Feckoff.net

I’ve tried a good few Linux distributions, but I seem to have had the most success so far with Ubuntu 5.04. It is the only one I’ve managed to get VLC working on with both sound and video. And as a bonus I managed to get my MS Explorer 3.0 mouse’s side buttons (for flicking backwards and forwards in web browser) working - never experienced that in Linux before either.

It took a bit of googling to get VLC to work, so, for your convenience, here’s how:

1. Make sure you’ve got synaptic configured to use the universe and multiverse repositories. There’s lots of info on Google on how to do this.
2. Run Synaptic
3. Search for “vlc”
4. Select the following packages: vlc, vlc-plugin-esd, wxvlc. You might need vlc-plugin-alsa if you’re using ALSA sound drivers
5. Click Apply

And you’re done. You’re probably best off associating common video filetypes with VLC now.