I'll just say (A) I didn't think it was OT because it was about FOSS software that runs on GNU/Linux and (B) I thought the discussion was pretty informative. I did look at how it started and what caused it to become something of a battle. I think the problem started because the original question wasn't very complete -- somewhat less complete than the OP thought it was, so he didn't understand the questions that were coming back at him. It was just a bit confused and so people could easily mistake certain kinds of questions more as accusations than questions and one thing led to another. I think VLC is pretty amazing. I'm using it a lot these days, e.g., to play DVD ISOs from my HDD. Mike