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Tuesday November 17, 2009

GNOME Marketing Hackfest GNOME Marketing Hackfest (November 10-11, 2009) [Read More] ( Nov 17 2009, 04:25:31 PM CST ) Permalink Comments [2]

Friday May 22, 2009

GNOME Zeitgeist on OpenSolaris and GStreamer Mixer Enhancements GNOME Zeitgeist and GStreamer Mixer Enhancements [Read More] ( May 22 2009, 05:45:19 PM CDT ) Permalink

Tuesday April 28, 2009

GNOME Shell on OpenSolaris GNOME Shell on OpenSolaris [Read More] ( Apr 28 2009, 07:20:43 PM CDT ) Permalink Comments [3]

Friday March 27, 2009

OpenSolaris Multimedia Improvements

The multimedia experience in OpenSolaris has improved so greatly since Solaris 10 that it is worth taking a look at the improvements in the latest OpenSolaris releases. Especially for people who have an interest or need for good multimedia support. Solaris 10 shipped with GNOME 2.6, GStreamer 0.8, and only a few GStreamer-based applications, such as totem. Aside from a lack of applications, the user experience on Solaris 10 is further hindered by the fact that most popular non-free media formats are not supported.

After investing a good deal of effort, the experience when using OpenSolaris is a world of difference. OpenSolaris now includes GStreamer 0.10, which supports Fluendo's popular media codecs. You can purchase licensed media codecs from them to play popular formats such as Windows Media (audio and video), MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and MP3 audio. Their MP3 audio plugin is available at no charge, which is nice.

OpenSolaris now supports a more rich set of GStreamer-based multimedia applications, including Songbird and rhythmbox, so it is now possible to organize and play an audio library on OpenSolaris. With codecs from Fluendo, totem is far more useful for playing video files. Fluendo's new media program, elisa, has been added to the upcoming 09.06 release and it provides a rich new interface for interacting with both audio and video.

The OpenSolaris 09.06 release also includes codeina. This program makes it easier to update OpenSolaris so it supports most popular non-free media. For example, if a person tries to play any media with a GStreamer-based program, and if a codec is not available on the system to play that media format, then codeina checks to see if there is a Fluendo plugin available to play it. If so, then codeina steps the user through the process of downloading and installing the needed codec. Once purchased, then the program will just go ahead and play the media file immediately. Of course, that media format will then be supported by all GStreamer-based programs.

I hope that people who try the latest OpenSolaris releases find it to be a much more positive multimedia experience. Feedback is welcome. Let us know on the desktop-discuss@opensolaris.org mailing list if you run into any issues or have comments.

We are not done working yet. Probable the most significant remaining issue with multimedia in OpenSolaris is that it still does not support playing DVD's. Fluendo promises that they will soon make available a DVD playback application, so hopefully that will address this issue in the near future.

Also, the OpenSolaris Desktop team is working to integrate more exciting applications in future OpenSolaris releases. Work is currently underway to integrate OSS into Solaris, though this will not make the 2009.06 release. Once that is done, we are considering making the popular audcaity Audio multitracking editor available. We are also planning to add the coherence Python module to add UPnP support to OpenSolaris and the jokosher audio multitracking program application. So, there are a lot of exciting reasons to look forward in terms of OpenSolaris multimedia support also.

Wednesday October 11, 2006

Boston GNOME Summit The leaves are changing color in New England following the Boston GNOME Summit [Read More] ( Oct 11 2006, 10:38:40 AM CDT ) Permalink

Wednesday September 20, 2006

Solaris and the desktop market Is JDS an alternative to other popular desktops? [Read More] ( Sep 20 2006, 08:16:49 PM CDT ) Permalink Comments [3]

Monday September 18, 2006

GNOME 2.16 GNOME 2.16 coming soon to a Solaris machine near you [Read More] ( Sep 18 2006, 02:33:30 PM CDT ) Permalink Comments [1]

Friday June 30, 2006

Hi To Everyone Wrapping Up At GUADEC! What I Have Been Doing Lately [Read More] ( Jun 30 2006, 08:50:39 PM CDT ) Permalink

Friday May 12, 2006

Another beautiful day GNOME Interface Stability [Read More] ( May 12 2006, 02:10:37 PM CDT ) Permalink

Tuesday March 14, 2006

Solaris ARC and GDM 2.14 ARC is ongoing... [Read More] ( Mar 14 2006, 12:41:47 AM CST ) Permalink Comments [1]

Tuesday January 24, 2006

ARC and GStreamer 0.10 integrated into OpenSolaris at long last... [Read More] ( Jan 24 2006, 07:43:43 PM CST ) Permalink Comments [1]

Monday December 26, 2005

GDM Configuration Overhaul looks good [Read More] ( Dec 26 2005, 08:53:06 PM CST ) Permalink Comments [2]

Wednesday December 07, 2005

GDM Performance Improvements ...at the Sun GNOME Performance Summit [Read More] ( Dec 07 2005, 11:03:01 AM CST ) Permalink Comments [3]

Thursday December 01, 2005

Sun Desktop Summit! Woo-hoo! It's great to finally have some face-to-face time with everyone! [Read More] ( Dec 01 2005, 01:51:40 AM CST ) Permalink Comments [5]

Tuesday November 15, 2005

Gstreamer and about-me and some GDM work too [Read More] ( Nov 15 2005, 07:02:30 PM CST ) Permalink Comments [4]