Everyday Linux gripes

As you already know, if I have to sit down in front of a computer, I want it to be running the Gnome desktop on Linux. I've watched it mature from a downright ugly, needlessly complex playground for geeks, to an attractive, simple interface that holds its own against commercial alternatives. And yet, every day I still encounter rough edges that make me think there aren't nearly enough folks out there hacking away at this stuff. I'd like to watch.

Take, for instance, the fact that I still have troubles playing any sort of rich media (usually video) in my Web browser. It doesn't matter whether I use Mozilla Firefox or one of the two native Gnome browsers, Epiphany and Galeon (see FIGURE 1), both of which use Firefox's rendering engine. Much of the time, if a Web page wants to serve me a video, I'm out of luck.

There are several reasons why. The first is that we still have competing standards for streaming video. On a Windows box, you've generally got to install three different video players (QuickTime, Real, and Windows Media - all with their own browser plug-ins) to confidently approach a video-laden site. Only Real offers a Linux player, so it's fallen to community coders to fill in the gaps - which they've done pretty well, all things considered.

Gnome's Totem media player can hook up to the video-playing engines of both the GStreamer and Xine projects. Both engines can play all three varieties of Web video when fed the proper codecs.

But getting Totem to embed itself in a browser and play video in-place on a Web page? Well, there's a way to make it happen, but it's not airtight.