...and Windows Media, Adobe Acrobat, Skype and GoogleEarthOne of the problems with (K)Ubuntu (and many other Linux distributions) is that it will not play commercial, copy-protected DVD's and a number of other proprietary file formats, out-of-the-box. There are complex legal and ethical reasons for this. However, many users just want to play their files and watch their DVD's. So what is the easiest way to make (K)Ubuntu do these things?
In principle, you need to add a couple of extra repositories to your system, namely... - deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ gutsy free non-free
- deb-src http://packages.medibuntu.org/ gutsy free non-free
and then you have to download some packages that contain the software and libraries you need. If all goes to plan, then the instructions below will add the following additional features to your system... - Adobe Acrobat Reader
- Google Earth
- MPEG Encoder
- Play copy-protected DVD's
- Play proprietary Windows Media file formats
- Skype
There are several ways to do this but probably the simplest and most comprehensive is to open a terminal window and type in each of the following four commands, followed by the "return" key. Please note that all four of these commands are single lines - though your browser may have caused them to "line-wrap".
1. Add repositories. The repository you use depends on the version of Ubuntu you are using:- Version 7.xx (Gutsy):-
sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/gutsy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list Version 8.xx (Hardy):-
sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/gutsy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list
2. If this generates a "No such file or directory" error it might be necessary to... sudo mkdir /etc/apt/sources.list.d
3. Install GPG key - this is needed verify the repository when your machne does routine updates... wget -q http://packages.medibuntu.org/medibuntu-key.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add - && sudo apt-get update
4. Upgrade the distribution... sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
5. Install applications and libraries... sudo apt-get install skype googleearth googleearth-data ffmpeg mplayer mencoder libdv-bin libggi-target-emu libggi-target-monotext libggimisc2 w32codecs libdvdcss2 mplayer-doc non-free-codecs acroread acroread-escript acroread-plugins mozilla-acroread Thats it! Enjoy.
Links & References
|
