How To Have DVD Playback, Adobe Flash Plugin, MP3 In Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron In A Single Step [HowTo]

The latest version of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution code-named Hardy-Heron has been released.

Ubuntu is a distro that’s well known for its user-friendliness and simplicity. If you haven’t tried Ubuntu yet, get it here. You can even get a free CD shipped to you absolutely free of cost through the Ubuntu ship it program.

However, if tested out-of-the-box, Ubuntu is crippled on the multimedia front. This is because of copyright and patent restrictions that complicate distribution of proprietary codecs with Ubuntu, which prides itself as a totally free operating system.

Even though Ubuntu developers haven’t included proprietary codecs, they have made it extremely easy for you to install them later through the Medibuntu repository. You can get encrypted DVD playback, Adobe Flash plugin and non-native media files (Windows media, Apple QuickTime, Real, MP3) support by using this single command.

Take a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal) and enter the following command:

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/hardy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2 w32codecs

The above command downloads all the required codecs from the Medibuntu repositories and makes your Ubuntu box multimedia ready.

Note: The above command is for 32 bit processors. AMD 64bit users, replace the ending word w32codecs with w64codecs. PPC users replace w32codecs with ppc-codecs.

Bonus Tip

Once you have run the above command, you can easily install third party applications like Skype, Google Earth and Acrobat Reader.

Skype:
sudo apt-get install skype

Google Earth:
sudo apt-get install googleearth-4.2

Adobe Acrobat Reader:
sudo apt-get install acroread

Happy Linuxing.