Fixing Totem Player in Mandriva 2008

03-12-2007


It's rare that I have some tech type help that I can upload for the masses to read, but tonight just happens to be such a time. Like the css help I have uploaded before, this is one of those little things that is handy to know but nigh impossible to find on the web without trawling through heaps of forums to try and find the one line you want.

I have been a Mandriva user since back in the day of Mandrake 10 and it was the Linux distro that I liked so much that I just won't shift from it. I tried Red Hat, had a look at Fedora, played with Ubuntu and even had a Caldera Linux system at one point, but Mandrake just had something that I liked and I can't be shifted, no matter how much my friends have pushed me to try Gentoo and Slackware. So I shifted to Mandriva when it was released and have followed each release. But for the first time ever I had a gripe with Mandriva, the 2008 R.C. The lovely Compiz-fusion was the main reason I upgraded from 2007. In the 2007 version I had gotten a nice Beryl system going but some of the plugins for Compiz just looked nice and I am a sucker for eyecandy. So what's the beef?

Video playback. For some reason with Compiz turned on, video playback was impossible. Audio had no issues, but try loading Totem or Xine to play a dvd or video file and it just crashed. Now I have been using M.2008 for a few months now, but it was always sitting in the back of my mind that I couldn't watch videos on my favourite OS. I mean what use is that, sure I might as well install Vista. The solution, which I finally found is this.

Go to the .gnome2 folder in your home directory and move into the Totem folder. In here there should be a file xine_config. Open this file in your favourite text editing program and search for the following line:

#video.driver:auto

When you find it, delete the # from the start (i.e. uncomment the line) and change the word "auto" to "openGL" (case is important, but you can leave out the quote marks of course). Save the file and load up Totem. Away you go, videoplayback working.

Blue_jester