Installing RealPlayer 10 on Ubuntu
2007-07-07 22:27:05

Many video/audio streams use RealMedia formats. This is a breif guide on installing Realplayer10 onto Ubuntu without using the meta-package.

Installing RealPlayer on Ubuntu Edgy Eft
To start, visit real.com and download the RealPlayer for Linux package. You should end up with a file called RealPlayer10GOLD.bin. Save it to Desktop.

Right click on the downloaded file and select Properties. Enter the permissions tab and check the "Allow Executing file as program" checkbox. Click Close.

Now, double click on the file. When prompted, select "Run in terminal". Accept all of the default values except for the installation directory. Most users have installed into "\opt\RealPlayer". Follow the instructions to complete setup.

When done the Window will close. If you restart Gnome you will see a new entry in the "Sound and Video" menu for Realplayer. Start it up. When prompted allow it to configure Mozillia. You should now be able to play Real Media from the player or from within Firefox.

Problems with Edgy and RealPlayer
If you use Firefox 2 on Ubuntu Edgy (maybe other versions/distros as well) you may notice that your media still attempts to play with Totem (usually causing it to fail on RealMedia files). To remedy this first open a console. Run the following commands:

cd /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins
sudo rm libtotem-complex-plugin.*

Then restart Firefox and try to listen to a RealMedia stream.