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I believe oakaz was referring to the ability to actually play movie and audio files which use non-free formats, such as MP3. This is a frequent/historical pain point for laypersons using Linux desktops.

The answer is yes. In the installer, there is a checkbox that asks if the user wants to install these non-free codecs.

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Oh, I've been using Linux for years and had no idea this was a problem on some distributions. I guess I've just accidentally skipped the ones dogmatic about non-free codecs.

which distro do you use?

Now Arch, in the past I've used Ubuntu and Gentoo. I may be misremembering, but I think in all of them there is a packages with non-free codecs either pulled in automatically or at least recommended when you install a media application.

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