Nothing wrong with the article, but I was expecting... optimizations. It seems to instead be a list of additional software your average desktop user may find useful.
Doesn't seem like a very useful article. DVD playback, etc, are givens....even for people new to ubuntu (you'll find the info with any google search). And is amarok really that much better than rhythmbox? Seems a bit KDE oriented.
I have issues with Ubuntu. When I switched to a Unix based environment 12 years ago, I did what was expected of anyone at that time. I read up and learned about my environment. It seems that users (end users that is) simply do not think that these things should be their concern. That Linux should just do everything out of the box. While I am all for the simplification of Linux for the masses, understanding that software patents, copyrights, and intellectual property (in the US mind you) is being infringed upon by following guides like these is important.
Ubuntu is basically encouraging such acts by offering these "solutions" in their repositories. There are commercial solutions that could be explored which would provide legal solutions. I understand that they are trying to "grow their brand", but it seems a rather unethical way to do it.
What copyright is being infringed by something that is in the ubuntu repositories?
Perhaps they are just mainly providing their solutions to people like me who don't live in countries with ass-backwards IP laws? You cannot seriously expect that a company that isn't based in the US and isn't hosting their stuff in US is going to have to follow US patent law for products offered to people out of US?
As far as I know, any potentially patent-infringing stuff is kept very far from US-based servers.
