Multimedia Support in Fedora 12

Why doesn’t Fedora support MP3 ‘out of the box’?

Fedora cannot include support for MP3 or DVD video playback or recording. MP3 formats are patented, and the patent holders have not provided the necessary licenses. Fedora also excludes other multimedia software due to patent, copyright, or license restrictions, such as Adobe Flash Player and RealNetworks RealPlayer.

That doesn’t mean you can’t play .mp3 files in Fedora, it just takes a bit of work (not much).

Follow these instructions to get mp3 and other multimedia support on your Fedora 11.
Open a terminal and become root, then run this command:

rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

Now, Install all other plug ins..

# yum -y install gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-plugins-ugly xine-lib-extras-nonfree

After successful installation, open Amarok or any other multimedia player and try to play the mp3 file and see if all goes fine and you are able to hear the music.

XMMS
To install xmms and make it MP3-capable, start by doing this:

# yum install xmms xmms-mp3

MPEG, QuickTime, AVI, and DVDs
MPEG (the format used on DVDs) represents itself as an open standard, but most Linux distributions won't ship software that read it because of blocking patents held by MPEGLA. AVI and Apple QuickTime have proprietary codecs covered by patents, so most Linux distributions won't ship software that decodes them, either.

Unfortunately, the alternate front end xine is even more broken. It can be installed this way:

# yum install xine xine-lib libdvdcss

Doing this will also install a number of support libraries, including the libdvdcss plugin

Disable WGA Notification

1. Click on Start>My Computer.
2. Type the following text into the address bar at the top of the page C:\WINDOWS\system32
3. Locate the file called WgaTray or WgaTray.exe and click on it once.
4. Press the shift+delete keys (this combination will automatically delete the files completely off your PC instead of to the Recycle Bin) but don’t confirm the deletion yet.
5. Right click on a non-occupied area of the taskbar and select Task Manager.
   Click on the Processes tab at the top.
6. Select the process called WgaTray.exe and click the end process button at the bottom and click yes to confirm the process termination.
7. Confirm the delete of the WgaTray that you semi-deleted earlier (this must be done almost immediately after the process termination because it will re-open itself quickly so it’s a good idea to have the deletion confirmation window open behind the task manager for fast access).
8. Restart your PC.
9. In the system32 folder that was opened earlier, find and select the file called WgaLogon.dll and drag it into the Recycle Bin (located on the Desktop).
10. Empty your Recycle Bin.
11. Restart your PC and the Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications Tool shouldn’t run anymore so now you have completely hassle free Windows XP usage.

How to Disable/Enable the Windows XP Welcome Screen

1. Click on Start.
2. Click on Control Panel.
3. Double-click on User Accounts.
4. Click on "Change the way users log on or off".
5. Uncheck "Use the Welcome Screen".
6. Click on Apply Options.
7. Close the User Accounts window and the Control Panel.
8. The next time you reboot your computer, the classic login prompt will be used.