On Fri, Feb 21, 2003 at 09:32:34PM -0500, M. Kirchhoff wrote: > newbie like me to be able to get it working under Mozilla (I had a hard > enough time figuring out how to symbolically link the Java stuff to > Mozilla to get it working--mind you I had no idea what a symbolic link > was until doing this). And now that you do, at some point you'll wonder why Windows uses those retarded .lnk files that are basically shell scripts for explorer instead of implimenting *real* symlinks... > Another site I frequent uses streaming Windows Media. Am I totally out > of luck there? I know there's this Crossover package that will run WM, > but it's definitely non-free. I haven't run into needing RealPlayer > support yet, but I wonder if there's a free clone of that that works > under debian-mozilla. Not a plugin for it, but mplayer will play them. It's non-free and only in unofficial packages. Add this to your sources.list. If you run stable, take the unstable line out. deb http://marillat.free.fr stable main deb http://marillat.free.fr unstable main Then you'll want to get the mplayer-<arch> package appropriate to your CPU, w32codecs (which also includes the DivX ;-) codecs among others) and if you also want quicktime support, qt6codecs. When you get the prompt of how you want to handle the movie, open it in gmplayer. Your movie will play in a seperate window. > If I start plugging in all these non-free, non-stable packages into a > stable Debian build, then is it really a stable system anymore? Well, if you're using unstable, things will break. This is the active development branch and is not the tree to be following if you never want to encounter reliability issues. Non-free is strictly licensing issues. If a package's license does not comply with the Debian Free Software Guidelines, it goes in non-free (unless the license is truly attrocious, in which case it won't make an appearance in the Debian archives at all). If a package depends on any non-free packages but the package itself complies with the DFSG, then it goes into contrib. http://www.debian.org/social_contract.html > Yet it seems like I need to add a lot of these additional packages > just to function. I'm confused! Did you ever get by with a base install of Windows without installing any additional software? At least here you don't pay anything for the additional software. > Believe me, I'm really, really drawn to Debian and can tell already > after just a few weeks of use that I'm a user for life, but I wonder > if there's some way to achieve a stable balance. I can live just > fine with Gnome 1.4 and Mozilla 1.0, but the other stuff I mentioned > earlier is harder to do without. And with all the backports for > newer versions like Gnome 2.2 and such, I wonder: is there anyone > out there who truly runs a stable-Debian only system? Yes, but it's almost mutually exclusive to being on the bleeding edge of open source software. Debian has prided itself from the start on being the most rock-solid reliable and the largest 100% Free distribution (non-free isn't technically part of the distro since the licenses contained there frequently place limitations on reselling, and thus can't be included on CDs). > Well, consider this my introduction to the world of GNU/Linux and, > especially, Debian. Feels good to be here! Welcome to the brave GNU world. Enjoy your stay. -- .''`. Baloo <baloo@ursine.dyndns.org> : :' : proud Debian admin and user `. `'` `- Debian - when you have better things to do than to fix a system
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