Installing Multimedia Codecs and Drivers Matthew Helmke

Installing Multimedia Codecs and Drivers Matthew Helmke buntu 8.10 comes standard with free them is of questionable legality for anyone and open software. This includes com- other than the company that has written Umunity developed drivers for hard- them. ware, where the source code for the software is available to be downloaded, viewed, and Hardware Drivers distributed legally. You can even modify it le- Some companies, like Intel, are choosing to re- gally, if you know how, as long as you either lease the specifications for their hardware or do not distribute your changes, or you license even writing and releasing drivers themselves your work in the same manner as the work as free or open source software, in both cases you are using. This software works with most inviting users to participate in the process of hardware, and also includes the ability to play writing or improving them. This is wonderful, and view some media types. and development of drivers for this hardware There are a couple of issues with doing tends to go quickly and the software tends things this way; you may not have access to all to be very good. Most of the time, you won’t of the features of some hardware while using notice anything except that the hardware just the free and open drivers, and some of the works, because the device drivers are included most commonly used sound and video files in the free and open source Linux kernel. require codecs, coder and decoder software Some hardware has special features which translates between binary data and that the production company does not wish sound or pictures, that are not free to be le- to make known, often because no one else gally distributed with the operating system. has the exact same technology and they are Don’t let this frighten you. There are usually hoping to protect a perceived advantage over drivers and codecs are available that will give their competitors. This is especially true in you full functionality, and which can be easily the realm of the more advanced video cards installed. The issue with these is primarily made by ATI/AMD and NVIDIA, but this re- philosophical, in the sense that the source striction is not limited to that hardware. code for them may not be viewed nor modi- Often these hardware manufacturers will fied, and in some cases, the distribution of release their own drivers for their hardware. When they do so, it will be made available in binary format, which means that it will run on your computer, under a set of conditions set by the manufacturer, but that you may not examine the source code to know what it contains or how it works. Some consider this a security risk. Others object because they cannot fix, adapt, or build on the software. Still others just want to play the latest 3D game or use another piece of equipment which requires a restricted driver, and they don’t consider those things particularly im- portant to them, or they can’t afford to lose functionality that is available only in the bi- Figure 1. Hardware drivers dialog, nary, restricted drivers. For those in the third with no proprietary drivers needed category, Ubuntu makes it easy to install www.linuxidentity.com 19 Codecs & Drivers third-party, restricted drivers for the the company’s web store at https:// a couple of methods available to en- most common devices, when the shop.canonical.com/. This will give able this feature at no cost. manufacturer has allowed their bi- you the ability to play everything but The easiest method is to install nary driver to be distributed. flash, which may be done by itself the VLC music player, which is in To check whether you have hard- by installing the flashplugin-nonfree the Ubuntu repositories and may be ware that requires or could benefit package using apt-get, Synaptic, or installed using apt-get or Synaptic from using an available restricted driv- your favorite package manager. with the package vlc. However, this er, simply open System –> Administra- For people comfortable with will limit you to only watching DVDs tion –> Hardware Drivers. Many of you the ambiguity of not really knowing using this program. will see a message saying No propri- whether using the codecs is legal or For those living in non-patent-en- etary drivers are in use on this system, not, or for the majority of people who cumbered parts of the world, there is a with the implication that none are avail- live in places where it is okay, there is community developed and main- able or needed. If so, you are all set. If an easy method to install everything tained, non-official repository of soft- you find something listed, and you want you want. That is what the rest of this ware available called Medibuntu, to use it, highlight the driver you wish section will cover. which stands for (Multimedia, Enter- to install in the list and click Enable. A Open Applications –> Add/Re- tainment & Distractions In Ubuntu) reboot may be required to complete the move... and in the center of the dia- and contains packages that cannot be process. log box that opens, tell it to show All included into the Ubuntu distribution You can use the same menu op- available applications. Highlight the for legal reasons (copyright, license, tion at any time to check whether box next to the package Ubuntu re- patent, etc). To use it, you will need to you have any installed, or to remove stricted extras, and Apply Changes add it to your software sources by drivers. at the bottom right to download and opening a terminal at Applications –> For many people, specifically enable support for many media for- Accessories –> Terminal, and entering those who have ATI or NVIDIA video mats, commonly used and free to the following at the command prompt. cards, using these drivers is neces- distribute Microsoft fonts like Times sary for the best possible experience New Roman, Sun Microsystems Java sudo wget http://www.medibuntu. ↵ using the Desktop Effects offered by Runtime Environment, the Flash pl- org/sources.list.d/ ↵ Compiz and described elsewhere in ugin for your web browser and media intrepid.list -O /etc/apt/ ↵ this magazine. One caveat; if you use players, and more. sources.list.d/medibuntu. ↵ these drivers, you may occasionally To enable playback of encrypted list find bugs or problems that the Ubun- DVDs, such as you might buy or rent, tu developers are not able to help requires a little more work, as the and your password. When the com- with, because of the closed nature patents and restrictions are more mand is complete, follow it with of the software. intense. The most certain way to be completely legal is to buy the soft- ↵ Playing Music and Video sudo apt-get update && sudo ware from the Canonical web store. apt-get install ↵ While Ubuntu does an excellent job However, in much of the world, this is medibuntu-keyring && sudo ↵ playing free media formats, like ogg not an issue at all, and so there are apt-get update files, but it does not come with the ability to play patent encumbered formats like mp3, mpg and flash. This is easily added to the default setup. There is some question as to how legal this is in some parts of the world, however in most places it is known to be fine. If you are not sure, you may want to research the legal and licensing issues for your part of the world. Ubuntu makes it very easy to add the codecs. For businesses, corporations, or individuals who are concerned about legal issues in their part of the world, you may now buy the codecs to be able to play mp3s, Microsoft media formats, and DVDs from their partner and sponsor, Canonical in Figure 2. Using the ATI accelerated graphics driver LINUX IDENTITY STARTER 20 You may be asked to accept this package even though it cannot be authenticated. This is normal. If you want to use the software provided by Medibuntu, type yes and enter. Now, you are able to add any of the packages made available from Medi- buntu using apt-get, Synaptic, or your favorite package manag r. To enable dvd playback, you will need the package called libdvdcss2. You may find out more about Medibuntu and their other offer- ings at their website at http://www. medi buntu.org/. One more option People reading an article in a magazine like this are the proactive sort. We like to Figure 3. Add/Remove restricted formats figure out what needs to be done in ad- vance and do it. Not everyone is like that. For the rest of the world, there is another option. In the past, Linux users might try to play an unsupported file type and noth- ing would happen. They would then have to spend time reading documentation, scouring the web for information or ad- vice, and some would just give up. In Ubuntu 8.10, when you try to play a media file type that is not currently sup- ported, a dialog box will come up asking if you would like to search for an appro- priate codec, such as when I tried to play a free test pattern MP4 from http://www. archive.org/details/IMB_SF_R30_C9 in Totem Movie Player. If you agree, a search will be launched. If a suitable codec is found, a dialog box will appear listing the codec.

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