3. Software Installation
Here we cover the installation of the DVD playback software on various
Linux distributions. For each Linux distribution we indicate how to
install MPlayer, Xine, Ogle, and VideoLAN onto the system. These
are the four most popular software packages for DVD playback in Linux.
Usage instructions for these programs will be given in the next section.
Read the section that corresponds to your Linux distribution. All
of the installation commands given below should be run as root.
3.1. Red Hat / Fedora
If you run Red Hat Linux or Fedora, you can download all of the
DVD playback software from the FreshRPMS package repository. Since
there are so many packages needed for DVD playback, the easiest way to
install all of them is to use apt-get. Here's how
to do it:
Follow the link to the version of apt that matches your Red Hat
version:
Download the appropriate binary x86 RPM package (in this example,
apt-0.5.15cnc3-0.1.fr.i386.rpm) and install it
using the rpm command as follows:
# rpm -Uvh apt-0.5.15cnc3-0.1.fr.i386.rpm |
Run the
commands
# apt-get update
# apt-get install mplayer xine ogle_gui
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to have apt install everything for you.
3.1.1. Special note about VideoLAN and Red Hat
The FreshRPMS repository contains the
videolan-client package for Red Hat 9 and Red Hat
7.3, but not for Red Hat 8 or Fedora Core 1. If you want to install
VideoLAN on Red Hat 9 or Red Hat 7.3, you can just type
apt-get install videolan-client and let the
program take care of it for you. Fedora Core 1 users who want VideoLAN
will need to visit the official VideoLAN
Red Hat page instead, and follow the instructions there. I do not
recommend that Fedora users install VideoLAN, since the VideoLAN
packages interfere to a large degree with the FreshRPMS packages installed in the previous step.
There appears to be no easy way to install VideoLAN on Red Hat 8.
3.2. Debian
These instructions are for Debian, stable only (3.0r1 as of
this writing) -- it is assumed that if you run testing or unstable versions
then you should already know what you are doing.
Make sure the following lines are in your
/etc/apt/sources.list
file:
deb http://hpisi.nerim.net/ stable main
deb http://www.interq.or.jp/libra/oohara/debian-unofficial/ ./
deb http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/debian woody main
|
(The first line is for MPlayer, the second is for the Xine CSS
plugins, and the third is for VideoLAN.) Then run the
commands:
# apt-get update
# apt-get install mplayer-686 mplayer-fonts mplayer-doc ogle
# /usr/share/doc/ogle/examples/install-css.sh
# apt-get install xine-ui xine-d5d-plugin xine-d4d-plugin gnome-vlc libdvdcss2
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3.3. Slackware
The best site for Slackware add-on packages is http://www.linuxpackages.net/. You can use their search
engine to find and download the Ogle, Xine, MPlayer, libdvdcss,
libdvdnav, libdvdread, lame, and a52dec packages from the web site. Put
the packages into a single directory and run
pkgtool to install the packages onto your
system.
For VideoLAN, you will have to build it from
source since there is no precompiled package on the LinuxPackages web
site yet. To make matters worse, the version of mpeg2dec included
with Slackware 9.1 is too old to be used with VideoLAN, so you have to
compile a newer version of mpeg2dec as well.
That said, if you still want to install
VideoLAN, then download the latest source packages for mpeg2dec and VideoLAN and run the following
commands. Note that you have to disable ffmpeg support for the VideoLAN
build because the Slackware MPlayer packages omit some of the header files
needed by ffmpeg.
# tar xzvf mpeg2dec-0.4.0.tar.gz
# cd mpeg2dec-0.4.0
# ./configure
# make
# make install
# cd ..
# tar xzvf vlc-0.7.0.tar.gz
# cd vlc-0.7.0
# ./configure --disable-ffmpeg
# make
# make install
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3.4. Mandrake
Mandrake users can get packages for all of the video programs from
the Penguin Liberation Front
web site. The fastest way is to visit the Easy Urpmi site and follow the
instructions to generate a listing of the commands you need to type for
PLF access in urpmi. You should then type in the commands returned by
the web site to set up your system for PLF access.
After you have set up PLF access, type:
# urpmi.update -a
# urpmi mplayer libdvdcss2 xine-ui ogle ogle_gui vlc
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to install all the video programs.
3.5. SuSE
The YaST package program included with SuSE works only with
official packages, and there are no official packages that support DVD.
Therefore you will have to install the packages for all of the DVD
software manually.
MPlayer and Xine packages for SuSE are available on the PackMan site.
For MPlayer, you need the MPlayer, lzo, and xvid packages on that
page as well as the "additionally needed binary packages" listed
on the page for each package. SuSE 9.0 users should note that as of this
writing the MPlayer package for SuSE 9.0 has a broken
libsmbclient.so.0 dependency. You can work around
this problem with the commands
# rpm -Uvh --nodeps MPlayer-1.0pre3-pm.1.i686.rpm
# ln -s libsmbclient3.so.0 /usr/lib/libsmbclient.so.0
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To install Xine, you should download and install the
libxine1-dvd and xine-ui packages from PackMan.
Encrypted DVD support in Xine also requires installing
libdvdcss from the VideoLAN site.
Ogle can be installed using the Red Hat
RPMs from the Ogle site. SuSE 9.0 users who want to install the
Ogle_gui package will also need to install
orbit,
gdk-pixbuf,
gnome-libs, and
libglade from SuSE 8.2.
VideoLAN users will need to download the Red Hat
RPMs from the VideoLAN site and install them forcibly using
rpm --nodeps. The VideoLAN packages also require
XFree86-compat-libs
and freetype
from SuSE 8.2 in order to run.
3.6. Gentoo
The basic command to use is:
# emerge sync
# USE="dvd mmx sse" emerge mplayer xine-ui vlc ogle-gui
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If you have an AMD processor, you should type USE="dvd
mmx 3dnow" instead of using the sse flag.
Athlon XP owners can use the 3dnow and
sse flags together.