linux real player help

[HondaF1]

Hi,
I am running Mandrake linux with GNOME GUI. I downloaded and installed linux (or at least I think I installed it right) and I opened Real PLayer 10 Gold up and it works, the problem is that it opens up this cheapo Real PLayer 10 window that is quite silly I mean cheap with no features, and not like the Real PLayer 10 for Windows or some screnshots of it I have seen in Linux. Why is this? Is this because of GNOME that it is showing it cheap, should I install KDE and try it? Any suggestions? It looks likea Real PLayer version from the way past and not like the current amazing real player 10 . Help please, what is wrong?

 

[drag]

Not sure. I never have used realplayer much, there are a quite a few different media players that are capable playing realmedia stuff once you get ahold of the proper codec.

It's not uncommon for media players to have a few different looks so that they fit in nicer with the surrounding enviroment...

First thing I'd try is figure out the command that is needed to start it from the command line. (if it's not something simple like realplay, then right click on the icon/launcher and check out properties and look at the command (in gnome)).

Then once you get that open up a terminal and do something like (if the command is realplay):
realplay --help

and if it's designed correctly it should give you some command line switches and options. There may be one that will change the look of the gui frontend. You may be able to choose between a QT-based (kde) and GTK-based (gnome) interface, or choose a complex design...

Also more likely the option to change the look of it buried in one of it's preferences dialogs somewere. Check out the help or options if you can find them somewere (I wouldn't know, never messed around with realplayer 10).

If it does turn out to be a command line switch you can use, then what you'd do is find your icon launcher again and right click it, choose preferences (actually it's properties, my bad), and add the switch to the command in their. Then everytime you want to launch a that program, use that launcher icon and it should work.

 

[HondaF1]

are there any other decent linux media players out there that are easy to install and have a good interface and a good set of options like repeat track and all that? other than xmms which I cannot seem to download.

 

[HondaF1]

iw a strying to install xmms, and during the install it says cc and gcc something not found. what is this? i know that cc is a compiler or something and gcc is too. help please.

 

[xcript]

Sounds like you grabbed the source. You'll need to download the binary RPM.

 

[drag]

Ya, usually you don't go to the project's webpage to download software. Most stuff is pre-compiled for you and put in packages called rpm's.

you can find rpms at places like
http://rpmfind.net/
http://rpm.pbone.net/
Look for RPM's specificly made for Mandrake and your OS version number... Most of the time rpm's made for other distros won't work very well.

also check out penguin liberation front, for Mandrake stuff.
http://plf.zarb.org/index.php
Read about urpmi, it can allow you to install programs for you over the internet using repositories. By doing that you help to aviod package inconsistancies and conflicts, which can be a HUGE pain if your using badly made packages from random people on the internet.

Personally i'd stick with packages from PLF if you can help it.

Also xmms is just for playing audio, like mp3s, flac files, oggVorbis etc etc.
If you want something can do multiple playlists and includes scanning for audio files and such you can check out Zinf.
http://www.zinf.org/


For video/audio media you can try VLC, it's fairly popular for Windows, so you may already know about it. But it was originally made for Linux.
http://www.videolan.org/

Otherwise you should already have Totem installed by default for the gnome desktop. Xine is probably the most popular for Linux right now, maybe Mplayer is more popular... I am not sure.

But lots of times the codecs for playing different files will be installed seperately. See if you can find a win32 codec rpm package for your OS. You may need to copy the realplayer codec out of your realplayer installation files and copy it to /usr/lib/win32 (that location can vary slightly)

Check out http://www.mandrakeusers.org/ for realy mandrake specific questions and stuff. They have forums you can search thru were you can find lots of answers.

Also Gcc is the C/C++ compiler for Linux. It'll be installed if you chose to install developer tools along with everything else at install time, you can still install it easily if you realy want too.

There are dozens of different players for Linux. If you want one with specific features check out
http://freshmeat.net/

You can easily search thru and find screenshots of all sort s of programs for Linux.