I picked up a copy of Sepultura’s Against earlier today and decided to play it on my Kubuntu Linux notebook.
Come to think of it, it’s been a while since I’ve played a CD with my notebook, I usually use my standalone player or just listen to digital music.
Anywho, I put the CD in the drive and what do you know – it can’t read, and hence play, the CD. Now, if this was some weird device driver problem then I’d understand but this is a DVD multi recorder drive perfectly supported under Linux.
The problem?
Well Kubuntu doesn’t link the actual block device with the default location the applications are set to use by default.
The solution?
All you need to do is link the block device to the media location:
$ sudo ln -s /dev/scd0 /media/scd0
Should I have to do that? No.
Should a first-time Linux user have to do that? No.
Would a first-time Linux user know how to do that? No.
Will a first-time Linux user gain a good impression of an operating system that “can’t” play CDs? No.
How many Linux distributions are there? About 1,293,294,932,573,257,329
Is there a lot of duplication of engineering effort? Yes.
Is it better to direct engineering effort into user experience than a new packaging system? Yes.
Is there any reason why Linux can’t equal the usability and device support of Windows and Mac OS X? No.
I yearn for the day when Linux rivals the usability of other consumer operating systems. And that day really shouldn’t be too far away…
