More Maverick Meerkat-Mania: Ubuntu 10.10 thoughts continued

MacBook, coffee mug, and cactus

Last updated on December 10th, 2021

Screenshot of VLC in Ubuntu 10.10A week and a half into Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat)…

I’ve been trying to give Empathy a go as an instant messaging client, despite previous versions in earlier Ubuntu updates disappointing me. While it seems to have improved a bit, it still lacks one feature I occasionally use, file transfers within Yahoo IM. I would think this should’ve been a higher priority than webcam support, though that’s important, too. While I’ve installed Pidgin (the more mature, full-featured previous client, which Empathy’s replaced), I’m still trying to give Empathy a fair chance.

Totem, the default Ubuntu video player, still has the same issues that 10.04 had regarding subtitles. Despite turning them off, Totem still displays a “Chapter 1” subtitle on my ripped video files, even those I didn’t rip captions for. Setting the subtitle menu feature from “auto” to “off” results in, when playing a playlist, being unable to skip ahead to the next video on the list. Thus, I’ve recently decided to switch the default video player to VLC, a popular multi-platform video player (available for Windows, OS X and Linux; screenshot of Ubuntu’s version shown here), to play video files. VLC’s quite flexible and powerful. While the interface isn’t as clean or simple as Totem’s, VLC’s working pretty smoothly.

Anthony Dean

Anthony Dean is the owner of Diverse Tech Geek and Diverse Media Notes.

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