[64studio-devel] 'Totem' not playing ANY file here

[R.Wolff]

Hi there again,
be prepared to see many a posts from me here, since I'm really new to
Linux systems- Even though I DO read manuals (The Debian Reference
Handbook etc..), 'how to's' and so on, everything still seems sooo
complicated. I hope you don't mind me asking more 'general' questions,
i.e. not always 100% related to 64studio maybe. If you do, feel free to
tell me so and I'll STFU. :D

Back to the topic then:
Totem (or any other 'media'player) doesn't play ANY media file on my PC,
be it .avi, ogg, mp3 or whatever. I've added the official debian repo to
the sources list ('Stable' & 'Non-US') and have installed xmms to test,
with no succes.
The message I get is in german and says something like 'Couldn't open
ressource to write'.
The settings in the multimedia-system config dialog are:

AUDIO OUT:
[x] Autodetect
[ ] Alsa
[ ] OSS
[ ] User defined

AUDIO IN:
[x] Alsa
[ ] OSS
....

It doesn't matter what I choose, the generated message is always the 
same after clicking the 'test' button.
For 'Video out' at least the test button gives me a color screen
'Video In' produces a 'Video for Linux (v4l): Device "/dev/video0" does 
not exist.' message.

Why does it seem so frickin complicated to include some codecs in every
distro to be able to watch some video files or to listen to some mp3's.
I really like and share the idea of open_source et all, but there are
some 'defacto' standards set by these formats, whether you like it or
not. So, not being able to watch embedded media while browsing the web,
no .mov support, no 'realtime' (not really dramatic to miss this one),
no 'Quicktime', flashplayer shows me the pictures, but doesn't give me
any sound. It's all so frustrating.

And why is it, when I try to install some other music apps from the
debian stable repo i.e., 64studio WILL NOT install certain dependencies.
I guess it's to avoid breaking some substantial functions?
And for some packages Synaptic says that in order to install xxx, you
first have to unistall:
....(giving me almost the full list of 64studio applications)???

So somebody please help me watching my .avi or .mov files and listen to
my mp3 collection.

TIA
Raphael