Is this for real? Does this mean we will be paying for things like Lame?

Both Redhat & Mandrake have full OGG Vorbis support. I checked Mandrake 9.0 beta 2 and it's got OGG support in both the console and XMMS. In the console, OGGEnc is the command line encoder (lastest 1.0 release) and OGG123 is the player. Press ALT + CTRL + F1 to access the console and ALT + CTRL + F7 to return to the GUI mode. They still have MP3 playback support in XMMS and MPG123 (console player), but they don't provide an encoder. Finally both OGG vorbis and MP3 seems to sound much better in Mandrake Linux than in Windows, especially with the Sound Blaster Audigy.

Even though OGG might provide better quality/size-ratio, you canŽt just snap your fingers and get all the people using mp3 to switch. This is going to take time. My understanding is that ogg is still without alot of support from end-users.

I think the more troubling part would be the $15,000 annual minimum (listed on that page) William

You're right Ghostdog, it's going to take a lot of time methinks; mp3 is just too entrenched into the public's psyche. I'm glad mp3 is still around though, because I find it *so* much nicer to be able to play my downloaded tracks on my Sony dvd player, than sitting at my computer doing something else at the same time. Playing oggs thru Winamp is not always a good idea when you're using your computer to do other cpu-intensive tasks. It's coming though. (Inexpensive ogg hardware support). -- Mike --

IŽll probably switch to ogg, when the time is right. but IŽm not willing to jump on a new technology that, what?, 0,6% of the "internet-music" users support.