[MPlayer-users] Why not make an installer?

[Martin]

> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> On Sun, 21 Dec 2003 21:38:18 +0200
>
> Martin <lagitus at mbnet.fi> wrote:
> > [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> > MPlayer is certainly an impressive piece of software but the difficulties
> > of installing it along with all the different codecs, fonts, GUIs etc.
> > are IMO keeping potential users away from it and hinder moving to Linux
> > entirely. Since making a RPM-type installable binary package for all
> > distros is not possible, why not make an installer?
>
> Yes, it's quite hard to read, understand and follow a README.
> I can understand that over 200 lines with over 1300 words are
> tedious to read. Especialy in a world where everything is being
> laid infront of our feet ready to use.
> Sorry, no. MPlayer is not hard to install especialy not the fonts
> windows dll and GUI skins, it's just another step to be done,
> nothing difficult there. What is difficult is to read the documentation
> and understand that MPlayer as software and the MPlayer Development Team
> expects you to have at least some minimal clue about what you are doing
> and that you at at least read the part of the documentation concerning
> the installation. If you are not able to do that you are better
> off with using something else as you will have a hard time using
> MPlayer anyways.
>
> > An installer like Loki Games' (also used by Unreal Tournament 2003 and
> > some other games) could solve this problem nicely. It could have
> > checkboxes for installing different codecs and display the necessary
> > licenses for each separately. Since better performance is gained when
> > compiling the software oneself, the installer could do that as well. It
> > could have scripts for finding necessary configure paths (like
> > --with-gtk-config) and a field for custom configure flags for more
> > advanced users.
>
> What's hard about ./configure && make && make install ?
> Oh right, there is no graphical installer showing you nice pics and
> telling you what mplayer can do while compiling.
> Heck, why would anyone want to spend his free time to write something
> like this when the current solution is already good ?
> Yes, we aim for world domination, like everyone else, but we want to
> have fun doing it. And i can asure you, it's no fun to write silly
> programs so that someone who doesn't have a clue what he's doing
> can run compile and run your programm. We even had to write many
> DAU protections because they couldn't follow the simple rule about
> how to handle code or read the manpage. That wasn't fun at all, but
> it needed to be done because those DAUs keept spaming the mailinglists
> about missing features or bugs which were nothing then plain old PEBCAK.
>
> Look even at this mailinglist, there is hardly a bugreport that does tell
> the minimal information we need to pin down the problem, thus reading
> those "bugreports" is just a waste of time. Even though there is a step
> by step documentation that tells you what to do.
> That's why most of the developers refuse to read this list.
>
> > Using Loki Games' installer would give a half-finished solution along
> > with an update mechanism.
> >
> > I would love to make this myself but I haven't got the skill nor the
> > time.
>
> Then you are out of luck.
>
>
> 				Attila Kinali


I'm not the one who's having trouble. I just think about 50% of the people new 
to Linux would not be able to understand the README or find the different 
codec packs with many files of the same name confusing. Ease of use is part 
of the quality of software. There are many who don't want to spend an hour 
figuring out the README, downloading sperate fonts, guis, codecs etc. and 
tracking down missing dependencies that the distro has installed in an 
unusual location. It's not always as simple as ./configure, make, make 
install. IMO many people don't have the knowledge or patience to go through 
the README. Even if it's not that fun to do it would make MPlayer 
considerably better.