Canonical Provides A Solution to A Frequent Misconception
For a number of reasons, Linux is significantly different from other operating systems. One of the ways in which it differs is that it is free. This makes including licensed media codecs very difficult, leading to reviewer complaints such as this one which appeared a while ago in the Wall Street Journal:
When I tried to play common audio and video files, such as MP3 songs, I was told I had to first download special files called codecs that are built into Windows and Mac computers. I was warned that some of these codecs might be “bad” or “ugly.”
For anyone not aware of the issues here, some media files such as MP3s use proprietary formats that you must pay to decode or play. When you buy Mac OS X or Windows, part of what you pay goes to pay that price, but you don’t pay anything for most Linux distributions. These codecs have been (potentially illegally) downloadable and legally purchasable for some time, but now Practical Technology is reporting that Canonical is making it easy for Ubuntu users to get them.
The main advantage of this is that reviewers and new users will be able to go directly to Canonical and purchase media playback software. Buying software like this is a model that customers are familiar with, so it should not seem strange. Of course, they may still not understand the real reasons why media playback support cannot be included for free, but at least they will know it is possible to make it work.
Not everything is right, though. My biggest concern is the price. If you buy both the codec pack and the DVD playback software, the price comes out to almost $90! $90 is just too high. This may not be something that Canonical has much control over, but who ever does have control should seriously consider the price. In the meantime, I hope that more hardware sellers start bundling these codecs in with Ubuntu on their PCs.
This move is certainly going in the right direction and may help to clear up a lot of users’ confusion, but it is far from perfect. If the whole pack was closer to $50 I would be a lot more enthusiastic about it.
September 23rd, 2008 at 6:40 am
If you buy the Fluendo codecs pack from Canonical, it’s actually a little cheaper than if you buy it from Fluendo! But yes, $USD90 is too expensive for this – where I live, it’s almost the same price as Vista Home Basic OEM.
September 29th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
$90 for Linux DVD playback ? Libdvdcss is Free software – freely and easily available with many distributions. I find it quite it quite amazing that anyone who can read would ever consider paying $90 for that basic functionality.
October 6th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Jean-Marc… you either are not aware of the laws of software-restrictive countries or you have no regard for it.
If the former then you should know that in countries like U.S.A. there are laws in place preventing the legal use of libdvdcss. I honestly didn’t know myself until becoming a true Linux user.
If your case is the latter… then you’re an incredibly narrow minded individual. Not everyone holds the same disregard for Law as you.
March 2nd, 2009 at 5:22 pm
As an Ubuntu user this news came on very suddenly and without warning. As a regular visitor to their forum, there was no mention on this by their moderators, or any of the longtime users there. I don’t mind paying for the codecs, but at least they could of gave us a little warning first.
Speaking of cracking down there was this program called Automatrix, I just found out today that it no longer exists. I can only assume it had been shut down by the feds.
March 2nd, 2009 at 10:07 pm
Fred Rogers – Actually, as far as I know, you can still get the only-legal-in-some-countries codecs just as easily as you could before. Automatix was discontinued by the development team, since many people were critical of the way it handled software installation.