Linuxphile.org

Ubuntu has quickly become my desktop operating system of choice. I like the design, the ease of updates, and the community support behind it.

One area many Linux distributions generally fail to address is multimedia. This is not a criticism of any distribution. I understand the licensing restrictions and choices the various distributions have made. I also respect their decisions to include only open source software. Where Ubuntu differs a bit is in the idea of the Universe repository, although I have seen Fedora as well as SuSE do similar things. In the Universe repository you can find a plethora of additional software for your Ubuntu installation.

As mentioned above multimedia, specifically streaming media, has generally been a headache for end users. Installation of third party codecs and software and additional plugins for Firefox was not for the faint of heart. With Ubuntu this headache all but dissappears. It is as simple as enabling the Universe repository, and installing three additional packages, a tiny configuration file change and a restart of Firefox and I was able to stream media, including WMV files.

I did all of this in a matter of five minutes following the article on Ubuntu Forums located here.

To add the additional packages the following command can be used from a terminal window, or users can use the Add/Remove Software application found under the Applications Menu.
sudo apt-get install w32codecs totem-xine mozplugger

With the additional packages installed restart Firefox. In the address bar type in "about:config" and press enter/return. This will list the installed plugins. You should now see MozPlugger listed. If MozPlugger is present you can now test your streaming media capabilities. I used the following link to test various media support: http://yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxTutorialMimeTypesAndApplications.html

Cheers!