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Our Blogs The BeerFiles Since when is Dell Gutsy Gibbon not Ubuntu?
Our Blogs The BeerFiles Since when is Dell Gutsy Gibbon not Ubuntu? | Since when is Dell Gutsy Gibbon not Ubuntu? |
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| by Stan Beer | |
| Thursday, 20 December 2007 | |
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Page 1 of 2 However, LinDVD is not free and therefore presents a philosophical problem for those who would not have the name of Ubuntu sullied through association with a proprietary software bundle. In a blog written by regular iTWire comments poster Limulus, titled "Dell: one step forward, two steps back", Limulus writes: "While its one thing if Dell wants to preload flashplugin-nonfree (which still is clearly NOT in the ‘spirit of Ubuntu‘), I am much more concerned by the fact that they’re using LinDVD to play a restricted format, as its not available in Ubuntu’s repositories (contrast with a case like MP3 support via gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3). The LinDVD page says “LinDVD, InterVideo’s Linux software DVD player, is currently available only to manufacturers for evaluation and integration.” Is this only legally available to Dell owners then? "It looks like Dell wants to create a DellOS distro based on Ubuntu with various of proprietary things in the mix (ala Linspire) to help sell their computers. There’s nothing stopping them from doing that, but is it really fair for Dell to be calling this “Ubuntu” though?" I fully understand where Limulus is coming from. However, having run into the problem of trying to install DVD playback on Ubuntu myself, I can also appreciate Dell's point of view. CONTINUED |
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