Meet the Totem media player
Movie Magic
© artcalin, Fotolia
Totem brings Hollywood to your Linux desktop. We'll show you how to get started with this movie player.
The Totem media player is the Gnome desktop's official movie player, so it's no surprise to find it listed in the Applications | Sound & Video menu as Hardy Heron's default player for video files and DVDs [1]. Given the availability of other popular players, one might wonder why Heron's developers chose Totem, but after spending only a little time with it, I'm not sure I can easily go back to anything else.
Versions
Totem is available in two distinct versions. Totem-gstreamer uses the GStreamer media framework for its audio/video back end, whereas totem-xine employs the same services as delivered by libxine, the xine project's A/V engine. Heron's default version is totem-gstreamer, but totem-xine can be installed from the system's Synaptic package manager.
Starting Up
I tested version 2.22.1 of Totem on Hardy Heron as a live system from a CD/DVD drive in a machine powered by a 2.4GHz CPU. The machine's audio and video capabilities are above average because I do some professional audio work and because I like to watch movies on it with better than average sound and visual displays. However, this article is targeted toward the new user of Totem and presumes no special hardware or previous experience with any other similar player.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Ubuntu 25.04 Coming Soon
Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) has been given an April release date with many notable updates.
-
Gnome Developers Consider Dropping RPM Support
In a move that might shock a lot of users, the Gnome development team has proposed the idea of going straight up Flatpak.
-
openSUSE Tumbleweed Ditches AppArmor for SELinux
If you're an openSUSE Tumbleweed user, you can expect a major change to the distribution.
-
Plasma 6.3 Now Available
Plasma desktop v6.3 has a couple of pretty nifty tricks up its sleeve.
-
LibreOffice 25.2 Has Arrived
If you've been hoping for a release that offers more UI customizations, you're in for a treat.
-
TuxCare Has a Big AlmaLinux 9 Announcement in Store
TuxCare announced it has successfully completed a Security Technical Implementation Guide for AlmaLinux OS 9.
-
First Release Candidate for Linux Kernel 6.14 Now Available
Linus Torvalds has officially released the first release candidate for kernel 6.14 and it includes over 500,000 lines of modified code, making for a small release.
-
System76 Refreshes Meerkat Mini PC
If you're looking for a small form factor PC powered by Linux, System76 has exactly what you need in the Meerkat mini PC.
-
Gnome 48 Alpha Ready for Testing
The latest Gnome desktop alpha is now available with plenty of new features and improvements.
-
Wine 10 Includes Plenty to Excite Users
With its latest release, Wine has the usual crop of bug fixes and improvements, along with some exciting new features.