A friend of mine saw some posts where several Linux users claim you cannot play FLV video clips on Linux. I currently use Mandriva 2007 Spring on an old Athlon 900 with 256MB RAM and a 32MB Radeon video card. I can play all the standard video formats, including wmv, RM, Divx, Xvid, ASF, SWF and FLV. To play the Shockwave videos, try the following:

Install the Flash plug-in. I use flash-plugin-9.0.115.0-release.i386. There is a later version, but it might try to associate certain video files with Netscape.

Click on the Mandriva (start) button. Select system, configuration, kde, kde components, file association.

Click the [+] next to video and click on x-flc from the drop-down menu. Add *.flv in the box, then save and exit. This will associate KMPlayer with FLV.

Start KMPlayer and click on configuration. Three codec packs are shown. Select the Mplayer codecs.

When you click on an FLV, select KMPlayer as the default if the box select comes up. KMPlayer should open and the video will load. Press the "F" key to toggle full screen.

I downloaded a Top Gear video on the Nissan GTR, plus two Edmunds videos on the GTR, all in FLV format. I can play them perfectly in full screen with no sync problems at all. I don't know if this will work in later versions of Mandriva, or other distros, but it does work in 2007 and 2007 Spring.

Bill Lahr

Thanks for the tip! I've been playing flv files in gxine for some time now, although I wouldn't want to use it for anything else. I think I'll give KMPlayer a try.