[MPlayer-users] Re: Problem - need to un-install Mplayer

[adland]

>    I typed "man dpkg" and it had no manual entry.

just an example I gather now from your response that your linux distro 
is RedHat and for this you will most likely use 
rpm (rpm package manager) instead.

try man rpm

> I think I used apt-get 
> to install them. 

okay you can do that if using Debian as well. 
it will use other underlying tools (like dpkg) to install the packages.

> Either way, I need to replace Mplayer. Synaptic said that it can remove 
> Mplayer, but it will also need to remove a whole lot of dependencies. 
> Should I just un-install Mplayer via synaptic and then re-install it 
> along with all of its dependencies? 

try using lower level command line tools.

find your exact mplayer package name
rpm -qa mplayer*

delete it
rpm --erase --nodeps mplayer-package-name

(of course this breaks the other dependant packages until you reinstall
mplayer, but they are still installed and configured like before)

this webpage may also help with some sample commands
http://xtronics.com/reference/rpm2apt-dpkg.htm

good luck