I'm totally new to Linux. I'm trying to get Linux Suse 9.0 to work automatically whenever I log to any page where music is being played online (todotango.com, radiocubik.com, music.aol.com, etc).
I also want to see videos. I have no sound and no image under Linux.

Up to this point I know how to open the console and type su. That's all I know about Linux.

Could anybody please help me to get any of the music/video players to work automatically? Please be specific and indicate what I should type on the console because I know basically nothing.

karlkropotkin

I've never used SUSE before, but there are two multimedia packages that I couldn't live without in Linux - XMMS, and Mplayer

Mplayer is a video player that's capable of playing just about anything you throw at it. I would also look for a package named w32codecs -- this includes many popular windows codecs. And to get the audio/video working from within a browser (I'm assuming mozilla and/or firefox), look for the mozilla-mplayer plugin (available here and probably a precompiled version from your distro. This is THE best plugin you will ever use for firefox (except MAYBE flash).

XMMS is a VERY robust audio player for linux. It basically works the same as winamp in windows. There are lots of good extensions that allow you to do anything from seeing better vieualizations, to controlling your music through gaim.

Sorry I can't be more specific, but this should at least give you an idea of what to look for. I'd spend some time poking around on tutorials and documentation (this seems to be a good start).

I hope that helped

Maybe xine/gxine could also be helpful. Xmms can definitely play streamed online music but you've got to show the location of the streaming server or open a .pls file with xmms.

My version of Linux Suse comes with the following Audio Players: ALSA Player, KMid, XMMS, Zing, amarok.

It has the following Video Players: Kaffeine, MPlayer, Noatun, Totem Movie Player, Xine.
I also downloaded Real Player for Linux.

Despite all this, I still don't know how to get them working. Could anybody explain how to show the location of the streaming server or open a .pls file with xmms or anyone of the other programs.

Please teach me what I must do or type in the console. I don't know anything about Linux, so please be very specific.

karlkropotkin

Visit the mplayer homepage and download all the codecs and install them. You don't get them with the distros because (as I understand it) of copyright issues. You can, however, download them. This will help considerably.

Beyond that, obtain a copy of Streamtuner http://www.nongnu.org/streamtuner/ and install it. It helps A LOT with online radio stations. You may have to tweak it a bit to get everything just the way you want it and presently Live365 has changed their format, which broke that part of Streamtuner. I have found that Kplayer works very well with Streamtuner and this is the tool I use to play most streams.

Then, obtain plugger http://fredrik.hubbe.net/plugger.html and install it to help your browsers. Again, you may have to tweak it, but it brings most multimedia formats into your linux browsers.

To play mms streams in Mozilla (and, I think, FireFox) you need to have gmplayer. gmplayer is an optional compile feature of mplayer; check to see if you have it already. It provides a graphical user interface to mplayer. It kind of sucks, but sometimes it is the best or only choice.

After you are sure you have gmplayer, then start a Mozilla window and in the address bar enter "about:config".

On the config page that appears, right click and select "new string". In the requester that appears enter exactly (without quotes) "network.protocol-handler.app.mms"

The next requester that pops up asks you for the value of this string; enter "/usr/local/bin/gmplayer" (put your own correct path in). After you complete this, Mozilla will play mms streams correctly, using gmplayer.

Multimedia on Linux, unfortunately, is not too easy. Mostly this is because of copyrights and the determination of some media moguls to NOT support open source. However, you can make it work. I can play just about everything I encounter these days; the hard ones are the ones that bury their URIs in javascript and demand their own players but often even those can be played once you find the right URI (I sometimes use ethereal to monitor packets and extract hidden URIs that way).

after untold time, i was able to get mplayer installed yesterday. it will play mp3. very important for live365, winamp, torrents, etc. the big hole in xmms is no mp3. i jumped when i put in a mp3 cd and the first real noise erupted from the computer. then that evening, i received a video e-mail from my brother. mplayer spit some error messages, but it played. i am listening to live365 as i type this.

i have been doing redhat9 sporadically for 1.5 years. suse is on the way, but if i can get this dog to print, suse will stay on the cd, and best of all, no more m$.

xmms does play mp3s but you need the libmpg123.so pluging for it to work. It sounds like the version you got with your distro doesn't have it