There are a number of options.. Xine, as a previous poster has suggested... the version that often comes with distro's is usually "crippled" in that it will not play encrypted DVD's, but there are a number of versions which include libdvcss or similar which will, in my experience play ANY dvd, as well as an excellent program called OGLE which seems better at handling many dvd's (fewer video glitches etc.) but is limited to dvd's whereas there are many file formats other than dvd which are availible via plug-ins for xine. If you have Mandrake you could check out the "penguin liberation front" (try typing that in google...) as they carry the uncrippled versions of xine, ogle etc. and much else. Other distro's do, I believe, have similar associated (logically NOT legally) sites that have these type of versions of popular programs. The distro's are leery of including them as the dvd industry is zealous at "protecting" themselves, rather than facilitating the legitimate needs of consumers, e.g. my desire as an international commuter to play region 1 (US) and region 2 (Western European) dvd's on my norebook - after all I got it so that I can travel, and I have paid for the disks so why should I not play them?
I've taken to using mplayer or Xine. Xine was really easy to get working on my Mandrake 9 box. There are packages for the libdvdcss libraries available at
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