If you run 64-bit Linux and use Second Life, chances are that you are having to get along without streaming media. (Fedora has RPMs for installing 32-bit gstreamer libraries on 64-bit systems, and worst case you can peek at the URL for streaming audio and fire up VLC or something in another window.)
That's been true for a long time; as far as I know, as long as there's been a Linux SL client. More recently, a problem's shown up for 64-bit and 32-bit Linux: VWR-28846, "Viewer 3.3.1 freezes on picture taking attempt". There are actually two issues here. On 32-bit Linux, it freezes after a complaint about PCRE (a library that implements Perl-style regular expressions) not being compiled with UTF-8 (a common Unicode encoding, which some, me included, think should be used everywhere). On 64-bit Linux, it freezes after a complaint about /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/menuproxies/libappmenu.so being a 64-bit library.
People, me included, have been clamoring for full 64-bit Linux support for quite some time--we're coming up on the third anniversary of the JIRA entry asking for 64-bit support--with no result save for third-party clients such as Imprudence (and Kokua someday, I hope!) and ArminW's Teapot. Not having streaming media cuts one off from an important part of SL, i.e. live performance, but the existence of kludges, I suppose, lets one rationalize. Not being able to save snapshots, though, is a lot harder to ignore. If Linden Lab only fixes that problem for 32-bit Linux, pulling 64-bit Linux users out from under the bus and throwing us under again, at the very least they'll be guaranteeing we'll give up on the LL client.
1 comment:
It seems LL doesn't care anything but the money. I never understood why LL programmers (who get a salary for their work) cannot fix bugs and third-party programmers, that doesn't get money (at least directly), can.
I use 32-bit Linux, but I've always used Phoenix/Firestorm because It gives me a lot of features that the official client doesn't give, like the "Local Bitmap Browser" It's something ESSENTIAL for designers.
If third-party viewers didn't exist probably I wouldn't be in Second Life...
Let's see if someday LL listen to the users and fix the important bugs and I would change of mind, meanwhile third-party viewers is the best choice to connect to SL, IMHO.
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