Playing media
OK, so we have good sound. Next, we need some media software. The best software for the job is an application named MPlayer, but for licensing reasons it's not available in Debian. What's the solution? Forcing it to appear in Debian! Open up /etc/apt/sources.list again, and add to the bottom "deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ testing main". Run apt-get update to update the software available, and whilst you're at it, run apt-get dist-upgrade to do a full update to the latest versions of all the software on the system. Now, we can install mplayer. Whilst we're at it, we need a number of video codecs to allow (for example) Quicktime and Windows Media Video files to load. "apt-get install mplayer-586 w32codecs mplayer-fonts" should do the job. This will NOT, however, allow DVD playback. The DVD consortium considers the act of playing legit DVD's under Linux to be illegal. Without obtaining a library called "DeCSS" from somewhere, you can only play pirate DVD's or cheap pornography. DeCSS is legal in some free-world countries such as the Netherlands, but should not be installed by United States citizens, as well as a number of other countries.The mplayer-fonts package will ask for some configuration, simply pick the default. Now, you can run "gmplayer" to have a nice friendly plays-almost-everything player come up:
Click for a larger image
Skins and help are found on the MPlayer homepage. Be sure to go to the options screen immediately, and change the Audio driver to SDL with ALSA. If you get crackling playback (common with some onboard sound cards), then you will need to edit .mplayer/config in your home folder, and add the line "srate=44100" to fix it. You might also need "zoom=1" for fullscreen to work, or to select a different video driver (X11 instead of Xv). You may wish to return after installing a 3D driver to select Xv.
