Multimedia & Audio

InterGenOS ships a working multimedia stack out of the box: a video player with hardware-accelerated decoding, a Wayland-native image viewer, and a document viewer, all running on GNOME 49 over Wayland. Audio editing and music-player applications are available on demand through the package manager. This page covers what plays today, how hardware acceleration is wired up, and which applications you add yourself.

The multimedia stack carries no telemetry, no usage analytics, and no background service. What it does, it does on your machine and nowhere else.

What Ships by Default

The desktop tier installs a functional media set for everyday use. Package counts drift between builds; the desktop tier carried 420 packages as of 2026-06-11, and that figure is not permanent.

For the full default application set, see The Graphical Session.

Hardware-Accelerated Playback

Video playback is hardware-accelerated through the Mesa graphics stack, which ships and is enabled by default for AMD (Radeon) and Intel (Arc, Iris, UHD) GPUs.

• VA-API hardware video decoding runs through radeonsi (AMD) and intel-media-driver (Intel).
• Totem uses VA-API for hardware-accelerated video playback.
• Firefox uses VA-API for hardware-accelerated video on the web.

Common video formats decode on the GPU rather than the CPU, which keeps playback smooth and power draw low on supported hardware.

NVIDIA Hardware

The NVIDIA proprietary driver is not installed by default. It is available as an explicit, user-initiated opt-in through the package manager:

pkm install nvidia

Installing it presents the NVIDIA license for acceptance before the driver is fetched. After install, follow the post-install steps to enroll the NVIDIA kernel module with your Machine Owner Key. Hardware-accelerated rendering and CUDA on NVIDIA hardware depend on this opt-in. See CUDA on NVIDIA for the full NVIDIA path.

Audio and Video Applications

The following media applications are optional. They are not pre-installed; you add them when you need them, through the package manager:

• Audacity — Multi-track audio editor
• Rhythmbox — Music player with podcast support
• Celluloid — GTK4 frontend for mpv
• Transmission — BitTorrent client

Install any of these on demand, for example:

sudo pkm install audacity

Wayland and Media

Every default media application runs on the Wayland display protocol. Wayland’s per-window isolation means each application sees only its own input and pixel buffer: one application cannot scrape another window’s pixels or capture its input. Applications not yet ported to Wayland run through Xwayland, a translation layer that starts automatically when needed. Compositing every frame through the display server also eliminates the screen-tearing artifacts common in legacy X11 video playback.

For the broader display posture, see The Graphical Session.

No Telemetry, No Analytics

No part of the multimedia stack phones home. There is no usage tracking and no app-store analytics. The package manager (pkm) records the packages you have installed for dependency resolution, and that data never leaves your machine. This is a machine you understand, can modify, and can trust.

Planned, Not Shipped

Larger creative and production applications are planned for future releases and are not part of the current build. Do not assume they are present today. When they arrive, you will add them through the package manager like any other optional package.

Cross-References

• The Graphical Session — Default applications, GNOME, and Wayland
• Peripherals — Audio devices and other hardware
• Package Manager — Installing optional applications with pkm
• CUDA on NVIDIA — Opt-in NVIDIA driver and acceleration
• FAQ