Here in this tutorial , we are going to install components from terminal. It’s upto you to choose between the terminal method or go for the good old Synaptic Package Manager- Add/Remove Programs. Of the many media players available for , choose the one which suits your sensibilities or tastes, whatever. First, we are going for a GNOME based player. Just go to Main Menu –> Accessories –> Terminal. Now type this in the Terminal.

sudo apt-get install exaile
sudo apt-get install banshee
sudo apt-get install xmmms
sudo apt-get install listen*

But then we all know, Amarok rules as one of the finest KDE based players with rich features and an awesome interface. You can always choose between other GNOME based players like Exaile,Banshee and Winamp Alt. et al. But if you are the man, this is how you install Amarok by typing the following in your Terminal.

sudo apt-get install amarok

Now that the Audio player is installed, next up is the installation of codecs for the smooth playback of any audio. GStreamer is a plugin which supports a large number of audio and video compression formats by using the FFmpeg library.This library enables applications to do real-time sound processing to even play videos. It is plugin enabled, which means new data types, media handling, and enhanced capabilities can be added by mere installations of plugins. It is mainly used for GNOME based OS and Ubuntu highly recommends you to install it. To install every plugin of Gstreamer do this in Terminal.

sudo apt-get install gstreamer*

Other KDE based players,viz. Xine can also be installed, which support Video Playback as well. To install Xine do this in Terminal.

sudo apt-get install xine*

If you are familiar with the interface of PowerDVD on Windows, Xine pretty much looks like the same.Installation of Video Playback Support will be soon posted here. Till then, watch this space for more.

Image: Amarok on Ubuntu 7.10, courtesy:Mskadu