Multimedia codecs

[malonn]

I'm wondering the most comprehensive package to get for my Fedora 38 installation that covers multimedia codecs? Specifically, I want to play h264 and h265 MKVs. I know I can get a media player like VLC or MPlayer, but they are packed with functionality that I will not use. I like the minimalist approach of Dragon Player. I really don't watch movies much on my computer, too (but I have hundreds of rips from my personal old disc library).

Is gstreamer the way to go? Does it cover all modern codecs? Is there something better that deals mostly in h264 or h265? Would you argue to scrap Dragon Player and get a media player that ships with codecs?

Thanks for any advice.

 

[f33dm3bits]

Howto/Multimedia - RPM Fusion

 

[malonn]

Cool, cool, @f33dm3bits
But officially Red Hat recommends against RPM. Thoughts? I know in "mainline" 37, Fedora actually gave you the automated option to add those repositories on a fresh install.

 

[f33dm3bits]

RPMfusion is a trusted third-party repo, 99% of the people that use Fedora use it. I don't know if it was possible before through the GUI. I always enabled RPMfusion myself but could be, you can enable them yourself.

Configuration - RPM Fusion

Quoting from the RPMfusion multimedia page.

Using the rpmfusion-free section This is needed since Fedora 37 and later... and mainly concern AMD hardware since NVIDIA hardware with nouveau doesn't work well

So if you have an Nvidia graphics card you should be fine without these installed, if you have an AMD graphics card you should install the advised packages the Multimedia page I linked earlier.

 

[f33dm3bits]

FAQ - RPM Fusion

How can I trust that RPM Fusion will work with the Fedora project?
Most RPM Fusion developers are also actively involved in the Fedora project and make sure that RPM Fusion interacts properly with the distributions from Fedora. The contributors also do their best to maintain a the same quality as official Fedora packages.

 

[malonn]

Roger that. That's the right on. If nothing else, it opens up available software to the OS.

Thanks, dude.

 

[Deleted member 147986]

"officially Red Hat recommends against RPM" isn't that their file format? I remember starting with Red Hat 5.2 somewhere in the 90s and it seems weird they're somehow now moving away from rpm.

 

[dos2unix]

But officially Red Hat recommends against RPM.

Huh?

 

[f33dm3bits]

and it seems weird they're somehow now moving away from rpm.

I haven't seen any information or redhat article that would indicate they are moving away from rpm.

 

[wendy-lebaron]

But officially Red Hat recommends against RPM. Thoughts?

I think what is really being said is they're trying to discourage the use of dnf, urpmi and other such command-line programs.

Because none of the distro-makers in that family and related ones like Mageia, OpenSUSE, PCLinuxOS and ROSA don't want anybody to see how ponderous one of those command-line package manager works. At least for me, even the "distro upgrade" from Fedora 36 to 37 was slower than I could ever update anything Arch-based and on some days, equal to updating on Debian thanks largely to the "initramfs" antics on the latter. On Debian as much as five times for over five minutes per run, and it could fail.

Installing AppImage, Flatpak or Snaps for an application such as Libre Office, instead of looking to do it from the command line, seems to be good advice to newbies to RPM-based distros. But I don't want to add to the misinformation.

 

[f33dm3bits]

I think what is really being said is they're trying to discourage the use of dnf, urpmi and other such command-line programs.

Where are have you read that Redhat would discourage the use of dnf? I have not yet read any article that would suggest that, not even on Redhat's own blog.

At least for me, even the "distro upgrade" from Fedora 36 to 37 was slower than I could ever update anything Arch-based and on some days.

That comparison is an apples and oranges comparison because Arch(and most Arch-based distributions) are rolling release and Fedora is a point release distribution. With Arch you get constant updates and with Fedora you are going from one major version to the next so you get a lot of more updates during a major upgrade than when you running normal updates as all Arch updates are part of it's normal updates.

 

[wendy-lebaron]

Where did you get the impression Fedora is point-release? There is no difference to me, with having to update although the frequency might be different. Fedora might be like Manjaro but I haven't gotten up to notice it, nor do I care right now. I don't think you have really stayed with Fedora and an Arch-based thing like EndeavourOS for three months or longer like I have. There was no difference in update frequency -- once a week, or less time between updates.

I used to have Fedora 36 with XFCE on my machine last year. Was updating it as frequently as EndeavourOS MATE about six months later. Had to replace both of them with Manjaro MATE which is "somewhat relaxed" even though I check around now and then, or I take notice of Distrowatch front page.

Fair enough about dnf but from my experience it was very slow on any RPM-based distro I had to use it in especially obtaining "synthesized" repository information. I have a slow Internet connection which compounded the problem. On any Arch-based distro this was rarely a problem. Recently I made a problem out of not updating ArcoLinux for over two months which forced me to reinstall it.

The heck I had to go through getting "synthesized" information broke the deal totally for me out of Mageia "Cauldron" a short time ago. Somehow I didn't suffer this on ROSA; instead it was generally very slow doing anything with dnf at the command line.

Sorry for off-topic rant, I will not post anymore to reply to something not having to do with the codecs. I was just expressing an opinion.

 

[dos2unix]

Where did you get the impression Fedora is point-release?

Fedora does have version numbers for every specific release, the current version is 38.
While it is a rolling release in the sense you can upgrade it every six months or so.

Fair enough about dnf but from my experience it was very slow on any RPM-based distro I had to use it in especially obtaining "synthesized" repository information. I have a slow Internet connection which compounded the problem.

Fedora does cache repo information, as does Arch, Ubuntu, Debian, and most other distro's.

There was no difference in update frequency -- once a week, or less time between updates.

Sometimes I get multiple updates in one day, sometimes I don't get any updates at all for 2 or 3 days.
Most of the updates do not require a reboot, so they rarely affect me.

I don't think you have really stayed with Fedora and an Arch-based thing like EndeavourOS for three months or longer like I have.

I can't speak for Malonn, but I've been using it over 10 years. RPMs for over 20 years.
Fedora does have frequent updates, but if you want to go LTS use Redhat ( RHEL ) or Rocky,
or Alma. They are all Fedora based, and the updates are much less frequent. Also you generally
don't have to upgrade ever 6 to 12 months.
Also while Fedora tends to stay closer to the bleeding edge than many other distro's it's usually a few
weeks or months behind Arch when it comes to having the latest and greatest.

 

[dos2unix]

The other option is to go with a version of Fedora that already has all the multimedia drivers and codecs pre-installed.

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