media player SOLVED

[intelligence]

I just installed the Linux Mint Cinnamon 18.2 32-bit program. I am now trying to install the media player, but I don't know how and which one to use. Can anyone helpme?

Much Thanks,
Mary

UPDATE: Thankyou 'Wharfrat' for your suggestion about the password . Greatly appreciated and I was able to download what I needed. Thankyou as well to all those that responded!
Mary

[catweazel]

I just installed the Linux Mint Cinnamon 18.2 32-bit program. I am now trying to install the media player, but I don't know how and which one to use. Can anyone helpme?

Much Thanks,
Mary

Mint comes equipped with a media player already installed. Are you having an issue playing a certain file?

[Hoser Rob]

If it's 32 bit you installed I suspect it's an old machine ... please copy/paste this to the terminal and copy/paste the text outpout here (always do this with support questions):

Code: Select all

inxi -Fxz

And if it's old hardware I'd suggest a fast player like SMplayer or gnome-mplayer. Smplayer is my default, the performance is really good and it handles different formats better than VLC. I use gnome-mplayer for the rare occasions I play video on my netbook, which has terrible video performance.

[inRAIDius]

I completely agree with Hoser Bob.
Smplayer is also my default. It plays anything we throw at it, has excellent playlist functionality, highly configurable audio and video settings, lots of choices of skins, plus many more. Give it try, I bet you'll really enjoy the experience.
You can find it here:
http://www.smplayer.info/en/info

Have fun!

[Moem]

You can find it here:

There's no need, it's in the repos.

[inRAIDius]

You can find it here:

There's no need, it's in the repos.

It's always good to research a program/application before installing it, no?

[intelligence]

Yes. When I click on it to download it asks me for a password for authenticity but we didn't put one in so I don't know how to get past that or even to set up a password.
Hubby and I are learning but as you can see we are not computer savvy. Thanks!
Mary

[WharfRat]

The password it's looking for is your user account password.

So respond with the password you use to login

[Hoser Rob]

You can find it here:

There's no need, it's in the repos.

It's always good to research a program/application before installing it, no?

Not necessarily. Linux novices are usually steered towards repo software, for good reason. Non repo software not only may not work, installing it can break existing software, including the OS itself. Novices generally don't know how to avoid this.

In Mint 17.3 there was justification for installing the mcman ppa version of smplayer for HEVC support, but most beginners install the newest version and it's not necessary there.

However, if it's an old 32 bit machine running Cinnamon it may not play HEVC properly anyway. Which is why I asked for inxi output.

[inRAIDius]

There's no need, it's in the repos.

It's always good to research a program/application before installing it, no?

Not necessarily. Linux novices are usually steered towards repo software, for good reason. Non repo software not only may not work, installing it can break existing software, including the OS itself. Novices generally don't know how to avoid this.

In Mint 17.3 there was justification for installing the mcman ppa version of smplayer for HEVC support, but most beginners install the newest version and it's not necessary there.

However, if it's an old 32 bit machine running Cinnamon it may not play HEVC properly anyway. Which is why I asked for inxi output.

Did I read this right? That it's not necessarily a good thing to do research before installing programs/making changes?
I would think that a user of any skill level would like to get as much info as possible in order to make an informed decision.
Experience tells me that when new users make informed decisions and yet still make mistakes, they learn much more about their system as opposed to taking the path of least resistance.
If research is not recommended by experienced users like ourselves, then maybe this forum isn't for me.

[I2k4]

Yes. When I click on it to download it asks me for a password for authenticity but we didn't put one in so I don't know how to get past that or even to set up a password.
Hubby and I are learning but as you can see we are not computer savvy. Thanks!
Mary

Given this statement, I have a hard time with untethered speculation about what kind of PC the Original Poster may or may not have and advice sending the Original Poster to obscure media players not in the current Mint software manager, that has to be installed by techniques they apparently are not familiar with:.

1. There are lots of 32bit PCs built for and running Windows 7 very well, with plenty of RAM and processing horsepower. Any 32bit PC that ran Windows 7 well will probably run Mint Cinnamon even better. IF the Original Poster's PC was built for Windows XP, then they might want to know that Mint XFCE is probably a better fit for good all around performance, especially for playing demanding media.

2. VLC Media Player is in the Mint software manager and is an extremely versatile, popular and very well documented free and open source media player on Windows, smartphones and Mint Linux. If the default media player is causing problems, VLC will handle all regularly used media file formats and will deal with videos on DVD very nicely as well as plugging into browsers for streaming online.

Too often, a delight of Linux expertise is making things more difficult than they have to be out of sheer enthusiasm for that expertise. New users should be given a break, they will have lots of time to find all those good and not so good software alternatives on Linux.