Linux players Novell and Red Hat are teaming with media company Real Networks to include its RealPlayer and Helix Players on their distributions.
As part of its news, Real Networks also said it would release Helix Player, the underlying technology of RealPlayer 10, on Linux under the General Public License (define).
The Helix player is Real Networks’ open source effort to allow media formats, including its own RealAudio and Video formats, to be distributed in Linux. Real’s player would join at least three current media player projects in the Linux/open source community: Xine, MPlayer and VLC (video lan client).
Novell also said it would make RealPlayer 10 for Linux the default player for RealAudio, RealVideo, Ogg Vorbis and Theora media codecs on its upcoming desktop Linux release. Red Hat plans to include the Helix Player with its desktop offering and offer a no-cost upgrade to RealPlayer10 when available.
RealPlayer10 is currently available as a beta download and it expected to be available as a stable release later this summer.
Download: Helix Downloads