For music I use XMMS, which looks almost exactly like Winamp. It should already be in your menu under Sound & Video as "Audio Player." If you want to listen to MP3's you'll have to install the xmms-mp3 plugin.
For movie player, Xine.
Mplayer would not work right for me in Fedora Core 2, so I gave it up and installed Xine.

ok so I tried to install xmms-mp3 and this is what it said
 
rpm -ivh xmms-mp3-1.2.7-0.rhfc1.dag.i386.rpm
warning: xmms-mp3-1.2.7-0.rhfc1.dag.i386.rpm: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 6b8d79e6
error: Failed dependencies:
xmms = 1.2.7 is needed by xmms-mp3-1.2.7-0.rhfc1.dag
 
but I have xmms 1.2.10 installed, is this one of those library location problems or something?
 
EDIT:
ok, so this problem was that xmms mp3 was ONLY for 1.2.7 not >=1.2.7 so I had to find one for 1.2.10, so now I have it working.
 
btw, this xmms is EXACTLY what I wanted, can you use the winamp skins on it too?
 
now I'm gonna go install xine.

Does anyone know of a player that can play video files and dvds translucently over top of your desktop?
 
the player that came with my ati 9700 pro can do so for windows

brodee, before you install anything else, You would be doing yourself a huge favor by installing apt-get RPM. That dag file you are trying to install in for Core 1 and I believe you said you use Core 2. This will make your life with Linux hugely easier, especially when installing Xine.
 
http://www.linuxcompatible.org/thread27839-1.html
 
And yes, WinAmp skins will work with XMMS, although I've never done it.

cool, thanks a lot, got xine installed.

i recommend xmms. its like an mp3 player! this is what i used at home, although for rh9 you must download a patch. you do a search for it on the web. and also for playing movies i use xine player. they are just fine.
there are lots of cool video and audio players out there, just try to search for them.
i even play .rm files using xine media player and also .wmv and .wma fles...
 

If you use the gnome desktop I'd give beep a try for a music player. It's a gtk2 port of xmms, I like it alot. I use mplayer for all my video needs. If you like the iTunes way form music try rhythmbox.
 
http://beepmp.sourceforge.net/
 
http://www.rhythmbox.org/
 
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/news.html

I like vlc, it seems to play anything - mp3, DivX, mov, whatever - perfectly. I have had trouble installing the FC2 build but that is probably just me.