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One of the most problematic new user challenges in Linux is the problem of codecs and DVD playback. These are major challenges, since they cannot be legally included with existing Linux distributinos without paying a per-user license fee.
That sort of thing is, obviously, not very fisable, but it is important to make it as easy as possible to have DVD playback and codecs for other media installed. Perhpas a separate commercial version that inludes these codecs would make sense, or perhaps the OS should just make it easy to purchase these codecs whenever you want.
The point is that being able to play media and DVDs is very important. One way or antoher, everything has to be lumped together, so that users can grap everything they need in 5 minutes with a relatively small amount of money.
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Linux mint already includes them, mandriva, and even mepis is now starting to include them right off the bat. If you’re using xine, you can get your codecs bundled in the xine ffmpeg package. After that if you can’t play dvd’s, you need libdvdcss. Libdvdcss is not a codec, it’s just a dvd decryptor.
It’s something similar gstreamer-codecs-ugly package, everything in there is bundled, and you just need libdvdcss to decrypt dvds. Getting codecs in linux is as easy as installing one codec package.
A lot of distros are pulling the “we’re including all of these wonderful codecs for you, fine to use if your in a different country, uninstall them if you live somewhere these are illegal…..if you want…you probably wont”. Which is good and all because this codec pay per user dealie is really stupid annoying.
The patent on mp3 runs out in 2015 and Flash should become more optional as html5 settles on a video standard(crosses fingers theora)… DVDcss and Blueray and whatever the hell comes after that, well that would take consumers actually standing up for themselves in mass probably not going to happen.
While I think giving people options and supporting media is good I would like to see the industry get some of the proprietary stuff out of the way.
Well alot of distros already ship that stuff, the one that comes to mind is Sabayon (DVDcss, MP3, Flash, Java etc)