From the article: "Mandriva and The Kompany, the creator of Mindawn, a Linux-friendly online music and video service, have announced their partnership to provide customers with built-in software to take advantage of legitimate digital content using Mandriva Linux 2006. Thanks to the collaboration between the two companies, Mandriva Linux 2006 users can access high quality music and video files at the Mindawn website. ... Mindawn's competitors typically offer music files that are reduced in quality through what's called "lossy compression". The more compressed a file is, the greater the loss in sound quality. By contrast, Mindawn offers its files in both Ogg Vorbis and FLAC formats. Ogg Vorbis employs lossy compression, but unlike MP3, is a totally free and open sound format. It offers superior sound quality compared to MP3 and other lossy compression techniques. Meanwhile, FLAC employs lossless compression, allowing it to offer full CD quality in a file 50% smaller than a WAV file. FLAC can easily be converted to AIFF or WAV files and burned to disc for use in standard CD players. It can also be converted to virtually any other lossy format for use on any portable media player." Read the rest here.
That is very good news. Now there is no more excuses like "but linux doesn't have iTunes". If there ever was a good time to switch to mandriva, this is it!
I agree with Pelvis, this can only be good for Linux community. Soon there will be little you can do in Windows which you can't do in Linux. I just hope that the service doesn't get plagued with DRM. I'll continue buying CDs whilst DRM exists. If I buy music, I expect to be able to xopy it onto my mp3 players as many times as I like! :x:
I have been buying and listening to digital music on Linux for years now, this is nothing terribly new. The real news here is that Mandriva Linux is in direct partnership with a media service. Furthermore, that music service is a DRM-free and reasonable service that, on the technical merits of its formats, frankly makes iTunes look like crap. Oh, and here's a screenshot of Mindawn if you're interested:
