Almost a year ago, RealNetworks announced plans to develop an open-source version of its media player.
A couple of weeks ago, the fruit of that project reached a beta state of ripeness with the release of test versions of Reals Helix Player and RealPlayer 10 clients for Linux and Unix.
I took both clients out for a spin and found that both worked well on their own and as plug-ins for the Firefox browser I use.
The clients sport a slick interface based on the same GTK2 tool kit on which GNOME is built. The interface is a major improvement over that of the very old RealPlayer 8 client.
I think the best thing about Reals media clients for Linux is that these clients lack all the annoying pop-ups and forced-registration dialogs that infest Reals RealOne client for Windows.
For more information or to download these players, cruise to https://helixcommunity.org.
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