How-To: Compile and Install VLC 1.0 in Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope

Ubuntu 9.04 (and Kubuntu) comes with VLC 0.9.9 included in the repositories. However, VLC 1.0.0 was released today and it ships with several new features and many improvements. For readers who don't know what VLC means, it is a powerful, cross-platform and open-source video player, built using Qt 4 toolkit. It supports many video formats and comes with advanced video features and functions.

To install the latest release of VLC (currently 1.0.0) in either Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu distributions, just follow the steps below:

1. Install the needed dependencies
First, use build-dep to get all the dependencies VLC needs. This will also install compilation tools, including the build-essential meta package:

sudo apt-get build-dep vlc

You will need your user password. Notice that on a fresh system this will install a lot of development packages. After the installation is completed proceed to the next step.

Notice: If the buil-dep command fails with a message which goes like E: Build-dependencies for vlc could not be satisfied. then try to install all the packages manually. The following are two separate commands:

sudo apt-get install build-essential libmad0-dev libavutil49 libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libavutil-dev libswscale-dev libpostproc-dev liba52-0.7.4-dev

sudo apt-get install debhelper dh-buildinfo gettext quilt nasm yasm libass-dev libxul-dev liba52-0.7.4-dev libaa1-dev libasound2-dev libcaca-dev libcdio-dev libdca-dev libdvbpsi4-dev libaudiofile-dev libavahi-client-dev libavcodec-dev libdvdnav-dev libdvdread-dev libesd0-dev libfaad-dev libflac-dev libfreetype6-dev libfribidi-dev libggi2-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libglib2.0-0 libgnutls-dev libhal-dev libid3tag0-dev libidl0 libimlib2-dev libjack-dev liblircclient-dev liblivemedia-dev liblua5.1-0-dev libmad0-dev libmatroska-dev libmodplug-dev libmpcdec-dev libmpeg2-4-dev libncursesw5-dev libnotify-dev libogg-dev libpng12-dev libpostproc-dev libpulse-dev libqt4-dev libschroedinger-dev libsdl-image1.2-dev libsdl1.2-dev libv4l-dev libvcdinfo-dev libvorbis-dev libx11-dev libx264-dev libxext-dev libxml2-dev libxpm-dev libxt-dev libxv-dev pkg-config qt4-dev-tools zlib1g-dev

This may take a while.

2. Download the source tarball
Get the source code from the official website (direct link), then make sure the currently working directory is the one where you saved it and uncompress it:

tar -xjf vlc-1.0.0.tar.bz2

3. Compile and install VLC
To compile and install, just issue the usual commands inside the vlc-1.0.0 directory:

./configure
make
sudo make install

Finally, don't forget to run sudo ldconfig with your user password.

You can choose an alternate location for the installation, so you can install as normal user. E.g.:

./configure --prefix=/home/user/usr/
make
make install

VLC 1.0.0 running in Kubuntu 9.04

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