Chapter 5. Playing Music, Video, Photos, and Games
IN THIS CHAPTER
Playing, recording, and ripping music
Watching movies and videos
Working with images
Playing games in Linux
Linux doesn't have to be just work, work, work all the time. There are lots of ways to use Linux that are just plain fun.
Over the years, Linux software has become available for playing music, video, images, and games. With improved multimedia players and tools for storing and managing content, Linux has become a great platform for storing, playing, and managing everything from your favorite songs to your precious videos.
Despite improvements in multimedia and gaming software for Linux, however, Linux desktop users still face some challenges in playing their movies, music, and games. Proprietary codecs needed to play DVD movies, MP3 music, and Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) files from your iPod are not delivered with most Linux systems because they are "non-free." Many popular PC games don't play natively in Linux.
Even though not all of your favorite multimedia content will run natively in Linux, there are ways to get software to do almost anything you want from your desktop Linux systems. This chapter will help you do nearly everything you want with multimedia files in Linux, plus a few things you probably haven't thought of yet. Topics covered in this chapter include the following:
Play music — Using popular music players such as Totem, Amarok, and Rhythmbox, you'll learn to play music files and CDs, as well as manage ...
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