~/.mplayer/config ~/.mplayer/codec.conf If you wish to utilize a freetype font, you need to link a TTF file to your ~/.mplayer directory. For example: ln -sf /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/luxisri.ttf ~/.mplayer/subfont.ttfotherwise ln -sf /usr/share/mplayer/font/iso-8859-1/arial-14 ~/.mplayer/font where 14 is the font size. You can chose your font size of 14, 18, 24 or 28. Set up the GUI with the following commands executed from your source directory: cat > ~/.mplayer/config << "EOF" gui = yes skin = default EOF mkdir ~/.mplayer/Skin && tar -xvf ../default.tar -C ~/.mplayer/Skin The first line, gui = yes, will make MPlayer start in gui mode automatically. If you want to decide whether to start in gui mode or not, leave that line out and start mplayer with -gui or as gmplayer (e.g. when starting from a Window Manager menu or command prompt).