With the proliferation of music services and downloads, it’s easy to forget that many Linux distributions don’t provide support for MP3 and other restrictive codecs. These file types are generally encumbered by patents or non-free licenses and, because of this, a number of distributions will not ship these packages. As a result, users end up being unable to do things that they could otherwise do on Windows or Mac OS X. For those “in the know,” they turn to alternative third-party repositories.
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