[MPlayer-users] Distribution Poll (was Re: Want Less Attitude?)

[Robert A Munro]

On Fri, 2002-06-14 at 03:55, Dominik Mierzejewski wrote:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> On Friday, 14 June 2002, Rob Wallace wrote:
> [snip]
> > The best way to lower the number of newbie questions is to provide more
> > binary packages. That requires volunteers who can tell their ass from a
> > hole in the ground - oops there I go with the attitude.
> 
> Good idea. Although I've had reports of my RedHat RPMs working on Mandrake,
> but it would be better to have MDK-specific packages (i.e. compiled with
> whatever good gcc is available for MDK, with specific dependencies).
> Any volunteers? Maybe some other RPM-based distros? Adapting my spec won't
> be much trouble and if there's enough demand, we could create a meta specfile
> that generates specfiles for different distros.
> 
> This might be a good idea to do a poll on what distros are most popular
> among users (and developers).
> 

In response, some data-points and opinions from a casual MPlayer user:

* Netscape 6.2.2/3 worked with MPlayer 0.90 using Helper mime-type items
but Mozilla 0.9.9 broke with that, and Mozilla 1.0 defaults to use Xine,
while depending on some 0.9.9 function for some things.  !@#$%^ Mozilla!

* Version-specific RPMs for RedHat and Mandrake would be helpful.  There
are differences between Mandrake 8.1 and 8.2, for example (like, my SCSI
adapter is no longer supported by Mandrake 8.2 -- I'm using RedHat now).

* Support for SUSE distros will likely cover a few others, since they'll
likely drive the United Linux LSB standards conformance for some others.

* Source-based support for Debian might also cover Sorcery, Gentoo, etc.

* A Query tool that parses "iname" output and recommends or triggers the
appropriate install for MPlayer would be very helpful for us dumb users.

Just some thoughts (which I'm not evolved or engaged enough to realize).

All the best,
Robert