Install Latest SMPlayer in Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Fedora

SMPlayer is a popular cross-platform multimedia player that supports various formats and codecs. It provides a user-friendly interface and offers advanced features like playback speed control, subtitle support, and YouTube integration. This article will guide you through the process of installing the latest version of SMPlayer on Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and Fedora distributions.

Installing SMPlayer on Debian-based Systems

Method 1: Using Official Repository (Recommended)

For most users, installing from the official repositories is the simplest approach

sudo apt update
sudo apt install smplayer

Method 2: Using PPA (Latest Version)

To get the latest version, add the SMPlayer PPA repository

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rvm/smplayer
sudo apt update
sudo apt install smplayer

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  smplayer-themes
Suggested packages:
  youtube-dl smtube
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  smplayer smplayer-themes
0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 4,141 kB of archives.
After this operation, 16.3 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] Y
...
Setting up smplayer (20.6.0~ds0-1) ...
Setting up smplayer-themes (20.6.0-1) ...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ...
Processing triggers for mime-support ...
Complete!

Installing SMPlayer on Fedora

Step 1: Enable RPM Fusion Repository

SMPlayer is available in the RPM Fusion repository. Enable it first

sudo dnf install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

Step 2: Install SMPlayer

Install SMPlayer using the DNF package manager

sudo dnf install smplayer

Last metadata expiration check: 0:15:01 ago on Mon 15 Nov 2023
Dependencies resolved.
================================================================================
 Package               Arch         Version             Repository          Size
================================================================================
Installing:
 smplayer              x86_64       23.6.0-1.fc39       rpmfusion-free     4.8 M
Installing dependencies:
 mpv                   x86_64       1:0.36.0-2.fc39     fedora             2.3 M
 qt5-qtbase            x86_64       5.15.10-1.fc39      fedora             3.4 M

Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Install  3 Packages

Total download size: 10.5 M
Installed size: 35 M
Is this ok [y/N]: y
...
Complete!

Basic Usage Commands

Once installed, you can launch SMPlayer from the applications menu or use these terminal commands

Launch SMPlayer

smplayer

Open a Specific Media File

smplayer /path/to/video.mp4

Playback with Custom Speed

smplayer -speed 1.5 /path/to/video.mp4

Load Subtitles

smplayer -sub /path/to/subtitles.srt /path/to/video.mp4

Key Features

Troubleshooting

If SMPlayer fails to play certain formats, install additional codecs

For Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt install ubuntu-restricted-extras

For Fedora:

sudo dnf install gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free gstreamer1-plugins-good

Conclusion

Installing SMPlayer on Linux distributions is straightforward using package managers. The player offers excellent codec support and advanced features for multimedia playback. For the latest features, use PPA repositories on Debian-based systems or RPM Fusion on Fedora to ensure you have the most recent version available.