I am pretty new to Linux , I am loving all of it except for one thing , playing media !
I have read many tutorials and 'how to’s ’ on how to get winmedia to work however all of them don’t seem to work , I have tried Kaffeine , Mplayer and others all to no avail!
I know this seems stupid but is there a simple way to get any media player to play DVD’s and winmedia in KDE4 without some kind of very complex installation process , is there a ‘winmedia RPM’ out there ? if there is where is it, as I have scowed the earth for it.
I am sure I am not alone , I understand the why the Codec’s are not built in but there must be a way for stupid people like me to be able to get it working.
The barrier you are encountering is IMHO a lack of familiarity with Linux, and specifically, openSUSE Linux. You also have likely crippled your experience a bit by choosing KDE4 in openSUSE-11.0, where KDE4 in 11.0 is immature. IMHO you would have been better going for KDE-3.5.9 or Gnome, … and then install KDE-4.1.2 in openSUSE-11.1 which comes out in mid-December.
Anyway what you installed is water under the bridge. Lets try provide some useful advice now. It might help if you brushed up on some basic concepts: Concepts - openSUSE
Now you can read the page on restricted formats and follow the “one-click install” links provided by caf4926 and you may succeed. And if so thats great!! You may not. But IMHO even if you do succeed, you won’t learn much. Your Linux experience will continue to be a mystery, and soon the monopolistic, keep the users blind, call of Windoze will call you back away from Linux. Back to the monopolistic proprietary OS that the majority of the people in the world use. And you won’t visit our forum any more.
My view is the best thing to do is setup your Software Package Manager with a minimum of essential repositories and then install your software via your Software Package Manager, as opposed to the one-click-install. You have more control that way over what is happening. If you read the openSUSE Concepts Guide link I provided, you will understand that the repositories are file servers on the Internet, storing Linux applications (for users to download), where the software package managers will obtain lists of the applications, and can upon command download, sort the dependencies, and install the applications themselves.
So I recommend you setup 4 repositories (repos): OSS, Non-OSS, Update and Packman. Just those 4. No others. None. You can add more when you learn better what you are doing. There is guidance for adding those 4 repos here: Repositories/11.0 - openSUSE-Community
Again add OSS, Non-OSS, Update and Packman. Just those 4.
Now, once those 4 are added, you can update your multimedia.
After setting up your repos, go to YaST > Software > Software management and select the xine-lib package for removal. Don’t remove it yet. Then select the Packman libxine1 package for installation. Now apply that removal of xine-lib and simultaneous install of libxine1.
Then select the following packages from Packman for install: smplayer, mplayer, xine-ui, kaffeine, libdvdnav, libdvdread4, xvid, libquicktime.
Also, go to this URL Restricted Formats/10.2 - openSUSE-Community and copy and paste the text in white (with a black background) to a gnome-terminal or konsole, to install libdvdcss2. I know it says openSUSE-10.2, but it will in this case work on 10.3, 11.0, 11.1 … etc … You need libdvdcss2 to play dvds.
That should hopefully get you started on to the road of a more enjoyable Linux experience.
I forgot to mention, a couple of other useful applications to install, to provide you more codecs, are libffmpeg0 (which will pickup many dependency apps with codecs) and w32codec-all.
You can install those from YaST > Software > Software manager from the Packman repository (after you setup the 4 repos that I recommended).
To play the usual avi/mpg4 formats in kaffine I think you will need to make sure you have “xine” installed. Just fire up Yast “Install Software” and type in “xine” into the search field and select libxine1 for install.
Also, you could install and use VLC. it does not have a fancy GUI but it will play anything. I used to use this on Windoze before I converted to Linux.
thanks everyone for taking the time to reply. firstly yes the one click install suggested worked a treat , thank very much.
Yes by win media I mean all the usual windows associated formants.
Also thank you for the info on the repository , I will do that also as you are quite right that although the one click install thing works well I did not learn anything , also my SUSE seems to have stopped updating itself lately , I have a constant yellow triangle annoying me in the bottom panel , so I need to sort the updates out.
Also please don’t worry , my Linux experience would have to be near life threatening in order for me to even think about using Windoze , the problems I am having adapting to Linux are tiny compared to the utter misery I used to go through on a daily basis using Windoze , people keep telling me to get a Mac but I cant see the point , looks like Linux to me but you pay for it, allot?
Anyway thanks very much for the help I will let you know how I get on.
