Linux and free software

[Blackcat]

So, whats the best Linux distribution made for video editing? (I’m talking about one that includes everything, so I just install it and is ready to use, because I don’t have internet at home).

[Flash Kid]

Here's the link for zoom player: http://www.inmatrix.com/zplayer/
and bsplayer: http://bsplayer.com/
though I don't think they do encoding, just playback.

I was browsing around my favorite Linux sites, then I found VLC Media Player, whose homepage is http://www.videolan.org/vlc/. I haven't tried it yet, but seems to have impressive specs. Its drawback is the lack for support of Real streams. 

I use it on my Windows and yes it sucks it can't play Real yet but I can watch my French DVD set with it cuz it can play multiregion. So I can watch foreign DVDs with it no problem.

[Flash Kid]

So, whats the best Linux distribution made for video editing? (I’m talking about one that includes everything, so I just install it and is ready to use, because I don’t have internet at home).

Google Ubuntu Studio (Sorry for double-post)

[Daisensei]

Have you seen manga girl representation of Linux distros? They are know as OS-tan.
What distro are you using? Mine is Debian; see how cute is her.

[Blackcat]

Have you seen manga girl representation of Linux distros? They are know as OS-tan.
What distro are you using? Mine is Debian; see how cute is her.

Ubuntu

My laptop is going to have Ubuntu and XP, because of Sam&Max chapter one, im too stupid to find a way to play it in Linux-_-

Edit 1:

Go and use KolibriOS!

http://www.kolibrios.org/

KolibriOS (also known as KOS and Kolibri) is a free operating system with a monolithic preemptive, real-time kernel, video drivers, for 32-bit x86 architecture computers, developed and maintained by The KolibriOS Project Team. KolibriOS is a fork of MenuetOS, written entirely in FASM (assembly language). However, C, C++, Free Pascal, Forth, among other high-level languages and compilers, can also be used in user application development.
English, Russian and Dutch versions are available.

KolibriOS Features
Boots from several devices, NTFS is also supported. You can even start it from Windows (Windows will shutdown).
Graphical user interface based on VESA.
Development kit: code editor with a macro-assembler (FASM) integrated.
TCP/IP stack.
Fits on a single 1.44MB floppy (many applications are compressed).
Pre-emptive multitasking, streams, parallel execution of system calls.
Supported file systems are FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 (long names support), NTFS (read only).
AC'97 audio codec support for Intel, nForce, nForce2, nForce3, nForce4 and SIS7012 chipsets.
CD and DVD support.
User can change themes directly in the OS.

So, what are you waiting for? Dont be lazy and try it!

[Threaux]

Anyone try out Sabayon Linux?  Looks pretty cool, I'm going to throw it on a spare laptop sometime soon to give it a test. 
http://www.sabayonlinux.org/
screenshots here: http://www.sabayonlinux.org/mod/screenshots/

Also as good as ubuntu and the debian distro's are I think OpenSUSE deserves an honorable mention too.

[Blackcat]

Nothing can beat Damn small linux

is damn small (50 m)

Is  Damn fast (If you load it into ram)

It has everything you can need in  pendrive of 100 m and you still have 50 m free for stuff!.

Damn Small Linux or DSL is a free distribution ('distro') of the Linux operating system (OS) for the X86 family of personal computers (PC's). It was designed to run graphical applications on older PC hardware - e.g. PC's with 386/486/early-Pentium processors and very little memory. DSL is a LiveCD with a size of 50MB. It can be installed on storage media with small capacities, like bootable business card, 64MB USB flash drive, CompactFlash card, and Zip drive.

DSL can also be run inside another operating system, using an emulator such as QEMU or Q.

DSL is not to be confused with DSLinux, which is a different Linux distribution for the Nintendo DS handheld game console.

[Threaux]

DSL was already mentioned in page two and three of this thread! But i guess page four needs a DSL shout out too. 

... As far as using DSL, it's a cool and nifty tool and not as limiting as you might expect, but its' a waste to install by itself on newer hardware.  Especially when there are some swanky(er), fuller-featured Linux OS's to try. 

[Blackcat]

So, besides xmms, know any other good winamp 2.XX clones?

Winamp 5 is just fatware (Slow and big ware)

[Daisensei]

So, besides xmms, know any other good winamp 2.XX clones?

Winamp 5 is just fatware (Slow and big ware)

I've moved from XMMS to Audacious (its official web page is here). Audacious looks like a very good player, you must give a try, Up to now I'm very satisfied.
I abandoned XMMS because it hasn't been developed actively lately, and XMMS2 showed many bugs in my machine; I removed both from my HD.

[Blackcat]

So, besides xmms, know any other good winamp 2.XX clones?

Winamp 5 is just fatware (Slow and big ware)

I've moved from XMMS to Audacious (its official web page is here). Audacious looks like a very good player, you must give a try, Up to now I'm very satisfied.
I abandoned XMMS because it hasn't been developed actively lately, and XMMS2 showed many bugs in my machine; I removed both from my HD.

And whats bad with just "xmms"? it can play all the audio formats I use, like mp3(With extra codec) ogg and wav.

Talking about audio, I need a audio recorder/editor for linux, with stuff like noise reduction and that...

[Daisensei]

And whats bad with just "xmms"? it can play all the audio formats I use, like mp3(With extra codec) ogg and wav.

XMMS is buggy (in my computer, at least) and when I upgrade my O.S., many times it was broken.  This never happened with Audacity so far.  Perhaps this isn't really a XMMS' faulty though.

Talking about audio, I need a audio recorder/editor for linux, with stuff like noise reduction and that...

Have you tried Audacity (not Audacious)? I used this sound editor in the past, you could try it.

[Blackcat]

And whats bad with just "xmms"? it can play all the audio formats I use, like mp3(With extra codec) ogg and wav.

XMMS is buggy (in my computer, at least) and when I upgrade my O.S., many times it was broken.  This never happened with Audacity so far.  Perhaps this isn't really a XMMS' faulty though.

Talking about audio, I need a audio recorder/editor for linux, with stuff like noise reduction and that...

Have you tried Audacity (not Audacious)? I used this sound editor in the past, you could try it.

The old XMMS I use works fine... but it came with Ubuntu...

And I didnt know Audacity had a linux version, thats great!

[Alistair Erie]

You know, I've actually been having issues with playing midis. I run Ubuntu 7.10 and just can't find an application that will let me listen to them. This is particularly bad, because I absolutely love game music.
I was wondering if you guys could help me out.

[Blackcat]

You know, I've actually been having issues with playing midis. I run Ubuntu 7.10 and just can't find an application that will let me listen to them. This is particularly bad, because I absolutely love game music.
I was wondering if you guys could help me out.

VLC media player should do the trick

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

[Daisensei]

Another program worthy to try is Timidity++ (http://timidity.sourceforge.net/), it's a great command line MIDI synthesizer. Some players like XMMS or Audacity act as a frontend for this software.
I don't know if it's available in Ubuntu, but there is Debian package for it. Don't forget to install also a patch files like Debian freepats package, or the more complete timidiy-patches that can be grabbed from http://linux.maruhn.com/sec/timidity-patches.html.
By the way, if you have an older and slower CPU (mine is a 600 MHz Athlon) set up has to be done to not eat so much processing power (/etc/timidity/timidity.cfg file must be edited).

[Blackcat]

600 MHz? You really should upgrade, the cheap PC I bought for my uncle has more power than that...

Of course you could try to make freedos with Freedos 32 work in that thing, your PC would fly!.


 

[Daisensei]

My computer is old, but can do almost all thing I need (tipicaly my needs are word processor, spreadsheet and web browser) without problem. I don't work with 3D rendering, quantum chemistry calculation or something that are really CPU intensive.
I'm old too, I hope nobody wished to upgrade me.

[Blackcat]

Video editing also takes a lot of cpu power (Rendering mostly), and really a 700  MHz+ processor is cheap nowadays. Of course I do video editing like a “caveman” that means I extract all the frames to bmp or png files and convert the audio to wav, then I do the editing/merging. There must be a lot of better ways to do it, but who cares?.

Now back to linux, my Ubuntu PC is being upgraded, and Im going to use it for audio editing...

[adam808]

There seem to be three main types of GNU/Linux distributions (Linux is the kernel of the GNU's Not Unix Operating System, the free Unix replacement with the original Free Software philosophy being that the user has the freedom to view, modify and redistribute the source code of everything - that has somewhat been sidetracked and to make it more palatable to businesses it is called simply "Linux"). Source based means all software is usually compiled from source code to install it. Slackware and Gentoo fall in this first group. Berkeley Software Distribution Unix and kin are also source based. The other two use precompiled packages and manage library dependencies. Debian and Red Hat and the 'distros' based on them are examples of these two. Debian based distros use DPKG as the package manager and Red Hat based distros use RPM. With automated package management, software is usually installed by using a program which lets the user choose from packages in the repositories hosted online, downloads them and installs what is needed. The source based distros download source code of the programs users choose and compile them. Compiling can take much longer, but there are more programs available in source code form than have been made into DEB or RPM packages. The packages must fit the distro it is being installed into or there may be problems, which is why the specific repositories are kept. There seem to be more packages in the Debian based repositories. However, some very useful features are in the Red Hat based distros. Of course, there are other package formats (Pacman) but DEB and RPM have the most precompiled software. SUSE is also an RPM distro, but is more like a cousin to Red Hat, being originally based on Slackware but adopting the RPM. Mandrake 'forked' from Red Hat and and later became Mandriva. It is most known for the Mandriva Control Center which makes managing the system easier. SUSE also has something similar in the form of Yet another Setup Tool.

My first install to hard drive (I'd booted Knoppix live disc) was Fedora Core 3, back when Windows XP Professional 64-bit was coming out, in 2005. That was fun (sarcasm). Installing ATI driver was very difficult (manualy inputting monitor sync rates while in console script so no GUI) and my Japanese MP3s and videos were invisible because their filenames were in Shift_JIS. Yeeeah... I tried Ubuntu 5.10 next. Still no NTFS write support. No writing to Windows filesystems, which included my storage drive. I went back to Windows XP for a while.
Now with the latest distro releases there is easier graphics driver install, auto UTF-8 conversion, and ntfs-3g that allows NTFS writing. At last, usable. Before ntfs-3g I'd have had to pass on GNU/Linux as I needed to be able to actually save files to my storage drive without rebooting and going into Windows.