Have SuSE 9.3 Pro (boxed version) and couldn't play MP3s or DVDs. So I downloaded the xine css stuff and lib-mad for xmms and everything was working fine. The I googled and found an LQ thread where they said to download the multimedia packs. So I downloaded those too. Now all the apps multimedia packs installed don't work at all. Audacity, Rosegargen, etc... just spin the hourglass and disappear.

No offense, but SuSE's package managment is horrendous compared to Mandrake's. I NEVER had to deal with inconsistencies or missing dependencies with Mandrake. And I only needed to go to one place to get packages and updates; SuSE confuses the !@#$ out of me with a package installer icon, online updater icon, system updater icon and YOU nagware to top it all off.

So I go to the package installer/uninstaller icon and the multimedia packs I just installed aren't listed anywhere. I guess because I installed them through the online updater icon, which is where YOU took me automagically. Glad SuSE comes with Mondo Rescue anyway... I won't have to reinstall from scratch a THIRD time to fix stuff the awful package management system keeps breaking. Grrr....

Guess I'll answer my own question.

The solution is to go back to "install and remove software" icon in YaST. Filter on "selections" (whatever that means, but apparently it's different than "groups") and check the "multimedia" selection/non-group/whatchamacallit which will install the missing dependencies the online updater missed, plus a ton of other stuff you don't want, but apparently that's the SuSE way. Ug....

Having similar frustrations with suse... started using Xandros first and their installer was actually very easy to use. Surprisingly Xandros was only one CD, but worked MUCH better than SUSE right out of the box.

Stupid me... bigger isn't always better.

I was pleasantly surprised with SuSE 9.3 in most regards. It got 3D working on my integrated Intel chipset vid card, WiFi working on my Atheros a/b/g card, and came with all the latest goodies like OpenOffice 2.0 (all the things the latest and greatest Mandrivel LE 2112 failed to do/provide.) My only complaint is about YaST, which really needs a complete overhaul, IMHO.

check this post that was written in a smiliar thread

it is really helpfull, I think you should try it

That's the post I initially used that got me hosed up in the first place.

The extra multimedia packs depend on stuff in the original multimedia "pack", which I never installed. Something YaST's online update apparently neglects to check. Anyways, the rest of the missing (lib-css for xine and lib-mad for xmms) packages I got from pbone, my prefered source for third-party rpms (instead of using the packman dude.)

Everything works fine now.

Crito and others:

You keep talking about multimedia packs (original, 1, 2, 3), I am not finding any packages that jump out at me and say, "Here I am. Install or download and install me." I have looked in YaST. I have used Google.

Please be patient with me and tell me where to look. I have some video clips taken by my son's digital camera. I want to be able to view them but all I get is a field of black and the audio that the camera recorded. Other people running other distros have shown me the video clips but I want to see them on my own computer which is running SuSE 9.3. My Internet research experience is rather sparse.

Thank you.

Click the SuSE Watcher icon in the tool bar, next to the time. Select "start on-line update". YOU will run. Select the nearest mirror and all updates will be shown, including optional ones. Multimedia 1 will take care of playing MP3's and non-Hollywood DVD movies. To view commercial movie DVDs, got to the following URL.

http://cambuca.ldhs.cetuc.puc-rio.br/xine/

Thank you, George. The only problem is that when I invoke YOU I still do not see anything to do with Multimedia. I performed an on-line update earlier this afternoon but there was nothing that said "multimedia" available at that time either. YaST also does not show me anything that looks like some sort of Multimedia 1 or Multimedia pack 1 or anything else that I can identify as related to the problem. My hair is already thin on top without this aggravation. The video clips that I cannot view were created in a model DiMAGE S414 digital camera manufactured by Minolta Co. Ltd.

This problem may relate to which location you're getting updates from. I use the University of Utah:

http://suse.cs.utah.edu/suse/

The list of optional updates is very long now and the Multimedia updates are near the end of the list. The name will be:

Multimedia Option Pack 1

Thank you again George. I'll check that out. I was using the University of Southern California as that is in my neck of the world. I would have thought that they would be the same.

I did indeed find four Multimedia packs on the Utah site. It is unfortunate that applying them does not appear to solve my problem. The video clips from my son's digital camera still do not display. The sound is there but the video is not.

install apt

and then install mplayer, it will download all the needed codecs and all the videos will work just fine

here is the Mplayer for SuSe 9.3

I uploaded it for you

first install this package

http://members.lycos.co.uk/forjava/l....89-2.i386.rpm


then install MPlayer

http://members.lycos.co.uk/forjava/M...-pm.2.i686.rpm

I hope this works