4MLinux Media Edition

4MLinux Media Edition is an open source Linux distribution, a multimedia edition of the 4MLinux operating system that consists of several well known audio/video players and utilities.

Distributed as a dual-arch Live CD

It is available for download as a single Live CD ISO image that can be easily burned to a blank CD disc or deployed onto a USB flash drive. Both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures are supported at this time.

Boot options

The boot menu presents two options, one that allows users to boot the live environment with default settings and another one that can be used only if the first option doesn’t work for you, through the VESA framebuffer.

Immediately after booting the live medium, users will be dropped to a shell prompt (command-line interface) where they will be asked to input a password for the root (system administrator) account, which will be used in the next step to login into the system.

Once logged in, users must type the startx command to start the X11 Window Manager and the graphical environment, which is comprised of a dock (application launcher) on the upper part of the screen and a taskbar on the bottom edge of the screen.

Default applications

Among the preinstalled multimedia apps, we can mention SMPlayer video player (backed by MPlayer SVN-r36573), SMTube, Qmmp, xine, TiMidity++, MikMod, FFmpeg, FLAC, GStreamer, LAME, MAD, MEncoder, VorbisTools, WavPack, Audacity, SoX, cdparanoia, cdrkit, dvd+rw-tools, DVD Shrink, and xorriso. Default applications include the Mozilla Firefox web browser, Ghostscript, XPdf PDF viewer, X File Explorer file manager, XPaint paint tool, and many others.

Bottom line

4MLinux Media Edition looks almost identical with any other 4MLinux flavor. The only difference is the multitude of multimedia applications and utilities, especially the out-of-the-box support for most audio and video formats. Considering the fact that it is a very small Linux distribution, one should use it as a portable multimedia environment.

Discontinued

As of January 24, the Media edition of 4MLinux has been discontinued, as announced by its developer along with the official announcement for 4MLinux 11.0 (stable branch). The good news is that some brand-new 4MLinux spins are available for download: 4MLinux, namely 4MRescueKit, 4MParted, 4MRecover, 4MPlayer, and 4MDoom.

What is new in this release:

• Lots of changes, which are my response to various feature requests: Qupzilla has now Flash Player support enabled out of the box, Mozilla software (Firefox, SeaMonkey, Thunderbird) use the native Linux build of GTK (not via Wine anymore), and Dropbox is now available as a downloadable extension.

What is new in version 10.0 Beta:

• This release has a wide set of applications for playing (MPlayer SVN-r37241 with SMPlayer and SMTube SVN-r6288, Qmmp 0.8.1, xine 1.2.6, TiMidity++ 2.14.0, MikMod 3.3.7), decoding/encoding (FFmpeg Git-2014-07-20, FLAC 1.3.0, GStreamer 0.10.36, LAME 3.99.5, MAD 0.15.2b, MEncoder SVN-r37241, sndfile 1.0.25, VorbisTools 1.4.0, WavPack 4.70.0), recording (Audacity 2.0.5, SoX 14.4.1), and ripping media (cdparanoia III 10.2, cdrkit 1.1.11, dvd+rw-tools 7.1, DVD Shrink 3.2.0.15, and xorriso 1.3.8). Various image file formats can be edited with ImageMagick 6.8.9-7 and XPaint 2.9.10.2.

What is new in version 9.1 Beta:

• This release has a wide set of applications for playing (MPlayer SVN-r37218 with SMPlayer and SMTube SVN-r6262, Qmmp 0.8.0, xine 1.2.6, TiMidity++ 2.14.0, MikMod 3.3.6), decoding/encoding (FFmpeg Git-2014-06-01, FLAC 1.3.0, GStreamer 0.10.36, LAME 3.99.5, MAD 0.15.2b, MEncoder SVN-r37218, sndfile 1.0.25, VorbisTools 1.4.0, WavPack 4.70.0), recording (Audacity 2.0.5, SoX 14.4.1), and ripping media (cdparanoia III 10.2, cdrkit 1.1.11, dvd+rw-tools 7.1, DVD Shrink 3.2.0.15, and xorriso 1.3.6). Various image file formats can be edited with ImageMagick 6.8.9-6 and XPaint 2.9.10.2.

What is new in version 9.0 Beta:

• This release has a wide set of applications for playing (MPlayer SVN-r37146 with SMPlayer and SMTube SVN-r6225, Qmmp 0.7.7, xine 1.2.5, TiMidity++ 2.14.0, MikMod 3.3.6), decoding/encoding (FFmpeg Git-2014-04-10, FLAC 1.3.0, GStreamer 0.10.36, LAME 3.99.5, MAD 0.15.2b, MEncoder SVN-r37146, VorbisTools 1.4.0, WavPack 4.70.0), recording (Audacity 2.0.5, SoX 14.4.1), and ripping media (cdparanoia III 10.2, cdrkit 1.1.11, dvd+rw-tools 7.1, DVD Shrink 3.2.0.15, and xorriso 1.3.6). Various image file formats can be edited with ImageMagick 6.8.9-2 and XPaint 2.9.10.2.

What is new in version 8.2 Beta:

• This release has a wide set of applications for playing (MPlayer SVN-r36817 with SMPlayer and SMTube SVN-r6033, Qmmp 0.7.6, xine 1.2.5, TiMidity++ 2.14.0, MikMod 3.3.6), decoding/encoding (FFmpeg Git-2014-02-09, FLAC 1.3.0, GStreamer 0.10.36, LAME 3.99.5, MAD 0.15.2b, MEncoder SVN-r36817, VorbisTools 1.4.0, WavPack 4.70.0), recording (Audacity 2.0.5, SoX 14.4.1), and ripping media (cdparanoia III 10.2, cdrkit 1.1.11, dvd+rw-tools 7.1, DVD Shrink 3.2.0.15, xorriso 1.3.6). Various image file formats can be edited with ImageMagick 6.8.8-10 and XPaint 2.9.9.4.

What is new in version 8.1:

• This release has a wide set of applications for playing (MPlayer SVN-r36573 with SMPlayer and SMTube SVN-r5993, Qmmp 0.7.5, xine 1.2.4, TiMidity++ 2.14.0, MikMod 3.2.5), decoding/encoding (FFmpeg Git-2014-01-11, FLAC 1.3.0, GStreamer 0.10.36, LAME 3.99.5, MAD 0.15.2b, MEncoder SVN-r36573, VorbisTools 1.4.0, WavPack 4.70.0), recording (Audacity 2.0.5, SoX 14.4.1), and ripping media (cdparanoia III 10.2, cdrkit 1.1.11, dvd+rw-tools 7.1, DVD Shrink 3.2.0.15, xorriso 1.3.4). XPaint 2.9.9.4, XPdf 3.03, and Ghostscript 9.10 (with GNU gv 3.7.4) are also included.

What is new in version 8.0 Beta:

• This release has a wide set of applications for playing (MPlayer SVN-r36521 with SMPlayer and SMTube SVN-r5949, Qmmp 0.7.4, xine 1.2.4, TiMidity++ 2.14.0, MikMod 3.2.4), decoding/encoding (FFmpeg Git-2013-11-28, FLAC 1.3.0, GStreamer 0.10.36, LAME 3.99.5, MAD 0.15.2b, MEncoder SVN-r36521, VorbisTools 1.4.0, WavPack 4.70.0), recording (Audacity 2.0.5, SoX 14.4.1), and ripping media (cdparanoia III 10.2, cdrkit 1.1.11, dvd+rw-tools 7.1, DVD Shrink 3.2.0.15, xorriso 1.3.2). XPaint 2.9.9.4, XPdf 3.03, Ghostscript 9.10 (with GNU gv 3.7.4) are also included.

What is new in version 7.1:

• This release has a wide set of applications for playing (MPlayer SVN-r36400-4.8.1 with SMPlayer and SMTube SVN-r5695, Qmmp 0.7.3, xine 1.2.4, TiMidity++ 2.14.0, MikMod 3.2.2), decoding/encoding (FFmpeg Git-2013-08-04, FLAC 1.3.0, LAME 3.99.5, MAD 0.15.2b, MEncoder SVN-r36400-4.8.1, VorbisTools 1.4.0, WavPack 4.60.1), recording (Audacity 2.0.3, SoX 14.4.1), and ripping media (cdparanoia III 10.2, cdrkit 1.1.11, DVD Shrink 3.2.0.15).

What is new in version 7.2 Beta:

• This release has a wide set of applications for playing (MPlayer SVN-r36461-4.8.1 with SMPlayer and SMTube SVN-r5820, Qmmp 0.7.3, xine 1.2.4, TiMidity++ 2.14.0, MikMod 3.2.4), decoding/encoding (FFmpeg Git-2013-10-09, FLAC 1.3.0, LAME 3.99.5, MAD 0.15.2b, MEncoder SVN-r36461-4.8.1, VorbisTools 1.4.0, WavPack 4.70.0), recording (Audacity 2.0.5, SoX 14.4.1), and ripping media (cdparanoia III 10.2, cdrkit 1.1.11, dvd+rw-tools 7.1, DVD Shrink 3.2.0.15, xorriso 1.3.2).
• XPaint 2.9.9.4 is also included.