[dvd::rip] Re: Poll: How do you install dvd::rip?

My Installation Issues,

(From a newbie perspective)

I started out with a standard installation for Fedora 4. At this point I didn't know anything about apt or yum or anything like that. I download either an RPM or the source code for dvd::rip. First thing I have to do is figure out how to extract the tar.gz file. A google search solves that. Now I end up with an uncompressed folder. I go into the folder and see a bunch more folders and a file called readme. I read it. Nothing much to look at. Next I look at a file called install. It tells me to type ./configure, then make and make install into a command prompt. Ok I open a terminal and do what it says. ./configure says I am missing something. I try it again. Still get the same error. Copy the error message into the google search bar, now I determine that I need to install another program, before I can run ./configure. So now I have to figure out where to get that program from. A few google searches later, I find it. I download it. I decompress it and do the whole ./configure, make, make install thing, but this program tells me I am missing 4 other programs. Now I am a little bit frustrated, but I really want to get dvd::rip installed. I go down the list, downloading each of the 4 programs and installing them. Some are RPM's, some I end up downloading the source from, but finally I get them all installed.

Wheww, glad that is done, so now I go back and try to install the program that I had to install a long time ago because when I ran ./configure while trying to install dvd::rip, it told me I needed it. I figure everything is ok, now I can finally get this program installed and then install dvd::rip. I'm happy when it makes it past the place where it stopped last time, but a second later it stops again and gives me a list of 3 more programs that need to be installed. Each of these programs turn out to be an entire tree of applications, and by the time I am done searching for rpm's and waiting for source code to compile I have spend 16 hours and installed over 45 applications.

I know that dvd::rip only requires a certain number of dependencies, but the point is that each of these dependencies has their own dependencies.

So anyway, I finally get it all working, time to drink a beer!!!

Now I have to learn how to re-encode movies and what format I should save them in and what bitrate I should use and what audio channels I should use and a whole mess of other things.

The program works great except sometimes screen grab didn't work, and when that doesn't work, then I am screwed because I can't re-encode the movie.

Now I am learning more about Linux and I install yum and learn how to use it. I run yum update and everything still works great except dvd::rip starts to fail on certain movies. I guess the transcode version was updated, why they released something that wasn't fully tested is beyond me, but I blame dvd::rip.

************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

That is just a short story about how I started with dvd::rip. I am an expert Windows PC user, new Linux user, and yes I do know how to write code and all that, I am not naive. I am just trying to let you know that if you make this thing so easy to use that anyone could use it, you would have millions, not thousands of users.