How To Install LPlayer On Linux
Minimalism is fashionable on Linux, as its an operating system known for simplicity. When it comes to music players, there are a lot of lightweight ones. Unfortunately, a lot of the lightweight music apps on Linux don’t look very nice and don’t feel very modern. If you love minimalism and want a music player on Linux that doesn’t use a ton of system resources yet stays modern, you may want to install LPlayer.
SPOILER ALERT: Scroll down and watch the video tutorial at the end of this article.
Ubuntu
Ubuntu users will have the easiest time installing LPlayer as it’s the developers target this operating system. There’s a PPA anyone can add and it’s compatible with Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Elementary and other Linux OS’s that use Ubuntu as a base.
To add the PPA, open up a terminal window and enter the following command to add the new software source.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/lplayer
Now that the new PPA is added to Ubuntu, you’ll need to run the apt update command to download package information for it. If you skip this step, LPlayer won’t be found or be able to install, even though the PPA is on your Ubuntu PC.
sudo apt update
While running the apt update command, you might have noticed that there are some updates for Ubuntu. Using the apt upgrade command, install these updates. Don’t skip this step, as LPlayer will likely run better with all software on the PC up to date.
sudo apt upgrade -y
Now that everything is up to date, it’s time to install the LPlayer app on Ubuntu. Using the apt install command, get LPLayer:
sudo apt install lplayer
Debian
Ubuntu and Debian have an identical core (Ubuntu uses Debian as a base), and because of it many of the programs ported to Ubuntu work on Debian. Despite this, installing LPlayer on Debian proper proves to be a challenge. There are no specific software repositories to speak of. To get this app working, you’ll need to download a Debian package file directly from the LPlayer Launchpad site.
In our testing, we can confirm that this version of LPlayer works well on Debian 9 Stable. We cannot confirm if it works on Unstable and Testing, as these versions of Debian are under development and have newer, changing library files. For best results, use Debian Stable.
To get the latest version of LPlayer that works on Debian, use the wget tool and download the package directly.
wget https://launchpad.net/~atareao/+archive/ubuntu/lplayer/+files/lplayer_0.3.4-0extras16.04.3_all.deb
After downloading LPlayer from Launchpad, use the dpkg tool to install the file directly to your system.
sudo dpkg -i lplayer_0.3.4-0extras16.04.3_all.deb
Installing LPlayer on Debian works fine, but you may need to run install -f to fix any dependencies that refuse to install.
sudo apt install -f
Source Instructions
If you don’t use a Linux distribution that is Debian, Ubuntu, or something similar, the only way to install LPlayer is by building it from source. The first step in the building process is to install all of the dependencies that the compiler needs to build the code. There are many different dependencies required to build LPlayer from source. Go to the official GitHub page and install all of the items on the list.
Note: keep in mind that the developer lists the Ubuntu names of these packages. Your operating system may have different names for these packages.
With all the dependencies working, it’s time to install Lplayer. Start off by cloning the latest version of the LPlayer software from Github.
git clone https://github.com/atareao/lplayer
Next, use the CD command to move into the newly cloned lplayer directory on your Linux PC.
cd lplayer
Fortunately, though the developers primarily focus on Ubuntu, the software works on pretty much every Linux desktop, thanks to the LPlayer Github repo. To run the LPlayer music app right away, cd into the bin sub-folder, and run the binary.
cd bin ./lplayer
Desktop Shortcut
LPlayer works, but running it is inconvenient. To fix this, create a custom Desktop shortcut. Open up a terminal and use the touch command to create a new lplayer.desktop file.
touch ~/Desktop/lplayer.desktop chmod +x ~/Desktop/lplayer.desktop
Open the LPlayer Desktop shortcut in the Nano text editor:
nano ~/Desktop/lplayer.desktop
Paste the following code into the Desktop shortcut file.
Note: change “username” under Icon and Exec to your Linux PC’s username.
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Lplayer
GenericName=Music Player
Comment=A Simple Audio Player
Keywords=Audio;Podcast;MP3;Song;
Exec=/home/username/lplayer/bin/lplayer %u
TryExec=lplayer
Icon=/home/username/lplayer.png
Type=Application
Terminal=false
StartupNotify=true
Encoding=utf-8
Categories=GNOME;GTK;AudioVideo;Audio;Player;
MimeType=application/x-ogg;application/ogg;audio/x-vorbis+ogg;audio/x-scpls;audio/x-mp3;audio/x-mpeg;audio/mpeg;audio/x-mpegurl;audio/flac;audio/m4a;audio/x-m4a;audio/mp4
Save the Nano editor with Ctrl + O, and exit it with Ctrl + X. Then, use the wget tool to download the LPlayer shortcut’s icon.
cd ~/lplayer wget https://i.imgur.com/NwMq3u2.png mv NwMq3u2.png lplayer.png
Now that the icon is inside ~/lplayer, the new shortcut will work correctly. To run the app, go to your desktop and double-click on the LPlayer shortcut to use the app!
