Does this guide also apply to Fedora 38?
RPMFusion repositories are enabled during installation but I don’t know if all these packages are automatically installed and if there can be package conflicts.
Thankyou
Nothing has fundamentally changed since Fedora 37.
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So I can copy/paste without problems?
That depends on the patent situation in your country. See “Warning” on the docs page you linked.
If you decide no problem, the easiest is to enable rpmfusion free and non-free (Configuration - RPM Fusion), and then sudo dnf install vlc, which brings along all codecs you will ever need.
In addition to the docs, see Howto/Multimedia - RPM Fusion
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Ok, I prefer not to install further repositories. I prefer Fedora recommended repositories. If I run the commands listed in the guide which missing packages would be installed?
Further than what?
I mean that I don’t want to install more repositories than those recommended and already installed by Fedora during installation. So I won’t be adding any more non-free repositories other than the ones I already have for Nvidia and Steam. That said, I don’t understand why the packages for openh264 and lame aren’t installed by default.
Then you won’t get any nonfree codecs. Fedora does only ship free software.
(neither do nvidia and steam repos you mention provide them).
see OpenH264 - Fedora Project Wiki, you can simply enable and install from it in Fedora.
lame is in Fedora repo: Overview - rpms/lame - src.fedoraproject.org, it’s free software
For more information what Fedora can ship, see:
Good part, once you enable rpmfusion-free and -nonfree, you can disable rpmfusion’s nvidia and steam repo. it’s included.
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Exact! I want to use only free software without licensing issues. So by giving the 3 commands in the guide at the top of this discussion I should only get codecs/plugins that have a free license, am I right? (I repeat that I have no intention of activating non-free repositories)
If I try to use that sudo commands, this is the packages install list:
gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free
gstreamer1-plugin-libav
gstreamer1-plugin-ugly-free
gstreamer1-plugins-good-extras
gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free-fluidsynth
gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free-extras
gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free-zbar
gstreamer1-plugin-openh264
gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free-wildmidi
lame
…and their dependencies
Let me just ask you two more questions:
- Why aren’t these free plugins installed by default?
- Why is the gstreamer1-vaapi plugin not installed? I don’t think hardware video acceleration will work without this plugin.
The answer is that “free” depends on the definition. They are not free enough to be included in Fedora (potentially license and/or patent encumbered)
It’s in Fedora’s repo, you can install it without additional repos: Overview - rpms/gstreamer1-vaapi - src.fedoraproject.org
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Thanks so much for all the clarifications!
Yes and No.
The rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver and rpmfusion-nonfree-steam repos are available upon a fedora install. The rpmfusion-free and rpmfusion-nonfree repos are not.
Which always puzzles me a lot…
So steam and nvidia repos are non free (otherwise they would be included in standard official Fedora repo), but you can enable them with ease from rpmfusion.
Whereas codecs are also non free, but for them you need to go through the manual hassle.
… and flathub is enabled as flatpak repo (remote) by deafult, which hosts a lot of non-free software.
Fedora has a somewhat inconsistent approach to 3rd party repos these days.
I guess from my point of view that fedora works with rpmfusion (or vice versa) so that the packages are consistent and ‘play nice in the same sandbox’. This still does not solve the timing issues of updates which may be out of sync.
Fedora mostly has maintainers & developers that test and verify that all fedora distributed dependent packages remain compatible before the package is removed from the testing repo and pushed to the update repo.
Since rpmfusion is 3rd party then fedora is not obligated to ensure that packages from rpmfusion are in sync before pushing fedora packages out. It is the responsibility of the rpmfusion maintainers to keep their packages up to date and in sync with fedora so timing issues do occasionally occur.
Sometimes the timing becomes a ‘gotcha’ for users, but as long as the user is patient, is usually solved within at most a few days.
The only certain way to avoid this is to never use 3rd party repos. Even when only using fedora repos and packages there may be (infrequent but real) similar issues with out-of-sync updates in pulling packages from fedora mirrors. The mirror may be in the middle of an update when the user does their update. Again, patience and understanding is critical.