/etc/mplayer/*, ~/.mplayer/* 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 /etc/mplayer/subfont.ttf otherwise ln -sf /usr/share/mplayer/font/font-arial-*-iso-8859-1 /etc/mplayer/font where * 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 > /etc/mplayer/config << "EOF" gui = yes skin = default EOF 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).