This is a long thread to plough through and so I'd ask you to ignore me if I've only got hold of part of the story.

I've just about given up trying to watch the video clips on the BBC website. There was always something didn't work right even if any part of it did.

I've just installed Vector Linux - the contributed for download - on an older machine and I've just been sitting there watching and listening to the clips with my jaw dropped. I didn't have to even install anything. That's just using the installed Firefox in the XFce desktop.

Edit: That is also the latest version 5.9 by the way.

Yes ... I've tried Vector and it does the BBC BUT it fails on the streamick.com page with the default ABC news.

Also, the live installer on vector doesn't work for me. I set up 3 partitions, made one boot, second as swap and third as home. I add the users and then the installer does a lot of writing to disk. It fails to boot. No questions about LILO or GRUB. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Have you tried the non-live installer

Downloading it now - will give it a try.

Tried the basic vector iso. It starts up, go to partitioning - fix the three recommended partitions. System goes to reboot and NOTHING happens - just a static cursor and blinking hard drive light.

Ho hum - foiled yet again!

Hi Castalla2007... first of all, sorry to say that I can't help you with the issue you're having, I'm a newbie as well and also don't have my computer connected to the Internet... I'm at work right now ...

I've read through the whole thread because the it's title caught my attention and I must say that at some point I was angry when reading the things you said against Linux... but also you're showing a good attitude and that's why people has been trying to help you...

Maybe you should check the essay "How to ask questions the smart way" by Eric Raymond. http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html . That might shed some light on why you got flamed at the beginning of the thread. He also wrote some other pretty interesting articles, like for example "How to become a hacker". In fact, that text got me into using Linux.

Bottom line, what I want to tell you is that (I think) you shouldn't have that negative attitude of "Ho hum - foiled yet again!". Linux is about hacking, hacking is about getting your hands dirty, and you've been doing that while trying to solve this, but complaining if things didn't work out. Easy things are easily forgotten, and when you finally get this working not you or the people here helping you will forget it. And it most probably will help other people having the same problem. If the problem would have been solved with two clicks, then you would have forgotten the way to solve it in the following minute while watching BBC's world news.

Also, maybe you should make a little research and finally stick to one distro and really get to know it. The thing is, don't look for an "easy Linux". With the necessary knowledge Linux is easy, as everything in life. The thing is that some people migrate to Linux expecting to find a "Windows with a different name", and Linux is completely different in it's basic concept. Windows assumes that the user is stupid and needs to be kept in the dark for their own sake, while also trying to hide all of its flaws and using lots of code just to have more control over you. Linux assumes that the user knows what is doing and provides the necessary tools for learning, giving you the chance to get more control over the system.

One last thing. I'd like to point out that I do not intend to tell you what to do, because there are as many ways to approach Linux as people in the world, but I just wanted to share my ideas about it with you and this forum, because ever since I started to get involved with all this stuff, I just can't help to admire the Linux (Unix) Philosophy a little bit more every day.

Thanks for the thoughts ... some of the earlier posts were probably provocative - it did provoke a response which ultimately got me on the right track. And I've definitely learned quite a bit. But obviously not enough to 'fix' the vector install problem.

I've also discovered a few video quirks on my travels. For one, if a video is playing embedded and I select the full screen option, yep there's the full screen BUT with the same sized video nicely surrounded by a massive black surround! I hesitate to ask how one fixes that! Got this effect in mepis. Can't recall if it happens in other distros.

I like the opportunity to try out various flavours of linux - I'm just baffled why something supposedly 'standard' (eg. mplayer, etc) works well in one but not in another. Somebody mentioned different compilers but I'm too newbie to understand the intracacies of that.

Cheers

It is either your laptop that does not automatically resizes the screen to fullscreen when it is not the optimal resolution (Windows without driver optimalisation has this problem as well so it's not Linux' fault persé) or (most likely) that the resolution does not change and that your media player does not resize the video in fullscreen mode. It is not a bug though.

EDIT: Is there a option somewhere that says "Automatically resize?" ?

no comments...

from another,
very good reply. Scratch do do better. If you want idiot proof software write it youself! Must admit, though, compiling from scource code is a pain in the fundament.

Oh no, have to reiterate.

Yours was a good reply and I concur despite spending most of the mornining trying to compile wine from source code- any ideas why fedora has no available rpm's for wine?

Royston.

Fedora, no rpms for wine? Are you sure you have added the livna repository? If not, you are missing many more goodies than just wine, especially in the codec department.

Pardon me for living.

This thread didn't need a 1 year anniversary bump.

So sorry. I thought free speech applied to all threads. I guess unless your around for the start, your thoughts are forbidden. I won't bother anyone here again.