glad that Jason is back on his feet after that car accident
  • ohhh yeah, RPM is such an evil standard released under that horribly restrictive and propiotary GPL.
  • I don't know why someone moderated that down. If you don't know, Jason Haas (the one who submitted the story) was involved in a car wreck. The fact that he's made a full recovery *does indeed* constitute a valid comment.

    Try reading before blindly moderating something down as "offtopic". Especially considering a post placed afterward on the same topic is sitting at +3.
  • I see that some moderators have deemed this post to be off-topic. Perhaps, they are correct. However, to me at least, having Jason Haas post a story is more important than having MPEG on LinuxPPC. Do you clueless moderators have any idea about what Jason has gone through? He was almost recently killed by some drunk driver.

    Off-topic my ass! Jason has been the marketing voice of LinuxPPC. He also been a good poster on the LinuxPPC user group discussion list (I read the archive list). About a month ago, Jason posted an update (I'm back!) on this list, but AFAIK hasn't posted since then. Just seeing his name here is great news. Rayban stated that he thought that it was great that Jason is back, and I concur.

    Moderation started because some assholes trolled on a story about when Stevens, the author of many great books on IPC and UNIX, passed away. While many of the comments on Stevens were obvious trolls, others were based on quasi-antilinux sentiment. Compters and Linux are not life and death. F*ck me, but, I'm starting to believe and *agree* with the trolls about moderation.

    You moderators that are clueless about life give an interesting slant on news for nerds and life that does not matter. For you others, bump up Rayban's (#2 post) comment. F*ck mine. I have karma whore points, and I'll post at default 2.

    Did I say that this pisses me off. Anyway, good luck Haas and your wife Cassie.

  • i apologize, i must have overlooked it. that was pretty stupid of me.
  • ...they're often better as places to nab software from when you already know what you're looking for...
    For me at least, I like to hit freshmeat everyday, and see what apps are being started, or being worked on...a lot of times I'll run into things I wasn't looking for, but would be really useful.
    besides, if a LinuxPPC user wants to play an MPEG file, they will most likely hit freshmeat, not /. [1]

    which useful ones are you thinking about?
    OK, that was a guess on my part...but the thing is that we don't get to see what stories you drop. It would be really nice if there was a "back page" on slashdot..where we could see the stories you drop...not all of them, just the ones that you thought about for second before killing it. We don't have to be able to comment on the stories, just have a link to them. Maybe you guys could create a subset of moderators that would be able to moderate the backpage...and if a story gets moderated up to like 10 or something (a high number) then it gets resubmitted for your approval to get put on the front page.
    You guys would still totally control what goes on the front page...and the backpage, but we get to see more of what other slashdotters are interested in. There isn't much room for abuse, since you guys still get to say what goes up on the pages. (loads of people will now complain about why StoryX got onto the backpage, and not the front page, but people will always complain)
    Just an idea.

    [1] Granted, alot of current users may have already decided that they cannot play MPEG files, and are not looking...
  • We can safely assume that Apple will release Quicktime for OSX.
    At this point won't we be much closer to getting a Linux version?
    Or am I reading too much into this?
  • I concur!

    The "real" news here is that Jason is back among the active participants of this arena. How 'bout an update on your condition, Jason?

  • I never said it was restrictive, and my point is that it's NOT a standard. I'm starting to hear new users everyday now talk as if RPM were the official GNU/Linux package format. I think that RPM is a poor replacement for straight tarballs, and I don't like how quickly they've infested almost every corner of GNU/Linux development.

    I'm NOT dissing the GPL. Where the hell did you get that from? I'm anti-RH, so I must be anti-GPL? Please.

    On a kinder note, I must compliment the moderator who knocked me down. I said it was flamebait, and it was, and I was rated so. Good job. Most of the mods label flamebait was "offtopic", trolls as "flamebait", and offtopic posts as "trolls". Keep up the good work!

    (Moderators: This post is not flamebait, but it is offtopic. That sounds like a fair moderation to me.)

    ---------///----------
    This post is not redundant, please don't moderate it as such. I repeat, this post is not redundant.

  • Um..yay? We Windows users have enjoyed the ability to play mpeg movies for quite a while now. Playing an mpeg is hardly an amazing feat of technology. Why not post an article on Windows Media Player and the many formats it supports?
  • I wonder if it can play that weird vcd format that is popular in some foregin countries.
    Foreign? C'mon. This is the Internet! The only people foreign nowadays are those who have problems spelling English.


    Rene - from some small European country-

  • Re:Why not QuickTime? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    xanim can already play quicktime's file and stream format, and most of the codecs through cinepak. Unfortunately almost all quicktime content on the net now uses the sorenson codec, which is patent-encumbered and so can't legally be implemented.

    So the Linux community doesn't want QuickTime for QT, they want it because it has the best codec. Why doesn't the community spend more effort on making a kick ass OSS quicktime codec?

    It's like Apple gave the community a car with no engine, and the community decides they'd rather build a vehicle from the ground up.

    Pride over convenience?

  • what i don't understand is that apple doesn't work more on quickTime for java and develop code that is portable. apple supports windows but not linux. why Windows and not linux?
  • Seems like that only looks like a troll if you don't know what RPMs are.

  • Stallman: 'programmers tend to favor polyamorous or non-monogamous relationships'

    Umm, men period tend to favor polyamorous or non-monogamous relationships. The fact that programmers are overwhelmingly male skews his viewpoint -- the majority of female programmers that I know don't jibe with his statement.

    Well, it's been nice knowin' y'all, even the ones who've flamed me, but after contemplating Richard Stallman having sex, I think I'm going to go kill myself now.

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • You're telling me that Mandrake and SuSE both package the same libraries with their releases as Red Hat?

    Dependency traps get bad enough using Red Hat alone - it has to get worse if you try to mix Red Hat with SuSE and Mandrake.
  • When those two distributions and their derivatives drop tgz and deb formats for rpm, only then will I consider rpm "standard".

    Why doesn't Red Hat at least *fix* the problems with RPM, and upgrade the technology to be at least competitive with Debian? I should hope that Red Hat hasn't already fallen into the pit of compatbility that killed Microsoft's quality.
  • at least not in mac os X. console apps probably, but anything with X needs an X server. apple, for some reason that still escapes me, decided not to base thier GUI on X so the vast majority of whats on freshmeat (including gtk, and thus gimp) will not just compile. if an X server and an X development environment come out for os X then we can talk.


    youll also have to get a three button mouse and get it to work (which may be simple, i dont know) apple better do something about this for the maya port. even the NT version requires 3 mouse buttons.

  • As Linux becomes more accepted, Red Hat will have to learn that old school UNIX vendors aren't going to put up with that shit. I love GNU/Linux, but it can't yet do as much as you think. There are very good reasons why you don't see SunOS and AIX users running to Linux in throngs.

    Er... AIX uses backup/restore archives for its' packages which can be bodged into the system manually, but should be installed using smit.

    Solaris uses .pkg files, which again, should be installed using pkgadd.

    Can someone please explain why RPM is so evil? Why is is so unreasonable to ask people to use rpm2cpio when I'm quite prepared to take time building RPMs for myself when only tar.gz files exist?

  • hmph... i don't think you are looking hard enough. I sometimes bang my head against the desk because of the shear volume of poor English grammer on the internet. And, I mean, from native English speakers. Anyone who has spent any time on IRC will be familiar with stuff like

    There not here. Will ne1 pc me?

    *shudder*
    -legolas

    i've looked at love from both sides now. from win and lose, and still somehow...

  • Lokisoft has had RPMS of smpeg for linux/ppc for ages. ftp://ftp.linux.tucows.com/pub/Loki/open-source/sm peg/
  • Oh yeah, really ? Where can i download Windows Media player (tm) for PowerPC ?
    --
  • You get Windows Media Player 6.3b for PowerPC right here! [microsoft.com]
    Granted, it only runs under MacOS, and even then in typical MicroShaft fashion, only plays streaming media. ie If you want to play an MS-encoded AVI that you downloaded elsewhere, it won't work.

    Pope

    Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
  • This is WAAAY off topic, however I happen to agree.
    The proliferation of the RPM format is rather disgusting. Not everybody runs redhat, and there are those of us that treasure the cleanlyness of our filesystems. If developers want to release RPM, that is just fine, but whatever happened to good old tar.gz ?
  • For a company that used to officially support MkLinux, you'd think they'd get off of their collective ass and at least release binaries

    Um, Apple's position on this is very clear and simple: "Where's the revenue model?"

    If you want to watch QT on Linux, you have three options:

    1. Come up with a revenue model that is defensible to Apple shareholders. I can guarantee direct delivery to Frank Casanova if you DO ... but you won't, because I can't, and neither can a whole lot of other people much smarter than you.

    2. Have Red Hat or somebody license QuickTime. You may have noticed in the news that Kodak did last week. Apple will license QT to anyone who ponies up a reasonable amount of cash, and "reasonable" is probably "not too bloody much" in the context of a new player platform I'd be pretty confident.

    3. The QuickTime file format is publicly documented. Download it at

    http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/quicktime/qtde vdocs/PDF/QTFileFormat.pdf [apple.com]

    and put your sorry whining ass to work.
  • Um, Apple's position on this is very clear and simple: "Where's the revenue model?"

    Where was the revenue model when giving away BSD? Apple feels free to profit on open-source. They should be giving something back. Quicktime seems like a no-brainer.

    Apple has shown that they're not so good at developing technolgies that have much market penetration. Quicktime is an exception, and they should have enough sense to take that for all it's worth. The revenue stream comes from Quicktime as a whole. If they were looking at straight revenue, they would have skipped making Quicktime for the Mac and just released it for Windows. When developing a standard, it's best for it to be just that: a standard.

    BTW, my "sorry whining ass" works on plenty. I don't feel that it's inappropriate to point out work that should be done when I can't actually do it myself.

    -Waldo
  • that's fine, 'cuz QT player does AVIs.

    Ramble on!
    mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
  • Where was the revenue model when giving away BSD?

    You mean Darwin? Because that plus Darwin Streaming Server equals a dedicated media server, which would be made platform independent without a large direct investment. As you noted yourself, that is indeed coming along nicely on both ends. The regular Open Source quality/contribution benefits also make a pretty good tradeoff for CoreOS code, given that the source is pretty much open already and the parts that weren't (the driver model, mainly) it is to Apple's benefit to have other people adopt in any case. Which they would do, if they were smart, since the Darwin driver model beats everybody else's all to hell.

    Apple feels free to profit on open-source. They should be giving something back.

    Uh-huh. And if you think the board or the shareholders would tolerate the presence in the company of anyone who thought that was a justification for open sourcing QuickTime, you have some serious dealing with reality issues, my friend.

    If they were looking at straight revenue, they would have skipped making Quicktime for the Mac and just released it for Windows.

    You seriously misunderstand QuickTime's value to Apple, which is as a technology used for media *creation* and as such is a significant driver of hardware sales. Client distribution is of comparative unimportance, as that contributes to hardware sales in fairly indirect fashion. Client distribution on a vanishingly tiny consumer installed base fringe OS like Linux is of an importance indistinguishable from zero.

    If you manage to get large swathes of the video creation industry to demand Linux versions of After Effects et al. and/or large swathes of the grandma consumer market to demand QuickTime Player on their Linux desktops ... then that will change. I shall not hold my breath.

    I don't feel that it's inappropriate to point out work that should be done when I can't actually do it myself.

    No ... but it is inappropriate to whine "I wish Apple would do something about it" without apparently making the slightest effort to grasp why Apple does not perceive a net corporate benefit from allocating resources in such a fashion. If your sole argument is "they should be giving something back" then we don't really need to hear any more from you. If you have something to say that would be justifiable to the shareholders, please share.
  • So it's normal to get Dependency errors while trying to install rpms on a non-RH system?
    *** SIGNATURE WANTED. BIG REWARD. It's name is "Bubba"
  • Well, sure.

    rpms compiled on a Red Hat system will depend on Red Hat-installed libraries, and configuration.

    Every difference between Red Hat, and the other distributions, makes it harder to use rpms across distributions.

  • Re:Good (Score:1)

    by Rei ( 128717 )
    This is fairly old news; I've been using this for a while. Unfortunatly, it uses SDL which doesn't work on my laptop's farky sound config (I have a maestro sound card which isn't supported, and only partially OSS complaint; I have to boot into windows, start the driver which initializes the card, then have in my autoexec, loadlin; it then partially works in linux (says its 16 bit, but really only limited 8 bit)). So I don't get the pretty music to my nadesico opener, for example.

    Whoever is working on xanim, please, for the love of YHVH, *make it work properly*. I have exactly two movies out of my entire collection which work right with xanim. Thats it. I have 2 avis which work without sound (which is a shame, since they're anime music vids). Thats pretty much it...

    - Rei

  • Hooray for LinuxPPC and all, but they aren't the only source for these tools on PowerPC -- Debian has 'em, too, and has for some time.

    I looked at the LinuxPPC page, read the descriptions of the RPMs, then did apt-cache search SDL, which told me

    smpeg-plaympeg - SMPEG command line MPEG audio/video player
    libsdl1.0 - Simple DirectMedia Layer
    smpeg-gtv - SMPEG GTK+ MPEG audio/video player
    libsdl1.0-dev - Development files for Simple DirectMedia Layer
    libsmpeg-dev - SDL MPEG Player Library - development files
    frad - Frame Relay Tools for DLCI/SDLA Drivers in 2.0/2.1 kernels.
    libsmpeg0 - SDL MPEG Player Library - shared libraries

    Then I did

    apt-get install smpeg-plaympeg libsdl1.0 smpeg-gtv libsmpeg0

    and my system happily installed these and two additional packages (libggi2 and libgii0), and I was in business.

    It's not like the Debian people scrambled to catch up, either. I'm using potato (frozen), which hasn't updated packages for PPC for several days.

    Linux != x86 Linux; LinuxPPC != PPC Linux.

  • don't look a gift-horse in the mouth; use rpmunpack (find it on metalab or something) to get the cpio.gz out of the RPM. (RPM is just a cpio.gz with some headers, so rpmunpack just copies starting at a certain offset. It's a tiny program, and will compile on anything, since it just uses stdio, IIRC. I know I've used it to check out RPMs on a SPARC Solaris machine.)

    Or, if you want a program that handles all the major Linux package formats _well_, then get alien. It does deb, rpm, slp, and (of course) tgz. You can also just tell it to unpack.

    Most programs will work on other distros, even if they were packaged with RPM. I use Debian myself, but there are a lot of people that have an easier time dealing with an RPM than with anything else, so I accept the fact that people distribute stuff in RPMs. Just be glad that RPM is a well-defined standard, and that there are several Free programs to deal with them. Sounds pretty good to me!
    #define X(x,y) x##y
  • If your sole argument is "they should be giving something back" then we don't really need to hear any more from you. If you have something to say that would be justifiable to the shareholders, please share.

    Sure, that's easy. It's only a matter of time 'til Microsoft comes up with a competing video format (or somebody else) that proves to be a threat to Apple. The stronger a hold that they have in the market, the better that they are. Permitting more platforms to both create and view their format will result in a better market hold, and therefore make them less vulnerable to such attacks.

    Seems pretty straightforward to me.

    -Waldo
  • Yes, AIX and Solaris have their own distribution formats. However, AIX comes from IBM and only IBM, and Solaris comes from Sun and only Sun. Linux as a complete OS (technically, Linux is the kernel) comes from a dozen different sources.

    The original Linux distributions, eons ago, were based on tar + gzip. Then the Redhat boys came along and decided tar just wasn't good enough -- it doesn't handle non-files very well nor does it carry any type of specs in the archive. They designed a package system centered on cpio which will archive almost anything with a custom header containing a variety of specifications. All of the distributions that followed adopted the Redhat paradigm of "packages" -- most of them just using the verbatium rpm.

    Don't get me wrong; a package format is a good thing. Something other than tar is always a good thing :-) However, LINUX is a KERNEL; Redhat/SuSE/Debian/etc. are OPERATING SYSTEMS. There isn't an agreed upon standard for what makes a Linux OS, filesystem layout, or package. Every distribution will include its own administrative overhead, its own filesystem architecture, and its own package management structure.

    Not to sound like Evil from Time Bandits, but... If I were designing a distribution, I'd start with package management; 8 o'clock, day one. Personally, I like the solaris methodology... a package needs to have the ability to install components onto root and others to where ever the user wants. It also has to have the ability to be patched without completely reinstalling the selected package. It also has to have the ability to detect changes from the package base so as to prevent destruction of customizations, etc. [and so forth...]
  • So the Linux community doesn't want QuickTime for QT, they want it because it has the best codec. Why doesn't the community spend more effort on making a kick ass OSS quicktime codec?

    The Linux community wants QuickTime to be able to play quicktime movies that get to them.

    It's like Apple gave the community a car with no engine, and the community decides they'd rather build a vehicle from the ground up.

    No, it's more like the Apple gave the community complete car [1], but which can only run on roads [2] built by Apple. Which is fine; only Apple prohibits the community to use that Apple-built roads.

    So the value of "gift" is very, very low (I'd say null, but it has same educational value I guess). By supporting it, community would only show that it is happy when being treated like that. Since it is not, it does not want to use something that is useless to them.

    [1] being QuickTime player
    [2] being the codec in question

  • Thanks! (Score:2)

    by haaz ( 3346 )
    Let me tell you, it is much better being back at home than at the hospital. :) Having a beautiful wife helps, too. (Add her super-literacy and other undiscussable things, and.. yeah!)

    I can now use a computer for at least two hours, and that's only with one good eye! Who knows what I'll be up to when they give me a new lens for my left eye. ;)

    BTW, FYI, there are progress updates on the www.linuxppc.com web page. :>

    Take care,
  • Properly-built RPMs should be relocatable (--installroot) providing there aren't static paths in the source (not really RPM's problem, IMHO).

    Patching of RPMs could be done by rpm -ivh --force installing an RPM that only replaces one or two files. --verify will fail for the old package on the files that were replaced, but that's expected.

    RPM does preserve files tagged as %config in the .spec file. If an RPM you use doesn't preserve the config, submit a bug report to the packager.

    The only thing I wish RPM did do (and it could be made to do it using postinstall scripts) would be to merge your changes to the config relative to the old config into the new config file. But I realise that there's a big can of worms to be opened just down that road...

  • Badly-built RPMs will incorrectly modify permissions, just like badly-build .tgz archives will. But you check .tgz archives before you install them, right? So why didn't you rpm --qlvv the i386.rpm before you installed it? And did you submit a bug report to the packager? Was the package even intended for your distribution? If it wasn't, it may not work anyway if the shared libraries are of differing versions.

    RPM has a great number of advantages over the package management Slackware (used to) do (I used Slackware back in 2.2.0 days and moved to Red Hat because I saw the advantages RPM offered). Can you find out which package 'owns' a given file? Can you determine which files in a package have changed since installation? Can you determine which packages might break when you upgrade a given shared library? Can you easily rebuild a new version of the package in exactly the same way Pat Volkerding did using the same compile-time options? Certainly none of these were possible in the Slackware 2.2.0 days...

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