CrunchBang - Code, Design & GNU/Linux

9 Responses to “Ubuntu On The BBC”

1. shirtees.net wrote, Sunday, May 18th, 2008

   "Sorry, this programme is only available to play in the UK"

   Any easy way to get around this?

2. Philip wrote, Sunday, May 18th, 2008

   @shirtees.net: I guessed the BBC's iPlayer service was UK only, but I forgot to mention it, sorry. I think you can also watch the programme from the Click website, it is available in Windows Media or Real Player formats; hence the mini rant. Good luck :)

3. gord wrote, Sunday, May 18th, 2008

   i think the bbc are slowly switching everything over to the iplayer, radio streams, video streams, everything. just taking a while. iruno why the bbc doesn't just fund gnash to the point at which gnash can play iplayer stuff nativly nicely really (like what google did with google earth and photoshop)

4. Vincent wrote, Sunday, May 18th, 2008

   Too bad iPlayer is UK only. Using [1] I could open it in VLC but it's terribly low quality :(

   [1] mms://a981.v37374d.c37374.g.vm.akamaistream.net/7/981/37374/1.0/clipdownloads.bbc.co.uk/realmedia/news/media/avdb/news/science_nature/video/173000/nb/173958_16x9_nb.wmv

5. James wrote, Monday, May 19th, 2008

   RealPlayer not supported on Linux? What are you talking about?

   For this format, Linux users are treated exactly the same as Windows users; we have to go and download the player from Real's website. http://www.real.com/linux

6. Philip wrote, Monday, May 19th, 2008

   @James: A few points to think about:

   1. I did not say that Real Player was not supported, rather that it is not supported particularly well, there is a difference. By this, I mean it is not provided by many [if any?] Linux distributions in their standard package repositories.

   2. While it may not be difficult for power users to install Real Player, I think regular users would maybe struggle. Personally, I cannot remember the last time I had to download and install an executable binary; which either says a lot about the current state of Linux and how far it has come, or how poorly supported Real Player is.

   3. Correct me if I am wrong, but reading left-to-right on the BBC's media options page, is Windows Media not the first option? While Real Player may not be installed as standard on either Windows or Linux, Windows Media player certainly is installed by default on Windows.

7. jerichokb wrote, Monday, May 19th, 2008

   Not a bad introduction to free software, except for two things that bugged me:

   1. Apparently OpenOffice.org Base is compatible with MS Access. It's not.

   2. Too much focus on the 'They're trying to upsell you' interview. Not helpful for OO.o and Ubuntu, or Firefox of course.

   Also, I think, there wasn't a clear enough distinction between free software and open source software. But then, I'm a bit of a pedant.

8. shirtees.net wrote, Monday, May 19th, 2008

   Excellent! Thanks. I learn new stuff everyday. Great blog.

9. Matogrosso wrote, Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

   Kubuntu is my main desktop both at home and at work. The BBC website works fine for me. Iplayer is OK as well for watching, not for downloading programs though.

   I have dual boot with Windows but I boot linux most of the times. From Kubuntu I open the Windows documents on the Windows partition with open office, edit them and save them in Microsoft Office format. No problem.