A 25-year-old video patent just expired, ending a legal headache for Linux

Getting media to work on Linux is more complex than you may think. Not because of the technical aspects (although that, too, is pretty tricky), but because of the legality of distributing proprietary software and patent-encumbered codecs. While companies like Microsoft can grab a license and bake the tech into their products, it's a lot less feasible for Linux distributions designed to be freely downloaded and redistributed.

Linux developers have used workarounds for this limitation for decades now; if you've ever downloaded a Linux distro and then spent some time enabling third-party repositories to get multimedia codecs, you already know what it's like. But one patent from 2001 prevented DivX videos from being patent-free worldwide, and the good news is, it has just expired.