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Best Video Player Software 2011 for Ubuntu Linux 10.04 and higher

SMPlayer

I am using Ubuntu Linux more for my video watching because Ubuntu Linux 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx starts up faster and opens video faster, crashes less when playing video files in my experience.

I find watching video files like avi, mpeg, mov, wmv, divx, FLV, and other video file types on Ubuntu Linux to be great since Ubuntu Linux is free, and so are the video players in most cases, so I can save hundreds of dollars by not buying an operating system or software. I can use the money I saved to buy a better video card, sound card, and larger hard drive for storing my videos.

The video players I like for Ubuntu Linux are also easy to use, fast, and hardly crash much in my experience.

Ubuntu can be one of the best computer operating systems for lower end and cheaper computers. It also works great as a OS for a media center computer or laptop.

All the video players I mention on this posts plays video very clearly and smoothly within Ubuntu Linux 10.04.

The three video players I recommend for Ubuntu Linux 10.04 are SM player, VLC VideoLan Player, and Totem Movie player.

SM Player has an easy to use user interface, and does not require much or any tweaks to make videos play quickly or correctly. The tool bar on the top is good for people who want easy access to most of SM Players feature quickly.

SMPlayer

VLC player also called VideoLan Player can play many file types, and is a very fast and easy to use Video Player. It also has a lot of features for more advance users to use.

VLC Media Player

Totem Movie Player is the default video player bundled with Ubuntu which is a simple, clean and fast video player for Ubuntu. Also, Totem video player can be run off the Ubuntu Live CD and is installed by default when Ubuntu is installed on your computer.

Totem Movie Player

You can find SM Player and VLC Player in the Ubuntu Software Center under the Applications menu on the top then clicking on the Ubuntu Software Center button on the bottom and searching for SM Player or VLC player to install them.

You would need an administrator/root password  for the install to begin.

3 comments… add one
  • Mandeep August 2, 2011, 10:50 pm

    It’s a shame there’s no longer a version of gmplayer in Ubuntu, that was my go to video player for ages. It was annoying to adjust to SMplayer, but it’s a great substitute. It’s a much nicer mplayer-based video player than gmplayer was.

    If you have a modern Nvidia video card in your Linux system you should look into setting up VDPAU for use with SMplayer to offload video decoding from the CPU to the graphics card. I’m able to playback 1080p files without stuttering on my old Athlon X2 4400 system thanks to that.

  • Shruti March 26, 2013, 1:56 am

    All are good but I LOVE VLC player. Think of any video format, and it’s most likely that VLC will support it. Thanks Johnson for recommending some great options too.

  • Johnson Yip March 26, 2013, 4:42 pm

    I love VLC as well because it can play a lot of video file formats, and it is fast. The settings are also easy to adjust, and there are plenty of plug-ins for VLC.

    Thanks Shruti for the nice comments.

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