Is there a reason for having reduced the multimedia guide this much? I had to follow it for now, but why now only one “general” minimalistic set of suggested packages instead of more extended set for different DEs? Where’s gstreamer-plugins-good package? Why to include again the infamous flash player?
Thanks.
On Thu 03 Aug 2017 04:36:02 PM CDT, F style wrote:
Is there a reason for having reduced the multimedia guide this much? I
had to follow it for now, but why now only one “general” minimalistic
set of suggested packages instead of more extended set for different
DEs? Where’s gstreamer-plugins-good package? Why to include again the
infamous flash player?
Thanks.
Hi
If a package is already installed and you switch to packman with dup
then it will automatically update/switch system packages. Use some
verbosity in the command (eg -vvvv) to see what is happening.
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE Leap 42.2|GNOME 3.20.2|4.4.74-18.20-default
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I did apply the Packman switch, and indeed several packages were changed/updated. Apologizing beforehand, maybe I’m failing to understand, but your response did not solve any doubts…
I’d like to add that packman has vlc-codecs and libxine2-codecs packages which do not exist in OSS and just doing a full vendor change is not enough as they are not dependencies of vlc and libxine2 so they will not get pulled so doing
zypper in vlc-codecs libxine2-codecs
is a needed step that should be added as these packages are relatively new (they didn’t exist in 13.x or 42.1)
Perhaps my question was not understood…
Here in the Multimedia sub-forum look at the guides for 42.1, 42.2, and even Tumbleweed. They seem written for “full complete” experience for either KDE or any of the other DEs. Now we have the 42.3 guide… written for just a “general” minimalist use… WTH!?
I know perfectly Leap 42.x releases have differences between them, so one cannot (or should not) easily apply 42.1 guide to 42.2 or 42.3. What changed in 42.3 to go “racist” with it? Truth to be told I’m still feeling the multimedia installation is incomplete with the 42.3 guide, and worst of all, I have been using openSUSE 42.3 for 2 days so far! This should bring consequences…
Hi
I don’t even use the list, just do zypper dup and add libdvdcss manually… all my GNOME DE stuff works fine.
I would imagine it’s due to the link back to OBS improving and integration, as in packman is just a rebuild service with things enabled that can’t be on OBS
nah we understood the question and the guides are more or less the same you can use the old guides for 42.3, the things is in the past there was no ffmpeg package in the opensource repository and to get ffmpeg and a few other packages installed you needed to manually pull them, now there is a restricted version of ffmpeg in OSS so by doing **zypper dup --from packman **you will install most of the needed packages (as I said vlc-codecs and libxine2-codecs do not exist in OSS and zypper dup will not install them so the new guide has a smallish fault)
the way I get multimedia working is in 3 steps
zypper ar -f ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/packman/suse/openSUSE_Leap_42.3/ packman
zypper dup --from packman
zypper in vlc-codecs libxine2-codecs flash-player
this gets multimedia working no matter the desktop environment: plasma 5, gnome, cinnamon, mate, lxde, lxqt …
OUCH
Er… sorry sir, I fail to understand this…
EDIT:
Aahh… Yet the phrase “restricted version of ffmpeg in OSS” sounds quite unwelcoming for some reason…
Without any intention to be bothersome, but wish mr caf4926 could be around sometime.
Hi
There have been many changes with patents expiring (multimedia list getting smaller), so stuff that can be built as part of openSUSE is now happening, the core multimedia stuff is built/maintained and provided via the openSUSE Build Service (OBS), so in the spec file are conditionals to either build the oss version or the packman version.
So, for example package "A’ built on OBS has feature X and Z enabled but not Y, the packman build service link to this package and when it builds because of the conditional in the spec file it builds with feature X, Y and Z.
Now most stuff is on OBS and a link to it on Packman, so only one package is maintained, when it changes on OBS, it automatically changes on Packman. Plus resources are limited on packman build service so the push has been to build back on OBS if packages can be.
If you check the installed gstreamer packages with
zypper se -si gstreamer* ffmpeg*
you’ll see what I_A and Malcolm are conveying.
mp3 patents have expired so mp3 support it appearing in OS. ie restricted version of libs that do not contain other proprietary codec but do contain mp3 support and other OS codecs.
Thanks very much again everyone for helping. I never imagined patents did expire -among other things…-. Will check what you advised for next week (I’m not at office right now).
another thing that reduced the list is the depreciation of the old gstreamer 0.10 libraries
I don’t think they wore even compiled for 42.3
It’s true! With all the changes all you have mentioned it seems Packman switch did pull many more packages, including gstreamer-plugins-good package. Thanks again.
By the way, it’s fine to run zypper se -si as standard user instead of root, right? No consequence or buggy? It seemingly did work, albeit it still had to “read repository information”, for which it took few seconds…
Yes.
Unless the repos need to be refreshed, that is only possible as root.
But zypper should warn you in that case, and will still show the requested information (possibly outdated though).
It seemingly did work, albeit it still had to “read repository information”, for which it took few seconds…
That’s about reading the cache of already installed packages.
opps posted in error on the wrong thread, sorry
One final doubt.
Why list flash player again in the 42.3 multimedia guide? Hasn’t it been kind of infamous already?
Well it’s the user’s choice as to whether they consider it necessary to install it or not. Rightly or wrongly, there are still sites using it for media delivery. 
Adobe are still providing security updates for it…
From the 42.3 multimedia guide:
WHAT? I already did the guide with the vlc-codec-gstreamer package! So this was an entire mistake all along? I even thought it would be a good idea to have gstreamer itself to be the playback, but now it turns out that it should be always vlc? Now should I clean-reinstall openSUSE entirely in order to have a well stable installation!? Or would it be a matter of just removing/adding packages?
“No” to all your questions.
The switch to Packman is actually the crucial part.
Although, you don’t necessarily need vlc-codec-gstreamer if you have vlc-codecs, or vice-versa.
But it shouldn’t make any difference either, especially if things work anyway…
Or would it be a matter of just removing/adding packages?
To this question, the answer would be “yes”!