Sun Puts OpenSolaris on Multimedia Course

Mar 30, 2009

The free OpenSolaris UNIX derivative from Sun has not exactly been known for its multimedia capabilities. This should soon change.

According to a Sun blog entry from Brian Cameron, the next big release of Open Solaris 2009.06 should support multimedia formats over GStreamer 0.10 and the related Fluendo codecs from the not so free world. Thus OpenSolaris 2009.06 will provide a plug-in framework similar to what Ubuntu has been doing for a while: if the user tries to play an unsupported file type, a notice appears that the necessary components are available for sale or are downloadable. Sun is using the Codeina source code from the Fedora project for purposes of notification and codec downloads.

The GStreamer update also brings with it support for a few new programs, among them the Songbird player, Rhythmbox music management application, and Fluendo's Elisa media center.

Although GStreamer allows a slew of formats, the framework lacks the components for playing DVDs. Cameron assures us that Fluendo promises to make DVD playback available soon. The OpenSolaris team is also working on integrating the Audacity and Jokosher multitracking editors.

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Comments

  • OpenSolaris and DVD playback

    DVD playback is a MUST. If OpenSolaris was just for servers (and it is) well then who cares about DVD playback,...
    The point is Sun can't put OpenSolaris in the PC/Desktop/Home Computing Market Mode without "mutimedia" playback abilities. -of "ALL" kinds.
    Games too. I don';t care if they have to rebuild "Wine" from scratch, but Sun has to realize that its either all "Windows/Apple" applicabilty, or its nuthin' !

    Would anyone like an OpenSolaris like that?
    yup.
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