Media and ubuntu.
After browsing the ubuntuforums.org absolute beginners forums for a few minutes I noticed that alot of people still have trouble with the media on ubuntu.
Vlc with it’s full potential, skype, google earth, k3b, amarok with mp3 support, dvd support, xmms with wma support, … are all in this repository, called the medibuntu repo.
In a terminal enter this.
Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon”
sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/gutsy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list
or
Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy Heron”
sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/hardy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list
After you enter either the command for gutsy or hardy, copy/paste this
wget -q http://packages.medibuntu.org/medibuntu-key.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add – && sudo apt-get update
Install common programs
Skype
sudo apt-get install skype
Free Skype-to-Skype calls.
To anywhere in the world.
And at anytime, day, night, morning or weekends.
Official website
K3b
sudo apt-get install k3b
The features are presented in no particular order and the list might be incomplete…
– Creating data cds
– Creating audio cds
– Creating Video CD
– Creating mixed-mode CDs
– Creating eMovix CDs
– CD Copy
– DVD burning
– CD Ripping
– DVD Ripping and DivX/XviD encoding
– Save/load projects.
– Blanking of CDR-Ws.
– Retrieving Table of contents and cdr information.
– Writing existing iso images to CD or DVD with optional verification of the written data.
– Writing cue/bin files created for CDRWIN
– DVD copy (no video transcoding yet)
– Enhanced CD device handling
– KParts-Plugin ready
Vlc
sudo apt-get install vlc
VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.
Google Earth
sudo aptitude install googleearth
Google Earth combines the power of Google Search with satellite imagery, maps, terrain and 3D buildings to put the world’s geographic information at your fingertips.
* Fly to your house. Just type in an address, press Search, and you’ll zoom right in.
* Search for schools, parks, restaurants, and hotels. Get driving directions.
* Tilt and rotate the view to see 3D terrain and buildings, or look up to explore the sky
* Save and share your searches and favorites.
Amarok
sudo apt-get install amarok
Amarok is the music player for Linux and Unix with an intuitive interface. Amarok makes playing the music you love easier than ever before – and looks good doing it.
Dvd Support
sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2
libdvdcss is a simple library designed for accessing DVDs like a block device without having to bother about the decryption.
Xmms with wma support
sudo apt-get install xmms-wma
XMMS is a multimedia player for unix systems. XMMS stands for X MultiMedia System and can play media files such as MP3, MOD’s, WAV and others with the use of Input plugins.
Kaffeine
sudo apt-get install kaffeine
media player for Unix-like operating systems running KDE.
By default it uses xine-lib media framework but also supports GStreamer. It also supports the use of MPlayer project’s binary codecs for proprietary formats. Kaffeine developers have also produced a Mozilla plugin to start the player for streaming content over the web.
Features include streaming, DVB, DVD, Video CD and CD audio.
Mplayer
sudo apt-get install mplayer
MPlayer is a movie player which runs on many systems (see the documentation). It plays most MPEG/VOB, AVI, Ogg/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, RealMedia, Matroska, NUT, NuppelVideo, FLI, YUV4MPEG, FILM, RoQ, PVA files, supported by many native, XAnim, and Win32 DLL codecs. You can watch VideoCD, SVCD, DVD, 3ivx, DivX 3/4/5 and even WMV movies..
Another great feature of MPlayer is the wide range of supported output drivers. It works with X11, Xv, DGA, OpenGL, SVGAlib, fbdev, AAlib, DirectFB, but you can use GGI, SDL (and this way all their drivers), VESA (on every VESA compatible card, even without X11!) and some low level card-specific drivers (for Matrox, 3Dfx and ATI), too! Most of them support software or hardware scaling, so you can enjoy movies in fullscreen. MPlayer supports displaying through some hardware MPEG decoder boards, such as the Siemens DVB, DXR2 and DXR3/Hollywood+.
MPlayer has an onscreen display (OSD) for status information, nice big antialiased shaded subtitles and visual feedback for keyboard controls. European/ISO 8859-1,2 (Hungarian, English, Czech, etc), Cyrillic and Korean fonts are supported along with 12 subtitle formats (MicroDVD, SubRip, OGM, SubViewer, Sami, VPlayer, RT, SSA, AQTitle, JACOsub, PJS and our own: MPsub). DVD subtitles (SPU streams, VOBsub and Closed Captions) are supported as well.
Acroread
sudo apt-get install acroread
Adobe Acrobat Reader for viewing and printing Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files.
w32 codecs
sudo apt-get install w32codecs
w32codecs this is a package of codecs needed to play multiple formats, notably DivX.
Non-free-codecs
sudo apt-get install non-free-codecs
Install several non free codecs.
Note:
It goes without saying that these programs can also be installed using synaptic packager manager.
Linux Owns 
I seem to have some problems with this command
sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/gutsy.list -O
In the terminal, after the request has been sent and awaiting response… it tells me that 404 not found. Can someone help
It should work, I did a fresh install yesterday (downgrade from hardy alpha) and the command worked.
Try the http://ubuntuforums.org
I installed alot here, thanks.
The Liberator who destroyed my property has realigned my perception
At the risk of sounding absolutely obvious, first check to see if the program you want is already available under Applications/Add/Remove
I managed to install both Skype and k3b that way without any problems on 7.1 Gutsy
Some programs on this list are available in the normal repo’s but with limited functionality.
Most likely because of copyright issues.
Sir,
I hava a problem in ubuntu’08.my monitor only detects two resolution 600×800,640×480 ….i cannot install vlc and some other players like xine ,mplayer using network without using synaptic…give some tips for to get 1020×1200 monitor resolution….and ….install vlc …..
I would suggest you post your question in the ubuntuforums.org.
That being said, go to “system -> administration -> hardware drivers” and install your graphics card.
A reboot will be needed, that should fix your resolution issues.
If you card isn’t listed, do a google search for ‘ubuntu envy”.
I’m not sure what you mean with “using network without using synaptic”.
Transport other very important factor that I can think of is the amount of traffic to poker. Super-easy trick to use and is so useful you will use it each single time you at any time perform.