totem-mozilla doesn't work on basically anything

[Patrick Wagstrom]

On almost everything that has embedded media, Firefox tries to launch the totem-mozilla plugin to play the media. The problem is that out of the box totem-mozilla cannot play any of the common media formats on the web. Instead the user is presented with a cryptic error stating that "totem can't play 'fd://0'".

Now, as longtime Linux user, I know that means that it's trying to read an input stream, but I have no idea if it's a codec issue, a stream issue or what. I shudder to think of what my grandmother would think if she saw this.

Here's an idea for a better solution. Don't ship totem-mozilla enabled by default -- at least not for all the media types. Ship a dummy plugin that explains that the media they're trying to view is not in an open format and that patent issue prohibit you shipping a working layer. It's less annoying for a user to be presented with a screen explaining why something doesn't work than to be presented with a screen that's technical jargon.

[Ketil Malde (ketil-ii)]

...better yet, don't let firefox suggest "movie player" (i.e. totem) unless there is good reason to believe it can handle the stream type. I typically have installed xine, amarok, and mplayer, all of which could handle mp3s.

And while I'm at it, you do realize one has to *browse* through /usr/bin if you want firefox to open a different application? There has to be a better way -- how about firefox present the choices from gnome/kde applications menu instead?

I tend to think that this is the single issue that makes Ubuntu less streamlined and newbie-friendly than Certain Other operating systems.

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

Thanks for this suggestion. It's nicely written up and up to the point. However it's not really a totem bug. I think that this would do well in a specification, as it will require changes in a couple of places and it's less easy to track all of this in a bug report. Still you raise a valid point.