Fedora 12 Out of the box

Out of the box, which is to say out of the ISO, Fedora 12 doesn't have many things I want, mainly patent or license encumbered packages or software. It didn't include support for mp3, divx, DVDs, or AC-3. I didn't know how to watch on websites without Adobe Flash (which has Linux support). In Windows, I use WinAmp to play MP3s. In Fedora, I am using Audacious. For mp3s, I needed audacious-plugins-freeworld-mp3 (which needed libmad). For xvid support, I used xvidcore (unsurprisingly). I got the Adobe Flash plug-in from get.adobe.com/flashplayer.

I could get Audacious from Fedora's Add/Remove Software and Flash from Adobe. I had to get the rest from rpmfusion.org. I chose not to add RPMFusion to Fedora's Add/Remove Software because I wanted to know the dependencies. I picked up Linux because I wanted to know how Linux worked.

Audacious needed libmowgli, audacious-libs, lirc-libs, audacious-plugins, libsidplay libbinio, mcs-libs, SDL, libmpcdec, and libcddb. ffmpeg-libs needed faad2-libs, faad2, dirac-libs, libdc1394, gsm, and schroedinger. libquicktime needed lame-libs, ffmpeg-libs, and x264-libs. gstreamer-plugins-bad needed mjpegtools-libs, libmms, libmimic, libdca, libdvdnav, rasqal, lzo-minilzo, libmodplug, raptor, celt, enca, directfb, libmusicbrainz, slv, libkate, tslib, fftw, libdvdread, libofa, redland, libass, libvncserver, postgresql, and libsysfs.

No Flash for FreeBSD, using Fedora

I could not figure out a way to get around the lack of availability of Adobe Flash for FreeBSD. Suggestions were to use Gnash, swfdec, or to use the Linux version of Adobe Flash Player with FreeBSD. I installed Gnash and swfdec but couldn't figure out how to plug them into Firefox, and I wasn't sure about using the Adobe Flash Player for Linux with FreeBSD. Adobe.com didn't want to help me to that, certainly.

I had tried Red Hat Linux before the time of Fedora Core. I tried Fedora Core 4 and 5 and even had Fedora Core 5 joined to the Active Directory domain at work using samba. I grabbed Fedora 11 and recently upgraded to Fedora 12. Adobe Flash Player installs from get.adobe.com/flashplayer onto Firefox easily. I use Firefox on Windows alternatingly with Internet Explorer, and I'm a fan.

I remember using BBSs, then CompuServe, AOL, and Prodigy, then Mosaic (I remember SPRY Mosaic), then Netscape. I was in public school at the time when Netscape was for charge, but you could get a free copy as a student.

To recover from that digression, I am now using Fedora 12.