Some media players are bundled with too many features which you don’t really need, these bloated media players eat up your RAM, thrushes your hard disk and drive your CPU crazy. So you should be very specific when selecting media player for your operating system and here we compiled a list of five best media players you will find on Ubuntu. Ubuntu Software Center is full of all types audio and video players to fit unique needs of users. But some media players are exceptionally well which includes VLC, Clementine, Rhythmbox, Audacious & SMPlayer. All of these media players are free and open source.
VLC
It is by far the best media player you will find on the planet earth. Recently VLC is updated to version 2.0. It is designed for everybody needs, it doesn’t matter whether you are a computer geek or ordinary user, you will find VLC media player tailored to your needs. By installing VLC media player you don’t have to worry about codecs anymore, it will play almost all audio and video files out of the box.
Clementine
Music player inspired by Amarok 1.4. Clementine have superior music library handling features. It enables you to search and play from your local library and online playing facility from Spotify, Grooveshark, Last.fm, SomaFM,Magnatune, Jamendo, SKY.fm, Digitally Imported, and Icecast. Clementine provides Album Arts, Lyrics, artist biographies and photos from online services like Last.fm etc. It provides native notifications on Ubuntu via libnotify and uses Qt UI which looks quite well even on Gnome desktop.
Install from Ubuntu Software Center
Rhythmbox
Rhythmbox is now default music player for Ubuntu 12.04 replacing sluggish Banshee music player. Rhythmbox is inspired by iTunes from Apple and like iTunes it tries to provide you with very good music management functionality. It is fully integrated with Gnome based desktops and uses GStreamer media framework. Rhythmbox major features includes sorting, searching, internet radio, visualizations, playlists, podcasts, iPod and USB music players support, Magnatune and Jamendo music store and much more.
Audacious
Audacious is minimal audio player originally inspired from Winamp for Windows. Audacious uses very less system resources and yet outputs very high quality audio. Audacious also have good music management features. The best feature of Audacious is that it can support Winamp Classic skins which will make you feel home if you were previously Winamp user on Windows. Other features include graphical equalizer with LADSPA effects, Lyrics fetching, GTK theme and much more.
SMPlayer
SMPlayer is best alternative to VLC media player. It is best complete front-end of MPlayer and like VLC media player SMPlayer supports all popular formats out of box and the best feature of SMPlayer is that it remember all settings of files that you play so when you close movie in middle SMPlayer will resume from where you left with exact same subtitle, volume and audio track settings.