A good media player will save you literally minutes of frustration when you next go to watch a video on your PC. There’s also an abundance of add-ons and useful features bundled in with many of today’s media players, and here we’ve got a selection of the best Linux video players.
So if you download all the latest TV, love your HD content or simply need to replace your default player with something a little more… usable then feast your eyes over this lot.
Forget the rest ““ this is the definitive list of the top 5 video players for your Linux machine. As usual they’re all free, and MakeUseOf approved.
VLC
Before I switched from Windows 7 to Ubuntu, VLC was the last word in video playback on a PC. It was the second program I installed on my fresh Linux partition after my web browser. It just works.
The playlist is a bit fiddly at times (it was worse on Windows though) but if you want a decent media player that will pretty much play everything from HD .MKVs to lossless .FLAC audio then VLC is a perfect lightweight solution.
No fancy bells or whistles (unless you fancy streaming your own video, of course) but a fantastic and tiny bit of software you’ll always be able to fall back on.
SMPlayer
A souped-up front-end for the still-quite-popular MPlayer, SMPlayer provides an attractive interface and builds upon the robustness of MPlayer to deliver a powerful software package.
The playlist is considerably easier to deal with than VLC’s, and even docks properly to the player itself. SMPlayer saves all your personal settings on a per-file basis and also supports the resuming of partially finished files once they’ve been closed. There’s a wealth of compatible Linux Screenlets out there to enhance your desktop with visualizations, album art and controls for this excellent media player.
Banshee
As well as playing all your usual audio and video formats, Banshee also allows you to connect your portable device to transfer files. This includes compatibility with Android devices, Apple’s iPod and others.
The whole thing is held together with a nice-looking UI, extra functionality like audio CD ripping and a smart, powerful playlist. This latest release is the collective work of 67 programmers and artists who have contributed to the project. There’s also support for internet radio, shared media, the Amazon music store, Last.fm and a whole lot more. Nice.
Miro
Another all-in-one solution, Miro is a video player built from the ground up for HD content. There’s a cracking interface to boot, which makes organising all your media that little bit easier.
There’s integration with plenty of web services including a nifty in-built BitTorrent client, Miro’s own Miro Guide and Video RSS for automatic downloads. You can also resume files and feeds from the same place you left off.
Boxee
More of a media centre than a video player, Boxee still deserves a mention. If you’ve not played with it yet, you might want to check out our existing article as to why it’s so great. You don’t need to buy a Boxee Box to enjoy it, as it runs over the top of your existing Linux desktop.
You can then watch video from your own storage, the web and other shared computers through Boxee. The media centre is perfect for your Linux laptop as you can plug it straight in to a HDTV and enjoy YouTube, Flickr and even check Facebook on your TV.
It’s also worth mentioning that the developers have fixed the latest version to work with Ubuntu 10.10.
Conclusion
We’ve pretty much got it covered here in this list. If it’s a lightweight desktop player you want then VLC or SMPlayer should suffice, whereas if you like a bit more internet with your video then the final 3 are designed to just do that.
We’ve also got a definitive list of open source Linux audio players in case you need one of those, and if you’re really serious about your video you might want to check out our two-part guide about using Linux as a media server. Part 1 is here, and part 2 can be found here.
Image Credit: Shutterstock
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I like VLC in Linux, it’s better than whatever default video player the distro uses. But on Windows I use Media Player Classic over VLC. VLC doesn’t “feel” like a native Windows app.
VLC is good but a little overrated in my opinion. It is chock full of network related
features that most people will not use, yet still this player lacks basic features like
remembering last played position of media files. Totally unacceptable as far as I’m
concerned.
Banshee is very feature full and nicely integrated, but why the mono dependencies?
Also, if you’re going to add features please make it possible to disable them. I’m looking at you subtitles! How simple, yet overlooked.
Miro is nice indeed, but is not compatible with dark GTK themes.
Smplayer is nice (especially mplayer VDPAU), but a proper media search function a-la Banshee, would be a great enhancement for large media collections.
VLC is good but a little overrated in my opinion. It is chock full of network related
features that most people will not use, yet still this player lacks basic features like
remembering last played position of media files. Totally unacceptable as far as I’m
concerned.
Banshee is very feature full and nicely integrated, but why the mono dependencies?
Also, if you’re going to add features please make it possible to disable them. I’m looking at you subtitles! How simple, yet overlooked.
Miro is nice indeed, but is not compatible with dark GTK themes.
Smplayer is nice (especially mplayer VDPAU), but a proper media search function a-la Banshee, would be a great enhancement for large media collections.
smplayer/mplayer is very good as it is. It certainly does not need a cataloging feature in my opinion. You can use something like tracker for this task.
Need maybe not, but desirable yes (imo).
I believe in launching only the application for the job in hand (more efficient use of processes and less desktop clutter) where possible.
At the moment I use GNOME search tool to find a media file then Smplayer launches from there. I would be cleaner to have search function as I previously noted.
After all, if I want to listen to music, Rhythmbox (for example) does a excellent job searching and playing my music library, according to my criteria. One application, job done. ;)
Yes, rhythmbox is “an integrated music management application”. SMplayer (mplayer in fact) is just a multimedia player. Those are two different kinds of applications. xbmc may be a good cataloging (and management and kitchen sink) front-end to mplayer.
Need maybe not, but desirable yes (imo).
I believe in launching only the application for the job in hand (more efficient use of processes and less desktop clutter) where possible.
At the moment I use GNOME search tool to find a media file then Smplayer launches from there. I would be cleaner to have search function as I previously noted.
After all, if I want to listen to music, Rhythmbox (for example) does a excellent job searching and playing my music library, according to my criteria. One application, job done. ;)
xbmc?
never heard of it