...which plays mp3 files,without adding plugins..
I have Rhythm music box player,and i don't have time right now to mess around finding plugins.
Are there any players?
Thanks

Just install the plugins needed for Rhythmbox, it would be less hassle than installing another media player and its plugins. If I recall correctly, Rhythmbox is based on Gstreamer, so you will need Gstreamer plugins.

mp3 is a proprietary format. As such, no media player on Linux will have it enabled by default.

I think your logic is wrong.

VLC can play any format without codecs

If you install Audacious, it comes preconfigured to play MP3s. As to proprietary codecs, it's a political decision to ship with or without (no logic involved there - but maybe (in)consistency ). Some ship with them, some without; Xubuntu's among the latter ones (which - if I recall right - hasn't always been the case... at least for Ubuntu as a whole).

M.

Hey, why don't you try xmms? It's free and you can get ot from internet. XMMS layout same with Winamp, so you will be find how easy to operate it. That is, i hope it's useful.

/shrug

So I was wrong. My mistake. Sorry for misleading!

As far as I know the only player that can play MP3 files without any additional packages is RealPlayer. It is also the only program that can play MP3 files without raising any legal issues.

Installing the codecs is a small job anyway. It should be a question of either installing a single package from your distro repository, or downloading a single archive and extracting it to the right place on your system.

I don't know where you're coming from there. Any Media player requires a codec to play any file, and can only play the formats it has been written/modified to support.

vlc does not need codecs, look it up, don't tell me I'm wrong because I clearly remeber playing mp3s with vlc without installing any codecs in fedora 7

I think vlc has some that it uses that get installed with it. I'm pretty sure it does the same with libdvdcss too (they make it I think).

As I said before, any media player needs codecs to play files. Without any codecs you will not be able to play anything.

Whether the particular codec you were using happened to be already installed or you installed or you installed it when you installed VLC does not change the fact that if you played a file then the codec must have been there.

Ok, you got me there. But the fact of the matter is, that you don't need to separately installed codecs for vlc to play it, unlike rhythmbox or any other music player

MPlayer comes with built-in codecs, too.

AceofSpades19, hand_of_fate:

You're both probably right, each in his own way - VLC may very well come with a complete set of codecs in a specific distribution (as does Audacious in Ubuntu, at least as far as MP3 is concerned). The fact that there are discussions of this kind hints at the real problem: The fact that there are proprietary codecs and drivers that might cause licensing issues - which is moronic, but still a main issue as long as you maintain a distro.

But with the right set of codecs in place, every player on Linux can play MP3s. So it all boils down to the question as to where to get the codecs. For Ubuntu, it's pretty easy thanks to what has been called Codec Buddy (no idea if they still call it that, I've never used it yet), so that's pretty close to what hand_of_fate suggested.

That said, there's *no* need whatsoever to use proprietary bloatware like RealPlayer to play MP3s! There may be uses for that player, but I can't think of anything that couldn't be achieved with open source players - given the right selection of codecs!

M.