[MPlayer-users] Quicktime playback on MPlayer/Linux -- Somevideos play in ultra-slow-motion?

[Phil Rhodes]

> MPlayer compiled and worked perfectly with no more than that (allowing
> for 'su' to gain root privileges for the install step) for me from the
> very beginning.

Probably because you take care to ensure that your environment is 
practically bit-identical with the developers. For those of us for whom 
computers are a means rather than an end, this is not practical, nor is it 
reasonable to expect it to be. I suspect your definition of "worked 
perfectly" is a bit more flexible than mine; if I have to hack strange 
values into obscure text files, manually unpack library source into various 
directories, add repositories, obtain files, deploy them by hand - I 
consider that "not working perfectly". You may consider it all in a day's 
work but you cannot realistically deny that those sorts of tasks are an 
inevitable part of more or less every software deployment on Linux and they 
are emphatically NOT simple.

Evidence? I could list software and environments I've tried to do this on, 
and I'll tell you how that discussion would go. First off, you'd pick on the 
more obscure pieces of software, saying things like: "oh, that's just not 
very well written, I know the guys who work on that, they're all idiots." 
Then you'd blame the distro I was using - "oh, that's just not a very good 
distro, it doesn't include X, Y and Z." Then, assuming I had the patience to 
humour you and install another, you'd have reasons that wasn't any good 
either - "it doesn't include A, B and C? What a waste of space!" Then we'd 
move on to ad hominem attacks on me personally, blaming my technical 
expertise, and finally, we'd get around to "oh, well, Linux isn't for 
everybody", which is of course the point I've been trying to make all along. 
I have had this series of discussions so many times with so many people it's 
moved through irritating and infurating to just being boring. There is no 
interest in solving these problems because according to the people who could 
solve them, they do not exist. You guys really do have an excuse for 
everything.

The sad fact is that software deployment on Linux is a sick joke, a complete 
farce, a barely-alpha-quality disaster zone, and it will remain so whether 
you choose to accept it or not.

Look, I'm not blaming you guys, it's a general Linux problem, and the reason 
I avoid the platform - but again, claiming these issues do not exist does 
not make them go away.

P