I'm used to Ubuntu, but I thought I'd try out openSUSE on an old box I rebuilt. I like what I've got save for trying to get .avi files to play. YaST isn't too tough to use if I can find proper RPM's, and I've searched 'til I'm almost blind trying to come up with a Divx RPM for SUSE 11.1. Right now, I've installed MPlayer and a host of other things, but still when I attempt to play an .avi with Totem I'm directed to get a plug-in: XVID for MPEG-4 (with something about Gstreamer mentioned like this). I downloaded a tar.gz from Divx, but I'm spoiled by package installers (like Ubuntu's and now SUSE's YaST) and fail in attempting to get an installation out of what I extract from it. I think DivX might help, but I'm stuck. I know there has to be an easy solution. Just haven't found it. I haven't tried playing a DVD yet. I've installed Mplayer. I thought I'd installed an MPEG-4 decoder already but if I'm right that probably would've cured my .avi woes. At least I can rip MP3s and watch Flash encoded videos. This last hurdle has me grounded though. My head's starting to hurt.

I have OpenSuse 10.3 installed, using Mplayer to play .avi files without any problems.

Here is a handy HOWTO to keep regarding several video formats and the tools to use for conversion from one format to another.