But GNU/Linux users, the intended target audience, are finding it difficult to view the same.

The videos apparently need to be viewed using version 8 of the proprietary Macromedia Flash player or above. Fact is there has never been a Flash 8 for GNU/Linux. After 7, Macromedia chose to release version 9 - on January 16, six months after it was released for Windows.

Hence few GNU/Linux users have version 9 on their systems. Those who have a player installed have version 7.

The videos are linked off both Builder AU and its sister publication ZDNet.

Those who have moved up from the x86 platform are in a more difficult bind. There is no way of playing Flash videos on 64-bit Linux apart from using a fork of the Firefox browser known as Swiftfox. But videos made in Flash 8 are a no-go.

A link to one video was posted to the tech website Slashdot late last night but users were understandably unimpressed. "How difficult is it to release a video about linux kernel development in a format that is easy to watch by people running linux? At least use flash 7... no need to blow their minds talking about ogg/theora," one obviously irritated poster wrote.

Theora is an open video codec; Ogg is a wrapper. Both are developed under the same licence as the Linux kernel. Another well-known open video codec is Vorbis. Other video formats such as MPEG4 and .wav can be viewed under GNU/Linux.