other operating system i could b running

[flap]

is gmplayer there though? is it just not running because it can't find the skin? Have you tried manually installing the skin from a tarball rather than an rpm?

[Calum]

not yet. that was going to be my next stepp, but i've been leaving the 'real' computer alone while i install and break stuff on the 'non serious' computer for the time being. i just rcvd freebsd, debian and lycoris in the post so i probably won't be fiddling with the real computer for a while especially since both of us need it now for our university stuff.

[JH]

Surprisingly MPlayer tarball doesn't contain skins. --enable-gui just enables GUI feature but skins should be downloaded and installed after that. In the one hand it's logical - there's no --install-skins flag in configure...

[Calum]

yup, i know, but then i try to install the skins using rpm and they install apparently but mplayer does not see them.

[flap]

when i installed mplayer i had to make symlinks to where the skins had installed. i can't remember why I didn't just move them to wherever mplayer was looking for them, but that might be your solution.

[JH]

Just download any skin you'd like (in addition to Default) from http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/dload.html and unpack them into your_home/.mplayer/skins if I remember it correctly. Make sure you have rights to read from there. That's all.