Re: Shuttle PCs with Linux pre-installed available to buy

On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 09:39:49 +0000, jasee wrote:

You can buy openSUSE, and of course SLES, and their other commercial
offerings. The paid-up versions of SUSE do not include DVD decryption
software either, but everyone just installs it from Packman.

An extended search at

http://packman.links2linux.org/

for dvd decrypt or dvd play/player etc shows nothing useful AFAICT. No
doubt there's something there but it's not obvious to a Linux newbie
where. :-(

Ooops, yes you're right. libdvdcss is from the VideoLan repository. I
recall now that there is some legal thing in Germany which stops Packman
from hosting the code. I think there are still some issues about it
being seen as a "means of circumvention".


The site almost exclusively seems to deal with Suse

Not almost - it is exclusively a SUSE repository, and is best accessed
via one of the SuSE supported package managers (YaST, YUM, SMART or
apt). It is a relatively simple task to add repositories, but you are
right that it is not immediately obvious that you would need to.


Personally, I would install Videolan if it works as succesfully for Suse

It does, but I prefer xine for DVD. The packman version of xine uses
libdvdcss if it is available. (The SUSE one does not).


ISTR there is one authorised vendor with a licence to distribute linux
DVD decoding software, but they only sell to OEMs, and last time I
looked had not actually licenced it to anyone.

It does seem rather strange. Linux distros seem to make such efforts to
look like Mswindows with animated icons for instance and support for USB
and USB2 is greatly improved as is hardware detection 'out of the box'.
However

And there's the rub. They only intended to sell to hardware OEMs, not
distro vendors. So any hardware vendor who delivers pre-configured Linux
systems would be able to purchase a licence for resale, but assume there
are some prerequisites on predicted volume of sales.

Ahah, found it:
http://www.intervideo.com/jsp/Product_Profile.jsp?p=LinDVD

I would guess that this opportunity was received with a complete lack of
interest on the part of (predominantly windows) hardware vendors,
resulting in a lack of market pressure to make an "enhanced" version
available direct to the punters. The cynic in me suggests that this
outcome was actually intended.
--
David Haggett
Linux user since 01/01/2003
Email: david<at>haggett<dot>demon<dot>co<dot>uk
.

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