[MPlayer-users] Installation of MPlayer

[The Wanderer]

Ajith Karat wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> Recently, I had installed Ubuntu ver 6.x on my home PC. Still I am
> facing difficulties in installation of MPlayer. I would like to know
> the perfect combination of MPlayer packages, preferably latest, so
> that I can download from a nearby internet café and install it on my
> home PC. (Again, I don't have a net connection at home right now.)

It is strongly recommended to *not* install MPlayer from a packaged
version, but to compile the source, preferably the latest development
source from SVN.

> Using the README from mplayerhq.hu [3] as a baseline, install the codecs
> with the following commands.

I would guess that this line (and most of the following) is taken from a
set of install instructions you found somewhere. Where did you find
them?

> Time to compile MPlayer.  Issue these commands.
> 
>             $ tar -xjf MPlayer-1.0pre5.tar.bz2

There is no such thing as 'MPlayer 1.0pre5'. The most recent official
release, which was quite some time ago, had the version number 1.0rc2.
Where did you get these sources from?

>             $ cd MPlayer-1.0pre5
>             $ ./configure --enable-gui
> AJK: I am getting an error here saying that new version of gcc is 
> required to proceed further.

What is the error message?

> How the latest gcc will be downloaded? From which site?

If your distribution does not provide a sufficiently recent version of
GCC in a package (which I find unlikely for the case of Ubuntu), then
the obvious place to look for the sources would be on the official GCC
Website, gcc.gnu.org (which is also the first Google hit for "GCC").

> Finally, copy over the included conf files.
> 
>             $ sudo cp MPlayer-1.0pre5/etc/* /usr/local/etc/mplayer/

Any installation procedure that requires you to execute copy commands
manually as root is hardly something I would expect of a modern,
user-friendly distribution...

> Test your install by launching the graphical version of MPlayer.
> 
>             $ gmplayer
> AJK: I am not able to invoke GUI version of MPlayer:-(

If you did not succeed in compiling it, this is obviously no surprise.
(Do you mean that you actually continued to follow the instructions,
rather than stopping and looking for a solution, after you got an error
at the 'configure' step?)

-- 
    The Wanderer

    My usual .sig is on vacation while I adjust to my new computer