Does debian linux support real media player? I have totem which works good, but it doesnt support every kind of video file. Any other suggestions?

If I were you, I'd use Mplayer and gmplayer and the "all" codecs. I'm not sure but I think Real Player supports Linux. You could check using Synaptic.

ok now where do i get these?

With Linux, Google.com Linux is your best friend and tool. http://www.google.com/linux
Search for Mplayer. It's probably the first result.

note: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/ you have to compile the source so I suggest your use synaptic or apt-get if you source.list is right. ("universe multiverse" I believe)

Sorry to be "picky", but debian itself, doesn't support anything that isn't Open source/non proprietary.

That doesn't mean that you can't get it too work or find a .deb for it. Real player has been ported too linux so it's available.

At the moment, I'm using SuSE 9.3 pro, and that installed it for me by default - though you must bare in mind, that you'd often only get it "pre-configured" like that, with a "paid for" commercial version distro.

If you go to this link you will find real player for linux. If you read the main page, you will notice that there is an "advanced installation" link for rpm based distros - unfortunately that counts you out, because debian is "apt" based - you'd need a ".deb" as opposed to ".rpm"

So if you read the install instructions it gives you a method of installng a "bin" file, it says how to make it executable then just run it (from a terminal).

Once you've done that, you should be able to make an icon on your desktop to start realplayer.

Dont forget though, there are a host of media players that you can install, probably directly from any debian mirror repositories that you have listed in your apt-sources file. For instance, my SuSE uses Kaffeine as the default video player, but theres stuff like mplayer, xine, etc etc that you could install as well - personally I've never used realplayer to play video files under linux, I just click them and see if anything is set as the default, or check out any error messages that come up.

regards

John

i tried to get Xine and it didnt work.. i forget what the problem was at the time.

i have so many questions and i dont eve know where to start.
sigh



i guess i need to talk to someone who has debian

For a noob you've picked one of the harder distros to get started on. I'd suggest you google alot of linux howtos and wikis. use the search function alot of the questions you've ask get asked and answered here every day.

mplayer should work
(not sure though)