From: Daniel Pittman
Date: 15:15 on 21 Apr 2006
Subject: gstreamer
Having recently converted a computer used by a family member from
Windows to Linux[1], things have gone smoothly. More so, in fact, than
I expected.
Except in one painful, hateful, evil way. KUbuntu, the distribution
that I chose, is nice -- but it uses the horrible GNOME gstreamer
multimedia infrastructure by default, because that is what Ubuntu do.
Which would be great, except that none of the gstreamer audio output
options work. At all. Except to abort the running process after they
complain about this.
This is especially annoying when a gstreamer based application registers
itself as the first preference plugin for embedded media *without*
showing up on the list of plugins.
So, after hitting that with a heavy rock ^W^W set of preferences for a
while and getting /that/ issue resolved, I try another bit of software
to get downloaded audio working, now that embedded streaming does.
All the options for playing back content use gstreamer -- of course --
is I have the choice of the movie player (no audio device, abort!) or
the iTunes alike music player. (hey, audio. whadaya know?)
Then, gstreamer gets to show more hate: play the audio to verify that
things work, and be happy -- they do. Exit the application. Listen to
the next thirty seconds of audio as gstreamer, presumably, runs through
the decoded buffer in the background and finally exits with the
"something broke" sound. (No error message, of course.)
Whee, plenty to hate there. Next try: switch between tracks, and hey,
nothing is happening. Hit the button to pause playback and, wow,
playback actually starts for no comprehensible reason.
Worse, I /know/ that all of these applications can run reliably, produce
high quality sound without these stupid problems. I have them running
myself, and working without hate.
I just can't apply the fix here, which is to get rid of hateful
gstreamer and use the xine engine instead, because the machine only has
a dial-up modem attached, and 20MB at 3KB/s is a little more than I can
take the time to get through...
In conclusion, let me just say: gstreamer, I hate you. GNOME, you
wretched pathetic attempt to introduce the complexity and inflexibility
of Windows to Linux, I hate you for causing gstreamer to form from the
=E6ther.=20=20
Gah!
Daniel
Footnotes:=20
[1] ...because the other options were having to clean up another virus
infestation, or having to pass on it and let someone else suffer.
--=20
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