I hate it when websites do that, and I certainly wouldn't want an operating system doing it. At the very least it should require the user to click on something before playing anything.
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.
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.
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.
