Posted inInformation Technology

Neither Flakon nor Epiphany browsers will play videos

seasoned_geek by seasoned_geek

This is really annoying.

As more and more people and companies attempt to monetize OpenSource we are going to see more and more of this shit. It all has to do with licensing and it is a pain in the ass.

You installed either Falkon or Epiphany (also called Gnome Web) because they are somewhat light and have “private” browsing options that will help you keep your identity. While nothing is actually “safe” on the Web, at least in these modes they purge all of the local storage when you close and they do ask sites to not track you.

For the non-geek, purging of local storage is really important and not just because you might be looking at naughty pictures. Advertisers and nefarious individuals (tomato – tomato) leave a rash of cookies on your computer. If your grandpa asks you to research “hemorrhoids treatment,” even if you use DuckDuckGo so your search history isn’t tracked, every one of the sites you visit is going to stuff a bunch of cookies in your browser.

The next time you surf the Web Google and other nefarious advertising groups will look for those cookies. So, when you and your significant other pop open the browser to plan a romantic get-away (once COVID-19 is over) right next to the romantic hotel shots will be an add for hemorrhoids treatment. Nice, huh?

This little trick will not fix Opera browser not playing videos. There appears to be many miles of broken glass you must crawl naked across to make that work. On Ubuntu 20.04 LTS you can fix these two browsers.

sudo apt install ubuntu-restricted-extras

Every year more and more shit gets moved into “restricted” and “non-free” repos as more and more people/companies try to monetize OpenSource.

Roland Hughes started his IT career in the early 1980s. He quickly became a consultant and president of Logikal Solutions, a software consulting firm specializing in OpenVMS application and C++/Qt touchscreen/embedded Linux development. Early in his career he became involved in what is now called cross platform development. Given the dearth of useful books on the subject he ventured into the world of professional author in 1995 writing the first of the "Zinc It!" book series for John Gordon Burke Publisher, Inc.

A decade later he released a massive (nearly 800 pages) tome "The Minimum You Need to Know to Be an OpenVMS Application Developer" which tried to encapsulate the essential skills gained over what was nearly a 20 year career at that point. From there "The Minimum You Need to Know" book series was born.

Three years later he wrote his first novel "Infinite Exposure" which got much notice from people involved in the banking and financial security worlds. Some of the attacks predicted in that book have since come to pass. While it was not originally intended to be a trilogy, it became the first book of "The Earth That Was" trilogy:
Infinite Exposure
Lesedi - The Greatest Lie Ever Told
John Smith - Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars

When he is not consulting Roland Hughes posts about technology and sometimes politics on his blog. He also has regularly scheduled Sunday posts appearing on the Interesting Authors blog.