I have recently installed a DVD drive for my computer. My question here is, do i need special software to play DVD's? If so where can i aquire this software?

To play DVD Movies? - Yes you need software and IMO your best bet is to use mplayer to watch them and acidrip to archive them.

what kind of software do i need to watch them? the disk i got with the DVD drive only has a Windows installation.

Well if your using Linux that windows cd is useless. Why not take mcleodnine's suggestion and use mplayer like he mentioned before. You can use that to play DVD's from within Linux.

http://www.mplayerhq.hu

i misread what was typed there. i thought it meant i needed special software to play the DVD in mplayer.

during the 'make install' part of the compiling of mplayer i got this error

[root@Ariel MPlayer-0.90rc5]# make install
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/Zero/MPlayer-0.90rc5/libdha'
mkdir -p /usr/local/lib
install -m 755 -s -p libdha.so.0.1 /usr/local/lib/libdha.so.0.1
rm -f /usr/local/lib/libdha.so
ln -sf libdha.so.0.1 /usr/local/lib/libdha.so.0
ldconfig
make[1]: ldconfig: Command not found
make[1]: *** [install] Error 127
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/Zero/MPlayer-0.90rc5/libdha'
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/Zero/MPlayer-0.90rc5/vidix'
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/Zero/MPlayer-0.90rc5/vidix/drivers'
mkdir -p /usr/local/lib/mplayer/vidix
install -m 755 -s -p *.so /usr/local/lib/mplayer/vidix
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/Zero/MPlayer-0.90rc5/vidix/drivers'
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/Zero/MPlayer-0.90rc5/vidix'
if test ! -d /usr/local/bin ; then mkdir -p /usr/local/bin ; fi
install -m 755 -s mplayer /usr/local/bin/mplayer
if test ! -d /usr/local/man/man1 ; then mkdir -p /usr/local/man/man1; fi
install -c -m 644 DOCS/mplayer.1 /usr/local/man/man1/mplayer.1
install -m 755 -s mencoder /usr/local/bin/mencoder
ln -sf mplayer.1 /usr/local/man/man1/mencoder.1
*** Download font at http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/dload.html
*** for OSD/Subtitles support and extract to /usr/local/share/mplayer/font/
install -c -m 644 etc/codecs.conf /usr/local/etc/mplayer/codecs.conf


what does that mean? and how can i fix it?

i'd recommend you just used RPM files, and not to try installing from source quite yet. however firstly you need to install a font for subtitles as it clearly states (it's even given you a url to go to...) also it can't find ldconfig for some reason. have you been messing around with your path variable as root? it shouldn't really matter though....

BUT you do seem to have installed mplayer, so try using it

mplayer works, i've installed the font and i'm trying to figure out the skins. i haven't tried to play a DVD yet so i don't know if that works, i just know it runs right now. is there anything else i need to use it?

oh yes, i haven't changed anything in root that could have made that error happen. first time it's ever happened. can it be fixed?

well, mplayer works like a charm for my mpg's and my avi's, though i can't get it to play a DVD.. is there something special i have to do? and for the skins, where do i put those to make them work?

edit: i figured out how to make it play the dvd, the only problem is it will only play 1 chapter at a time and it seems to skip. every 3 seconds it will skip and then do it again. other than that though it works great. is there anything i can do about that?