[dugite-code]

Don't know when you last tried a Linux distro but most Linux distro's come with a video player out of the box and have done for the better part of the last 10 years at the very least

[housemusicfan]

Correction: most Linux distros come with 12 video players out of the box (and at least 7 calculator apps)...... the philosophy of "we can't decide so just include them all" is pretty strong.

[mikedelago]

There may be 12 video players in the package repositories but I can't think of any distro that installs with 2 video players.

[hulitu]

xine, phonon and mplayer ? slackware at least

[dizhn]

That's usually from installing multiple window managers which all pull their own dependencies. It should be possible in principle to install enough of a window manager without installing unnecessary packages.