codec support

[R. Wood]

Allegedly, on Wed, Aug 02, 2006 at 04:22:14PM -0700, Corey Burger stated:
> On 8/2/06, Darryl Moore wrote:
> > Hi all, I was just on slashdot where part of the discussion
> > http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/02/1815256
> >
> > was on the fact that event Ubuntu comes with popular codecs
> > disabled, requiring extra work for the user to enable them. This is
> > a barrier for the very demographic that Ubuntu is targeting.
> >
> > https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats
> >
> > This is largely a response to US DMCA legislation. Since the rest of
> > the world (Australia excepted) does not have DMCA style legislation,
> > does anyone here have any interest in repackaging Ubuntu to include
> > those codecs by default.
> >
> > It could be a fun project which might highlight some software patent
> > and DMCA issues.
> >
> > http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=192928&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=nested&cid=15834909
> >
> >
> > cheers,
> > darryl
> 
> Those codecs are, in fact, already packaged by default. They are
> merely part of the multiverse repository. The only thing missing is
> w32codecs (which are legally grey due to copyright issues, as they are
> direct copies of the windows codecs) and decss (which the DVD assoc is
> quite sue happy over). The codecs which are packaged are in
> gstreamer0.10 plugins packages bad and ugly.
> 
> Corey

Someone has already mentioned 'easyubuntu' (not 'automatix' [going from
memory there] which apparently can cause problems).

Also I'm pretty sure that 'vlc' media player works right out of the box
unlike other media players.

Have Fun with GNU/Linux,
Raymond