Having trouble getting .WMV, .WMA, and .ASF files - the Windows-based media formats - to open on your Linux box? Being forced to dual-boot or switch workstations just to listen to or watch audio and video clips is usually more effort than it's worth. But fortunately, if you are using Xine and one of its frontends like Totem, you can add support for these file formats within Linux.

Software you'll need

• Xine - Xine is a free media player engine primarily developed for *nix but can also be used in Windows with Cygwin.
• Totem - Totem is a movie player developed by the Gnome team. You don't have to use Totem, but it is a very popular package for Linux desktops.
• MPlayer's Essential Codecs Package - These are the codecs that make all of this work.

As usual in Linux, you may have dependency issues to worry about. Also, depending on your distribution, you may have binaries available.

Note: If you already have Totem running, you can skip quite a bit of this.

Downloading and installing Xine

You can find the link to the latest Xine release on their download page. Once you have the link, drop to your favorite shell as root and proceed.

First, download and decompress the source.

root@laptop:/home/lineman# wget http://optusnet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/xine/xine-lib-1.1.1.tar.gz
root@laptop:/home/lineman# tar xzvf xine-lib-1.1.1.tar.gz

Second, change to the Xine source directory to configure and install.

root@laptop:/home/lineman# cd xine-lib-1.1.1/
root@laptop:/home/lineman/xine-lib-1.1.1# ./configure
root@laptop:/home/lineman/xine-lib-1.1.1# make
root@laptop:/home/lineman/xine-lib-1.1.1# make install
root@laptop:/home/lineman/xine-lib-1.1.1# make clean

Third, run ldconfig

root@laptop:/home/lineman# ldconfig

Downloading and installing Totem

First, find the link to the source you want on the Gnome FTP site. Then go back to your shell to download and decompress.

root@laptop:/home/lineman# wget http://ftp.acc.umu.se/pub/GNOME/sources/totem/1.3/totem-1.3.0.tar.bz2
root@laptop:/home/lineman# tar xjvf totem-1.3.0.tar.bz2

Next, change to your Totem source directory to configure and run the installer.

root@laptop:/home/lineman# cd totem-1.3.0/
root@laptop:/home/lineman/totem-1.3.0# ./configure
root@laptop:/home/lineman/totem-1.3.0# ./install-sh

Downloading and installing the MPlayer codecs

The MPlayer downloads page has quit a few different downloads available. The one you are looking for is called "essential codecs package." Get the download link and drop to your shell one more time.

First, we'll download the codec.

root@laptop:/home/lineman# wget http://ftp5.mplayerhq.hu/mplayer/releases/codecs/essential-20050412.tar.bz2

Next we need to create the directory /usr/lib/win32.

root@laptop:/home/lineman# mkdir /usr/lib/win32

Finally, we need to decompress the codecs and place them in /usr/lib/win32.

root@laptop:/home/lineman# tar xjvf essential-20050412.tar.bz2
root@laptop:/home/lineman# cp essential-20050412/* /usr/lib/win32

All done!

If you didn't have any errors along the way, you should be able to view Windows-based media in Totem now. Enjoy a little less dual-booting and, more importantly, fewer limitations in accessing media!