dear friends, I've spent many hours trying to install mplayer, Idownloaded the binary codecs and put them in usr/local/lib/codecs, but I couldn't install mplayer source, I used ./configure --enable-gui ,then I tried apt-get install mplayer, just to be informed, I set up all permissions by chmod comand. Could anybody please help me, as I siad, i spent many hours (more than mounth 4 hours a day) I use ubuntu 8

gentless gent,

Welcome to LQ.

Ubuntu 8??

Is that a typing error?

You are not using Ubuntu 8.04 or 8.10 are you? They reached end of life 2 years ago and are no longer supported.


For the more recent and fully supported Ubuntu 14.04, open Terminal:


This link will help:

http://www.linuxtechi.com/install-mplayer-ubuntu/

also you REALLY DO NOT want to build mplayer from source

there are literary HUNDREDS!!!! of needed PREREQUSITS
and it is not easy to build

use the version that is already built and in your package manager

if this is really Ubuntu 8.04 or 8.10
STOP using it NOW!!!!
and install a supported version of Ubuntu 14.10 or 15.04

or
want a lot of people think is better
Linux Mint 17

and do your self a big favor
and READ and i mean really READ!!! the install documentation and the user guides and the install instructions
for installing Multi media programs for YOUR installed operating system.

thank you beachboy and john, Ive just downloaded and installed ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS as a guest in VMware 4.3.26 but its imaginably slow, even that I allowed for it 2 Go RAM, 128 video memory, I have 4G RAM in my physical machine and 512 in video memory, so I thought using ubuntu 8.04 is better. Please give me your advice ?

hi guys,I finally could allow my ubuntu guest to access internet through WIFI (I could acces to my googlemail), I typed : sudo apt-get install mplayer
but the result were like this : unable to find the package, what should I do

Better : sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install mplayer

yes I type it, here is the come out :
E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (13 Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), are you root?
what should i do in this case ?