Is It Just Me????

TommyD · #1 July 9th, 2003, 01:18 PM

I am running Redhat 9 I have installed the java plug-in along with RealPlayer. I have tried unsuccessfully to installthe flash plug-in and an mp3 player. I get errors when I try to open a wav sound file that Gnome sound recorder has crashed process 9204 So far forget about mpeg files and sound embeded in web pages. An example here Is there a solution?
Sorry for being so lame

twistedcranium · #2 July 9th, 2003, 01:53 PM

Ding Ding!!! *confetti falling from the sky, champagne and cake for everyone*.....you have asked the Million Dollar question.

I was waiting to see if someone stepped up and asked this question here at CTH. No, TommyD, you're not lame for asking this or having this issue as its not your fault.

RedHat, back at 8.0 has chosen NOT to ship its products with MP3 capability. This also was done for 9 as well. They cite growing issues over patent and licensing conflicts of the MP3 format.
http://www.redhat.com/advice/speaks_80mm.html

I can't say that I blame them as including these items in an open source OS probably could cause legal issues somewhere down the line for them.

So this puts the decision to use potentially 'unlicensed' or 'proprietary' formatted technologies for MP3 on the USERS of the OS.

Currently, its not illegal to use MP3 codecs and plugins for audio and video devices, in Windows or Linux, but RedHat sees trouble down the road and chose to protect themselves and by default their users. If the users go out on the internet and get the patches and plugins, its then their problem, *IF* the issues ever become a problem.

Considering these issues and CTH's Terms of Use, I won't be telling you HOW to bring back your MP3 support.......but I can tell you that if you read that link from RedHat above and look real hard....you'll get there.

Windows products get around by paying for licensing the MP3 technology or at least they should.

TommyD · #3 July 10th, 2003, 02:16 AM

Thanks for that response. How about the other player trouble when I click onto a wav file? Anyword anot web pages with embeded ,wav files?

twistedcranium · #4 July 10th, 2003, 02:50 AM

You're using Gnome with Netscape or Mozilla? or one of the other browsers Galeon or Nautilus?

If you log out, login with KDE as your desktop do you see the same behavior?

TommyD · #5 July 10th, 2003, 02:47 PM

It behaves the same way. Do you have any suggestions?

twistedcranium · #6 July 10th, 2003, 04:27 PM

Well, I'm not a big Gnome user, but I believe that you can edit file type associations the same way as in KDE.

In KDE, you browse to a file of interest in Konqueror (the file folder viewer thingy). Right mouse click on a *.wav file and click on PROPERTIES.

At the moment I'm not in front of a linux box, but inside the Properties edit form at the bottom you'll see a list of applications that can be used to open that type of file. The top most one is the one that the system uses by default to open that type of file, while the others in the list show up as possible choices to open it with when you right mouse click on the file type.

My suggestion at this point is to go into that panel, and if there are a few options available to open a wav file in, use the arrow buttons to move the application names up to the top one by one. Try the other options out and see if you get good results there. This will help us narrow down where the problem is, and it might allow you to use a program that you like better.