Revision 5 as of 2006-01-09 10:58:53

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Introduction

RealPlayer is available from several sources:

None of these methods are ideal.

  • RealPlayer8 is no longer supported by Real, and the installer is designed to install a release that is not on the Real site.

  • RealPlayer10 from Real does not integrate at all with Ubuntu's package management system. Uninstalling requires you to manually find and remove files that are scattered around your system.

  • RealPlayer10's debian package does not make RealPlayer the default player for RealMedia or ["Smil"] file types.

Installing RealPlayer

Installing RealPlayer10 from a .deb file

Since this method has the fewest issues, it is documented on RestrictedFormats

Installing RealPlayer10 from Real

Go to [http://www.real.com Real.com] and click the yellow Download RealPlayer button. (The example below assumes the file was downloaded to your Desktop).

First, install a needed support package, then make the downloaded file executable, and finally run it by typing in a terminal: 

cd ~/Desktop
sudo apt-get install libstdc++5
chmod +x RealPlayer10Gold.bin
sudo ./RealPlayerGold.bin

When the installer asks for a directory, you should use one of the customary locations for software that is not part of a distribution, either /opt/RealPlayer or /usr/local/RealPlayer.

Installing RealPlayer8 from multiverse

Got to [http://forms.real.com/real/player/blackjack.html], and scroll down until you find RealPlayer 8 for Linux 2.x (i386) RPM. Follow that link, until you find rp8_linux20_libc6_i386_cs1_rpm, and download it. The realplayer installer expects the file to be named rp8_linux20_libc6_i386_cs2_rpm so first you must rename the file, then run the installer. Assuming that you downloaded the file to your Desktop, in a terminal, type: 

cd ~/Desktop
mv rp8_linux20_libc6_i386_cs1_rpm rp8_linux20_libc6_i386_cs2_rpm
sudo apt-get install realplayer

Answer the questions (twice), giving the location where you downloaded the file.

RealPlayer 10 and SCIM in Breezy

The SCIM package has a gcc ABI incompatibility problem when using with programs that are compiled with a different gcc version.

In particular, the proprietary RealPlayer 10 is compiled with gcc 3.2, and thus conflicts with SCIM in Breezy (since Ubuntu Breezy/SCIM is compiled with gcc 4.x). RealPlayer 10 will fail to start when SCIM is running.

To resolve this conflict you can modify the running script of RealPlayer as follows:

1. Edit the file /usr/bin/realplay 

sudo gedit /usr/bin/realplay

2. Then add the following line right after the bash declaration statement: 

GTK_IM_MODULE=xim ; export GTK_IM_MODULE

Now RealPlayer 10 will run fine even when SCIM is running.

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