Recently I have had a lot of people asking how to play various media files in Linux. Since most users are migrating over from either Mac or Windows, they are either used to one single application handling their media files or at least knowing exactly what apps handle each media type. When they migrate over all of a sudden there is no Windows Media Player or iTunes. And then comes the bombardment of different applications to choose from! All of this combined makes for some difficult usage.
And so…I thought it would be smart to write about the best tools to play certain media types. Understand that these are the best in my opinion. You might hear differently from every other user.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at the best audio and video viewing tools available.
Audio
XMMS. Call me a purist but for straight up audio you can not beat XMMS. No you will not be able to manage your iPod with this tool. But for pure music enjoyment, nothing beats it. And if you were a Winamp user you are in luck because it works the same way. There is one hiccup with using XMMS. If you plan on playing MP3 files, like everyone does, you’ll have to uninstall the XMMS installed on your distribution (if one was in fact installed), and make sure you install the player xmms-mp3 instead. Once installed you can enjoy: mp3, acc, ape, flac, icecase/shoutcast, ogg, shn, speex, tta, wav, wavpack, wma. XMMS is also themeable for all you desktop hipters ;-).
Rhythmbox
Of all the music managers, my favorite is Rhythmox. Rhythmbox was inspired by iTunes so, as you can imagine, it integrates well with iPods and other such devices. And although you can not use Rhythmbox with the iTunes store, you can download music from both Magnatune and Jamendo. Rythmbox also supports DAAP sharing which allows you to connect to a centralized server. Rhythmbox uses Gstreamer so it supports a wide range of audio formats.
Banshee is another favorite that manages to one-up Rhythmbox by being the first Linux media manager to integrate with the Android-based G1 phone. Banshee offers all of the features of Rhythmbox minus the ability to download music from a “store”. Banshee does, however, include last.fm stream support. The list of audio files Banshee supports is smaller than that of XMMS mp3, acc, ogg, and wav.
Video
Mplayer is not usually the default video player in Linux nor is it the easiest to install or get running. But when you do get it installed and running it works flawlessly. There are some distributions (such as Elive Compiz) that install MPlayer as the default movie player which plays video files and DVDs perfectly.
VLC is typically the favorite “universal” media player. This little gem really can play it all. And the beauty of VLC is that it’s cross platform, so if you know VLC in Windows or Mac, you will know it in Linux. VLC supports MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, as well as DVDs, VCDs, and streaming. VLC is not nearly the installation nightmare of most other video players. If your distribution does not default to VLC, you might want to give it a try before you resign yourself to the idea that Linux and video do not make good bedfellows.
When all else fails, XINE. XINE is one of the more well done, reliable, versatile of the media players. XINE plays CDs, DVDs, VCDs,? and decodes multimedia files like AVI, MOV, WMV, and MP3. You can also install support for mov and mp4 media as well as real player files. XINE is that media player I install when my current distro doesn’t play well with VLC or Mplayer.
Final Thoughts
Viewing media files doesn’t have to be difficult, even in the Linux operating system. Although this list isn’t exhaustive, it is the best of the best IMHO. Any of the above players should work well for you.
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Best video player: mplayer + gnome-mplayer frontend
Best audio player: mpd + ncmpc fontend
btw you forgot to mention songbird. users of itunes should feel at home with it.
Talking about linux media players and you don’t mention amarok. What’s wrong with you.
To bad that BSplayer (pro) is still not avalible for Linux, this because i think BSplayer has absolute the ferry best colors/vieuwing result.
Hey dude where is it amaroK? :D
hybrid-kernel: Songbird is a good alternative. It has some issues with stability I have found. Eventually that will be the de facto standard in Linux I would think.
Nuri.U: I left out Amarok for the same reason I left out gtkpod – reliability. On separate occasions I have had both Amarok and gtkpod fubar an entire ipod library. never had that problem with Banshee or Rhythmbox. I also find both Banshee and Rhythmbox compatible with more devices.
Last I checked RhythmBox supported last.fm
Lol, where did you left Amarok? Audaacious? XMMS is just plain ugly… We live in 21. century FFS…
audio – banshee or atunes (for features..utube, etc)
video – mplayer w/ frontend
just say no to songbird until Mozilla focuses on the song (app) part rather than the bird (artwork/extras)
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What about Totem?
For gnome, I suggest banshee as the media player, i’m using it and i found that it’s the best music player, at least, it can read my itunes playlist.
As for kde, i suggest amarok, it’s the best player now, although the 2.0 version is a big failure.
Good list. Most of the newer ‘media players’ are rubbish, hard to compile, and don’t
support the right codecs out of the box.
@jack
Personally I never had problems with my ipod and Amarok and these days, I don’t bother with the iPods anymore and Amarok still shines :)
no Amarok? blasphemy!
You forgot Amarok and Listen like audio players, there are good programs
amarok sucks.
@ ed
Songbird is not Mozilla. It uses to open source xul runner framework that Mozilla develop. Also the songs portion is fine imho. Its plays tracks well, and once it does cd ripping and podcasts I will be using it full time. The fact is though if the songbird team ignored things like album art and other extras It would not stand out at all from any other music player, and this is what the extras are designed to do. There is only so much that can be done on the music playing side without completely reinventing the wheel.
amarok 1.4 i’ts the best player, they shold put mashtape on it. like songbird
Your taste seems to be different from mine. For music I mostly use Amarok and for videos I use the normal video player.
try listen-project.org. great music player, faster than exaile. amarok <1.4 is great, but i need a lightweight player and with amarok i get all that stupid kde stuff. cheers
From all the new players (bastardized freaks if you ask me, look at Amarok2) name 1 that supports equalizers. Not f*cking Amarok or Rythmbox or Banshee.
Best of the best my @ss.
Stupid list.
@tom. just a little FYI XMMS has ALWAYS had an equalizer, and a quite good one IMHO
install the binary after installing wine and it runs perfectly and content automatically plays upon tellin it the folder of your choice (very exceptional) and very fast
1. type this in konsol
sudo apt-get install -y wine
and then when that is done visit site and get this media player (binary)
Thank you for share .