I just tried installing the Xubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex version and it looks like things are improving – many of the problems I had with earlier install attempts that I had documented on this site have been solved. The standard iso GUI install booted up and worked OK, although I had to manually setup the partitioning to get past an error about mounting the swap partition. Other than that the install takes a little time (likely about a couple hours) on the old Panasonic Toughbook CF-28. I went to the CBC radio site and tried playing one of the “Listen Live” links and it automatically realized it needed some extra codecs and started the process the download them which took another 1/2 hour or so – after it finally got all the codecs and plugins required the CBC radio stream started playing. The codecs it downloaded are the freely available ones but also the ones that are questionable from a legal perspective in certain countries due to the patent issues – there is a different solution if you want to go the legal route – more on that below.
Ubuntu lets you download the free codecs and plugins but a message comes up saying you can buy them from the Ubuntu store as well if you are in a country that is restricted by the software patents that are the root of this codec issue mess. If you want to go the legal route, Ubuntu has teamed up with a company called Fluendo that has licensed and packaged all the codecs required – they seem to want enough money for them – if you had to pay for these plus the Power DVD decoder from another company called Cyberlink you would be paying about $90.00 US which is approaching the cost of Windows. If these upgrades were more reasonably priced people might go for it, but at those costs, I don’t expect they will catch on in a big way – this is not so much the fault of either of one of these companies that are packaging these things, but it might be time for the patent holders they are licensing these from to be a little more reasonable to make the costs more affordable. This whole software patent thing just does not make sense in today’s global world where software can be downloaded so easily from anywhere and with different rules for different countries it just makes it confusing for the average user who just wants things to work. It also doesn’t fit well with open source software and updates for everything else being so easily available from the standard package managers in Linux distributions – if open source operating system use increases and enough of the public demand more reasonable solutions perhaps the pressure will be there to change things or the way the content is delivered on the Internet will change to get around these issues – either way the old methodology of using software licensing and software patents and making money from such things is likely to decline.
