switching to linux, worth it?

[hummus19]

been tossing the idea around for a while about using linux as a second operating system. now that i have my dvd burner, i have a question:

would it be worth the time to use linux to encode video? everything ive ever heard/read is that linux is less imposing on system resources, hence quicker. if this is true, is there a distro that is geared more to this type of task?

im sorry if my ignorace on this subject is overwhelming!
thanks for your time...

hummus19@cswebmail.com

[TactX]

Originally posted by hummus19
would it be worth the time to use linux to encode video? everything ive ever heard/read is that linux is less imposing on system resources, hence quicker. if this is true, is there a distro that is geared more to this type of task?
Linux is not necessarily quicker than Windows. That mainly depends on your setup (like which desktop environment or windowmanager you want to use, ...).

AFAIK there is no distribution that is aiming for video encoding. But there are lots of tools and very good, fast encoders (mplayer/mencoder).

I suppose you want to encode mpeg-2, right? A discussion on that can be found here. (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=58850)

[libredr]

Personnally, I encode two times faster under Linux with xvid or ffmpeg than with xvid under Windows. Moreover, you can tweak more the encoding parameters. There is a learning curve, though, but with distributions nowadays, it is not a big deal.

[hummus19]

ok, i know before i even ask this, the response that im going to get.

of the major distros, is there one or two that stand out as far as being "relatively easy to learn" and "powerful" enough to be an alternative to windows xp?

lets narrow this down to (but obviously not limited to) the 3 ive even heard of, Suse, RedHat, and Mandrake. Ive already d/l Redhat, but if someone thinks i should go in another direction, all advice would be GREATLY appreciated.

thanks for your time.

hummus19

[TactX]

I think RedHat is just fine for newbies. I've tested RedHat 9 some weeks ago, and for me it is one of the easiest installation I've ever seen.

But for a newbie all of these distribution you mentioned are just fine.

If you have finished your RedHat installation you should check out the fedora project (http://fedora.mplug.org/index-main.html). There you will find a nice tool ("apt") to install and to manage ("Synaptic") some very interesting packages like mplayer, XviD and other stuff.

[libredr]

Mandrake is very user-friendly too, thanks to the installer (rpmdrake/urpmi) which solves automatically dependencies : you add "sources" (software packages that are on CD or on a distant FTP server), and using a GUI to select softwares, you can then search and install in a couple of clicks any software among descriptions, it downloads automatically the packages or asks you to put this or that CD and install them for you. You may also use the console command urpmi for that. I wrote a guide about it : http://www.zebulon.org.uk

[mikeX]

i started out with SuSE 8.1 (still using them at the moment, gonna change to Debian soon though), i found them really user friendly and yast (their package installation and system control utility) is quite easy to use. i heard from a friend that tried red hat 9 for a brief time that they did not (at least natively) support mp3 playback!! so watch out for such things.

i have to say though that keeping clear from major (& usually more commercially orientated) distributions is advised! they may be more easy to install and more user friendly at start but as you start to get more into gnu/linux (and gnu in general) they will probably not suffice... plus their development usually has profit as motivation, something not really true to the GNU spirit... (at least the way i see things)

u should try Debian as an alternative

[TactX]

Originally posted by mikeX
i heard from a friend that tried red hat 9 for a brief time that they did not (at least natively) support mp3 playback!! so watch out for such things.

That's right. But with fedore (link i my previous post) you can easily install the necessary libs and lots of other stuff you need for A/V.

Debian is great! I use it myself. But it's definetely not a good start for newbies :rolleyes:

[gotaserena]

I've had little problems with redhat 9. Instalation was done in about 30mins (old P3 with 2 cpus). If nothing else you can download wine and run virtualdub and AVISynth just like you did in windows. The lack of mp3 was swiftly solved by downloading the mp3 package.

I would like to hear more about xvid for linux. Where did you install it from?

[ultimatebilly]

Have a look here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=57796), TactX provided a link to a package for debian, I think Redhat has support for Debian-packages!?
The other possibility is to compile the sources...
You can get the sources from the xvid homepage or from CVS...
I wasn't able to get XviD to work with mencoder myself, but I didn't really try, because I had almost no time in the last few weeks...
It compiled fine, but mplayer didn't find the libraries during configuration...
I will try again the next few days, hope you have more luck...

[TactX]

Originally posted by gotaserena
I would like to hear more about xvid for linux. Where did you install it from?
I got it from the fedora project. But it seems like some (many) packages have beeb removed from their list (including mplayer, XviD and transcode) :(

[mikeX]

i think that any sort of package (rpm for Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE &more - deb for Debian) can be supported as long as you have its corresponding package installer application (i thing dpackage for deb, can't really remember) regardless of the distro...: )