Revisiting Linux Part 1: A Look at Ubuntu 8.04
by Ryan Smith on August 26, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Linux
Applications: Video Playback
Windows Default: Windows Media Player
What I use: Media Player Classic – Home Cinema
Ubuntu Default: Totem (Used: VLC)
Moving on to video, we have Totem, Ubuntu’s other media player. As we previously mentioned it’s already the default for audio files opened via the file browser, and along with that it’s also Ubuntu’s only video player. In concept it’s close to VLC or Media Player Classic, as it’s a solitary program that has a single window to play whatever the currently opened file is.
The single biggest strength of Totem is that once the restricted codec pack is installed, it can play anything and everything under the sun. MP3, AAC, MKV, H.264, MPEG-4 ASP, FLAC, and more are all available. This makes both Mac OS X and Windows Vista pale in comparison – the former can play about half of that, the latter even less. Codec hell has always been a nuisance under Windows and Mac OS X, but Ubuntu gets things right and avoids it altogether. I really can’t overstate this; from a fresh install it’s much, much easier to play media out of the box with Totem on Ubuntu than it is any other OS. This is the experience everyone else should be shooting for.
The key to Totem’s ease of use stems from the fact that the restricted codec pack includes the FFmpeg project’s libavcodec library of audio/video codecs. As the project seeks to offer playback support for every significant codec in existence, this gives Totem a clear advantage over Windows and Mac OS X, neither of which use libavcodec. This does mean, however, that Totem is not unique. Its playback abilities can be found in any other application that implements libavcodec, such as Media Player Classic, MPlayer, VLC, and others. As such the real magic is that Totem is the only default media player to include these abilities, rather than that it’s a completely superior media player.
As it stands there are two big kinks in Totem. The first of which is that it’s an extremely simple media player that lacks any kind of advanced features. It offers a single deinterlacing mode, no control over post-processing, and no audio/video filters. As such advanced users are going to find it unsatisfactory, and accordingly it’s one of the only default Ubuntu programs I specifically replaced when using Ubuntu. Instead I ended up using VLC, which has the advanced features I was looking for and I was already familiar with it since it’s a cross-platform media player.
The other kink in Totem is that it’s only as good as libavcodec, which in turn is only as good as the version of libavcodec that came with Hardy due to Ubuntu’s software update policy. As it stands the version of libavcodec that comes with Hardy has issues playing back a small number of Windows Media Video files, something which newer versions correct.
Furthermore it suffers from libavcodec’s continuing weakness: H.264 playback. Only the single-threaded H.264 decoder is considered stable, as such all libavcodec players using it will run in to problems when decoding high bitrate material. Our 30Mbps test clip won’t play back correctly under Totem or VLC 1.01, for example. There is a multithreaded H.264 decoder available in libavcodec, but as it’s not stable (on players that I have that include it, it crashes from time to time) it’s not suitable for general distribution. All of this is compounded by the fact that there’s no other H.264 decoder that can be installed on Ubuntu (e.g. CoreAVC) which means Ubuntu is limited to the best that libavcodec can do. For this reason none of the regular Ubuntu media players are well suited for material such as full quality BluRay rips.
Now we have yet to touch on hardware accelerated playback, which is something we’re going to hold off on until we take a look at Ubuntu 9.04. Linux does not have a common media framework like Windows and Mac OS X have DirectShow/DXVA and QuickTime respectively. Rather the desktop environment that Ubuntu is based off of (GNOME) includes a lesser framework called GStreamer, which is closer to a basic collection of codecs and an interface to them. As such hardware accelerated playback is not as easy to do under Ubuntu as it is under Windows and Mac OS X. We’ll take look at the APIs and the software for this in our look at Ubuntu 9.04.
But so long as you don’t need hardware accelerated playback, then Totem or another libavcodec based player will do the job nicely. Compared to the other applications in Ubuntu, I would put Totem/VLC up there with Firefox in terms of being a jewel of the OS. Like Firefox they may not be OS-exclusive applications that can be used to drive users towards Ubuntu, but they help solidify Ubuntu by giving it the ability to do a common task just as well as (or better than) any other operating system. At least until Windows 7 hits the shelves, no one has a better default media player.
Final Verdict: Meets My Needs
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Eeqmcsq - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
for your time spent on writing this article. I've made the jump to from Windows to Ubuntu (and Xubuntu for my older computers) back around 7.10 and 8.04 and I went through some of the headaches in adjusting to Ubuntu, but I eventually solved all of them and I'm quite settled in now.One comment about finding help in the form of command line instructions, rather than GUI instructions. GUI instructions for Ubuntu would not be useful for Kubuntu or Xubuntu, since they use different window managers. The command line solutions usually work for all three.
Also, boot times were noticeably improved in 9.04. Perhaps you can run a quick retest on it.
And you CAN install stuff when using the live CD. I've installed a couple of temperature monitoring utilities when I was stress testing my motherboard.
Finally, thanks again for writing such a thorough look into your Ubuntu experiences. It was a great read in seeing how far Ubuntu has come and what it still lacks.
fepple - Thursday, August 27, 2009 - link
Yeah, you can set the APT sources to use a CD. There is an option for it 'system' > 'administor' > 'software source', or you can edit the /etc/apt/sources.list fileclarkn0va - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
[quote]since SMB is the predominant protocol for consumer file server gear, it’s a fair test of such use.[/quote]While this comment is not false, it presents a lazy approach to comparison; it's a one-sided contest, and Linux, pitted against Windows on home turf, doesn't stand much of a chance.
You as much as acknowledge this in the article, so why not provide some counterpoint? For example, consumer file server gear, even if it supports SMB almost ubiquitously, is usually *nix-based. So instead of just showing Windows and Linux clients interacting with Windows servers, show them interacting with *nix servers as well. Do some NFS transfers as well; NFS is well supported in consumer NAS these days.
You also really missed the boat on the video drivers. 8.04 was not the first Ubuntu release to include the Restricted Drivers Manager (known simply as "Hardware Drivers" in later releases). This handy app will identify hardware, such as AMD and NVIDIA GPUs, that can take advantage of proprietary drivers, and will offer to to install the same via synaptic (APT) with just a click of the mouse. No CLI, no headaches.
Still, a thorough review, and generally well-researched. I'm looking forward to the 9.04 follow-up.
Since you mentioned hardware HD decoding, I recommend taking a look at smplayer from the testing ppa (https://launchpad.net/~rvm/+archive/testing)">https://launchpad.net/~rvm/+archive/testing). Unfortunately vdpau doesn't work with the nvidia blobs in the default Ubuntu repos, but I believe there's a PPA providing vdpau-compatible blobs for anybody not wanting to do CLI installs.
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VaultDweller - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
[quote]While this comment is not false, it presents a lazy approach to comparison; it's a one-sided contest, and Linux, pitted against Windows on home turf, doesn't stand much of a chance. [/quote]This isn't Linux pitted against Windows on home turf, it's Linux pitted against Windows in the real world.
clarkn0va - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
Well, no doubt SMB is the dominant method of sharing files for consumers in general. Obviously comparing Linux to Windows makes sense in a world where Windows is the incumbent, but it's not the whole story.I hope Part 2 will address some of the objective benefits of Ubuntu, and not fall into the trap of "worse because it's not the same as Windows".
VaultDweller - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
I agree in principle, but there has to be a distinction between "Worse because it's not compatible with Windows," "Worse because it's not as easy as Windows," and "Worse because it's not the same as Windows." Die-hard *nix advocates tend to dismiss the first two as if they were the latter, and this tends to undermine their argument.Also, in some cases "Worse because it's not the same as Windows" can be a valid point, because the public has been trained to the point that the Windows way is the "intuitive" way. Of course, this isn't truly intuitive, as people who learned Linux first would find Linux methodologies more intuitive - but that's largely a moot point, as that's not the reality we live in today. You could say the same thing about the color red - in the western world, when we see red we can intuitively guess that it means Stop, or Warning, or Error, etc. The fact that this is not an understanding we're born with but rather a socially acquired intuition does not mean it would be any easier to suddenly change the color of traffic lights and expect people to adjust without problems.
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
All of the NAS gear I can get my hands on is either SMB only, or is a Time Capsule which is SMB + AFP. I don't have anything that does NFS, which isn't so much a comment on testing (I could always set up another box) as it is usefulness. NFS just isn't common on consumer gear; SMB is a more important metric if you're looking at file transfer performance, because that's what most people are going to be working with. This doesn't preclude doing NFS at a later time though.And the Restricted Drivers Manager is limited to the drivers in the Hardy repository, which means they're a year+ out of date.
amrs - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
Interestingly, if one checks the SmallNetBuilder NAS charts, it looks like out of 87 NAS devices, 49 have NFS. 56% in other words. And you say NFS isn't common? Really now? Seems a little biased to me.ekul - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
While a lot of your issues have complicated solutions or lengthy technical backstories I can solve your complaint of smb shares mounted in nautilus not being useful in non-gtk applications in one simple command (or as you seem to hate commands the gui can do it too).theory: make a symlink to the directory nautilus mounts to so it can be easily accessed. Symlinks to directories or files are transparently (to users and applications) identical to the location they refer to. Windows doesn't have symlinks (only useless shortcuts) so it isn't surprising you were not aware to do it.
howto: gvfs uses the directory /home/$USER/.gvfs as a mount point so link to it:
ln -s ~/.gvfs ~/linkname
howto gui: in nautilus go to your home folder then choose view -> show hidden files. Right click on .gvfs and choose make link. Then you can rename the link to whatever you want and hide hidden files again.
hint: symlinks are your best friend. My home dir is littered with links to places on the filesystem I visit a lot to avoid a lot of clicking/typing
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - link
I suddenly feel very humiliated...The symlink is a very elegant solution, I'm embarrassed I didn't think of that myself. It's a bit of a lousy solution in that there even needs to be a solution, but as far as things go that's a very insightful suggestion.