Can I use this CD on Linux?

[JoeS]

I am thinking about buying a CD. It has video and documentation. This is the description:

Will run on any "Windows" OS. Fast and easy self-installation just by popping the disc into your CD tray and hitting Run. The disk uses the WMF or Windows Media Format. Mac users can play the disc on a WMV player which attaches itself to Quicktime player.

Will I be able to use this on a Linux computer?

[zenwalker]

Yeah, one could use it on a Linux machine -- as a coaster for a beer or coffee mug!

Should the copyright allow ripping to hard drive, wmf files could theoretically be converted to avi using Mplayer

 mencoder infile.wmv -ofps 23.976 -ovc lavc -oac copy -o outfile.avi 
  

(from another)

[Rubberman]

Linux can play just about any video format out there, depending upon how recent the distribution is that you use and what video codecs and applications you have installed. Myself I primarily use VLC for this stuff (it supports just about everything). Also, you can use ffmpeg to transcode the video stuff into formats that are more widely supported, such as mpeg1, mpeg2, mpeg4, h.264, etc. The only problem would be if the WMF files are encrypted, in which case you will have to do the transcoding in a Windows environment (maybe).