All Linux Things

Look here, https://itsfoss.com/video-players-linux/

I tend to go with a video player that is native to the desktop environment I am using. On Gnome I stick with Totem (Videos I think they call it now) and on KDE I stick with Dragon. Gnome uses gstreamer as it media backend and KDE uses Phonon, so since those frameworks are already installed I just stick with the applications that use those apis.

I don't really like how they just lump in gui frontends with actual players. However, they do at least CLARIFY on some of the gui frontends that it is just that, a frontend only for something else. So not that big a deal I guess, but it still kinda annoys me.

As far as what I use, I prefer smplayer w/ mpv. There are the occasional files that it gets wrong, and so I keep vlc around as a backup.

VLC most of the time but Ive also used smplayer. I dont tend to use whats provided in a distro as Ive preferred VLC for a long time.

Tried Dragon last night and it was a good experience.

Spoke too soon as Dragon had some issues last night and I ended up on VLC instead.

I grew up with out TV so I never got use to watching video stuff. I use to go the the movie theater a lot and they had about a 30' screen, so video on devices even 60" TVs seem pretty third rate. And the idea of enjoying watching video on a monitor or laptop screen will never seem like a quality experience is possible.

I encode videos at 360p, they don't take up that much space and especially with my aging eyes they look fine on our 30" TV. This is actually just way to many words to say if I double click a video player icon and it launches it will undoubtably suit me just fine.

Ill second that about video players,and my eyes arent that good either. Sitting closer at my 24" widescreen monitor many times is the easiest way to see.