Best Linux Media Player?


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Well i saw a thread on here yesterday and i regret not bookmarking it (if anyone could find it that would be great).

It was about a linux media player that uses hardly any system resources, unless you change it's skin and stuff.

If nobody can find it can you post the best ones here?

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It's a difficult question to answer...

"Best" is what suits you, personally, and what you need from it. Lightweight? Fully-featured? Skinable? Uses native widgets? It's a hard thing to quantify, and it really comes down to personal preference and compromise.

"Media Player" is also difficult. Something like Totem can handle virtually anything you throw at it, but it's no good if you want to keep a media library. Generally speaking, one app will do one job really well, another app will do several jobs, but each not nearly as well as the dedicated app, if you see what I'm saying...

You really need to try everything available and see which suits your needs best.

My preferences:

Video: VLC

Music: Exaile

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i'm using vlc on my ubuntu box and its working great, it plays everything. mplayer has lots of missing features. With vlc i can alter the screen size and it works better with dvds

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It's a difficult question to answer...

"Best" is what suits you, personally, and what you need from it. Lightweight? Fully-featured? Skinable? Uses native widgets? It's a hard thing to quantify, and it really comes down to personal preference and compromise.

"Media Player" is also difficult. Something like Totem can handle virtually anything you throw at it, but it's no good if you want to keep a media library. Generally speaking, one app will do one job really well, another app will do several jobs, but each not nearly as well as the dedicated app, if you see what I'm saying...

You really need to try everything available and see which suits your needs best.

My preferences:

Video: VLC

Music: Exaile

+1...I love exaile, especially when using GNOME...it's alot more lightweight then amarok, and looks great.

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I've always loved Amarok for tunes, but recently Exaile has been my music player of choice (lightweight and quick). Banshee is a close second too. For videos and such It's usually GnomeMPlayer (I just like having the video and controls as one window).

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I used to use VLC a lot, especially for videos but then I discovered SMPlayer so I use that now for my videos usually and Audacious/Amarok for audio. If you want something light weight just for audio, go with Audacious

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I was going to suggest SMplayer too. It's a really nice front end to mplayer. I discovered it by accident when I tried to download gmplayer from the arch repos. It has features that no other GNU/Linux players have (afaik) like full screen controls and seeking and it also has a bookmarking feature (which I actually turn off but some people like).

I use mpd and gmpc for listening to music.

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I've just recently started using mpd, and as such I've been looking at a few GUI front-ends. There are some nice lightweight ones, like gmpd and sonata, but I prefer a player with a decent library to sort my tracks with. I've been using Ario lately, and I've found it to be quite good.

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i use mplayer for most of my videos... i find it to be fast snappy and actually better at seeking through videos

totem for everything else

and amarok for music management

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there is no "best" media player in linux. I find that every media player that I use, lack a certain piece of functionality.

Mplayer gave me some problems so I switch over to VLC. For audio I just use RhythmBox as it's light and just easy to use. Hate it how Mplayer takes up 2 icons and VLC doesn't seek very well compared to mplayer.

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