Ubuntu and DVD playback - an issue with codecs?

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 20 November 2007 05:26

Opinion and Analysis

As my colleague Sam Varghese has written , after nearly two weeks of flawless operation, my first Ubuntu Linux installation unexpectedly became unstable, crashed and was unable to be booted. Puzzled that an OS with the reputed stability of Ubuntu could behave like this, I searched forums and user groups for an explanation. What I found led me to believe that an open source package manager called Automatix that I installed was the cause. As a result, I am going to try an experiment: same computer, two disks, two clean installs, two operating systems - Vista and Ubuntu. But is there an issue with Linux and video codecs?

Today I will pick up my formerly partitioned Ubuntu and Windows Home Server box from my system builder. The computer has had an extra drive added so that I can run Vista on one 320GB disk and Ubuntu on the other 250GB drive.

I have a boxed review copy of Vista Ultimate courtesy of the original Microsoft launch which I am using to replace Windows Home Server. My reason for switching Windows operating systems on this box are two fold. One, I want to give Vista a fair trial on a highly configured computer from a long standing Windows user's perspective. Microsoft has always claimed that Vista works well on a computer with plenty of memory, processor power and a good graphics card. Two, the brand new review copy of the McAfee Total Protection security package I was sent from that vendor doesn't work with Windows Home Server!

With regard to my recent experience with Ubuntu, I have deliberately held back on writing anything until I tracked down the cause of the crash. The Debian based distros, such as Ubuntu, have a track record or remarkable stability so I was surprised - no astounded - that my computer went down within two weeks. I had previously installed an earlier version of Ubuntu, Dapper Drake, on a test machine that was left running continuously for two months.

The reason I downloaded Automatix was that I was becoming frustrated in my efforts to find a way to run a standard off-the-shelf DVD movie using either of the two most popular Ubuntu players, MPlayer and Totem. Perusing the Ubuntu Forums led me to a post that recommended Automatix so I gave it a try.

There are two things that now worry me about Automatix and Ubuntu. One is that Ubuntu itself provides no warning that Automatix may be a package that could introduce instabilities - despite the fact that the Ubuntu Technical Board actually had a tester turn in a highly negative report on the package highlighting this issue.

More importantly, however, it's hard to believe that a distro as mature as Gutsy Gibbon doesn't provide out of the box DVD play back. I'm not entirely across the legalities of this but, as near as I can understand it, Ubuntu requires users to search its package repositories using the Synaptic package manager to enable the necessary codecs to play back encrypted DVD movies. The reason I'm told is that because it is actually illegal in some countries to download the codecs.

As I said, I'm not sure why this should be the case or even if it is. However, if Ubuntu (and presumably all Linux users) have to break laws - whether they agree with them or not - in order to play DVD movies, then this a real problem that needs to be addressed.

I would be interested to hear about this from knowledgeable members of the Linux community because tomorrow I'm reloading Ubuntu - actually Kubuntu because I would like to try the KDE version.