Your media player problems stem from a lack of codecs.

Look here : http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/

If you want to play the normal encrypted DVDs you'll needinstall libdvdcss in order to handle the decryption. I believe that's installed through the easy ubuntu app as well.

I'd suggest you go to the Ubuntu website and read through their forums to see what additional apt repositories you need to add in order to get that as well as many other apps you're likely to need. By default only a minimum of repositories are enabled by default and it's been so long since I played with Ubuntu that I honestly don't remember them all.

Thanks, Mason. I dropped a line at the Ubuntu forums, but because they are so busy it dropped out of sight pretty quickly. I've probably got a crudload of drivers to get as well; hoping to spend much of tomorrow doing it and if I can access the net with it by Monday I'm going to take it online and do several downloads.

There are a couple of handy little commands you can use in a terminal to gather some info about your system.

lspci will provide a list of the hardware. this is handy for figuring out what drivers you actually need.

lsmod will provide you a list of driver modules that are loaded.

Ubuntu has a fairly decent network manager application that you can use to set up your connection if you aren't comfortable doing it the faster way from the command line.

If I can help, let me know.

Also, if their forum is a problem, you will definitely get your questions answered at linuxquestions.org. Just be sure to read and search first as it's probably already been answered and some get a little snippy about questions where the poster obviously didn't search first.

Mods: my apologies in advance if this is not an appropriate place for this and you decide you have to squash me like a bug. It’s okay. I can take it. (whimper).

I will try to make this as short and as clear as I can. I don’t do very well at the tutorial type of thing, so I will try to be helpful and we should just call it trying to point you in the right starting direction. First off, let me say that I think you have picked a great distribution to start on. I really like Ubuntu, and as far as Debian in general? Well, I think it just rocks. ‘Nuff said… stick with it if you like it and it will come to you.

You can find almost all you could want to know on the subject (media and restricted or non-free necessities), at these two places. These are great jumping off points… Just my opinion.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/

http://www.getautomatix.com/

Be sure to follow the instructions for your particular release of Ubuntu.

Now for the short version. I must add that there are no guaranties, and any and all modifications are at your own risk… my own success rate has been fantastic on every Ubuntu installation I have done. This is what works for me.

1. Open Synaptic. (By the way, I am using 6.10, Edgy Eft), at the moment. Navigate to: Settings > Repositories. Enable the remaining repositories in the software sources dialog. Close the dialog and refresh (the reload button), Synaptic.

2. Open a terminal (copy and paste will work for this if I haven’t screwed up the syntax anywhere).
Enter your admin (root) password when the “sudo” command asks for it. Or if you are familiar with the console, sudo –i (your preference).

3. Issue the following commands:

sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-pitfdll gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse gxine libxine-main1 libxine-extracodecs ogle ogle-gui

sudo apt-get install libdvdread3

5. After installing libdvdread3, if it wasn’t already installed as a dependency, take the time to navigate to /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3 and read the “Debian.readme” file. This will shed some light on DVD decryption. Installing the libdvdcss decryption component is a personal choice left up to you. That said here is the command you need to issue in the terminal.

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/install-css.sh

The same decisions apply to w32codecs. Here are the commands for installing them.

wget -c http://www.debian-multimedia.org/pool/main/w/w32codecs/w32codecs_20061022-0.0_i386.deb

(that’s the download to your home folder… probably).   

sudo dpkg -i w32codecs_20061022-0.0_i386.deb

(that’s the install). You can delete the package from your home folder if you want now.

One last thing. No matter what I have tried, and attempts have been many, the installed default movie player (Totem-gstreamer), has consistently failed to play DVD’s. (I must be overlooking something). By using Synaptic and installing the Totem-Xine package, this problem has been remedied for me every time. It will automatically remove Totem-gstreamer during the install. Cosmetically, there is no difference that I can see. It just works.

You should now have a better selection of media players in your menu, they all work for me and will play almost anything I throw at them. You may find the Automatix tool very helpful as well. One more thing: if you like to listen to internet radio, say shoutcast stations for example, I find Streamtuner very reliable. Again, it just works.

sudo apt-get install streamtuner.

I hope I have not made any critical errors in syntax or explanation. I have tried my best not to steer you wrong or miss anything. Good luck with Ubuntu and the learning process. It’s well worth the effort. You can find all of what I have tried to explain in the Ubuntu forums. They have a great community. By the way, I am a hardcore Stardock and Wincustomize fan as well as a subscriber, and although I find myself chained to Windows, it’s distributions like Ubuntu that continue to fuel my continuing education in computing.

(Pops another beer and belches… did I say short?) I hope I helped a little.



Later!

While I don't share Cathexis' enthusiasm for Ubuntu (I'm a Slacker all the way), the advice provided is very good although most of it is done automatically by either easyubuntu or automatix.



The gstreamer version looks at the DVD device a little differently than the xine version (the better one IMHO) and just requires a little tweaking and a few permission changes in order to work correctly. I agree that Xine is far better in just about every way.



It looks to me like you did quite well and this will probably help Gid far more than my sketchy reply.

Thanks both of you for your replies. I think both answers will be helpful, Mason's for giving me the shortcut, and Cathexis' for giving me the technical details. I'm one of those people that wants to find out as much about how it works and how to fix it as I can, but also wants to be up and running, so I'll probably use both at different points (probably the thing I love best about Linux is that since I can install it to multiple machines, I can play with several different options and shut down and go to my functional computer when I'm at the point of tearing my hair out...lol!)

I like being a troubleshooter, it's where I'm building a solid reputation very quickly in IT (I'm becoming a Windows empath...scary! LOL), so I want to roll my sleeves up and get dirty...but I still likes to play!

That's good Gid, those skills will serve you well learning Linux (well, Ubuntu anyway).

Try and learn the command line commands as they will serve you far better than the GUI stuff. The most important command to learn is "man". You can pull up the documentation for virtually all of the commands that show syntax and use. Example: man lsmod or man lspci or man cat

If you're not sure how to use a command, pull up the man for it.