mplayer questions
 

I've had no luck since installing Ubuntu a week ago. The most I can do is surf the web with FireFox.

First problem was not being able to configure my wireless card- gave up on that for now.

Next I was having trouble with the hard drive running slow- it still does but it's better than it was.

Now I realized that the Movie Player that came with my Ubuntu doesn't play dvd's.

What do I have to do to make it play DVD's normally? How many programs am I going to have to download and install and which ones? And how? Is this going to be an all day project too?

Help

If your DVD movie is encrypted, which most are, you need a codec called libdvdcss, sometimes called libdvdcss2. Use your package manager and search for libdvdcss and mark it for installation.

Also, if you haven't done so already, install the ubuntu-restricted-extras package. This will install the proprietary codecs like java, flash,mp3 playback, etc for your system and your web browser.

About the wifi issue. I never configured a wifi card in linux, but I do know if ubuntu detects a supported wifi card, ubuntu would prompt you to download a firmware/driver. Once that is done, it will install and configure the card.

If your card is not supported, try using the ndiswrapper utility.
You will need to know what card you have.Type sudo lspci in a terminal to determined what card you have.

Visit the ndiswrapper home page and search for your card in the database and follow the instructions for configuring your card.

Hope the above helps...

okay, about the wireless card, I tried to "install"ndiswrapper" but I think I got an error. window that opens says

Changes applied
- not all changes and updates succeeded. For further details of the failure, please expand the 'Details' panel below.

(reading database... dpkg: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting:
failed in buffer_read(fd): files list for package 'python-newt':Input/output error
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)
A package failed to install. Trying to recover:



Now what do I do?

got the exact same error when trying to install libdvdread4


is there corrupted data on my hard drive?

Sorry, for the delay in replying...

The codec libdvdcss is what you need to play encrypted DVDs and ndiswraper is the utility to use when configuring an unsupported wireless card.

It seems that you have a new problem, your package manager. Ubuntu does a good job in handling packages and dependencies. Unfortunately, I don't have experience fixing broken or corrupted database repositories if this is the case.

Perhaps, someone who is a die-hard ubuntu user here may be able to tell you what it means and how to fix it.

If you get no answers, try the ubuntu forums at http://ubuntuforums.org/

I will continue to search and if I see anything online I will post back.

But try this.

sudo dpkg --clean-avail
sudo apt-get update

If you get no errors, try installing the above packages again.

tcervinsky

Since you had no success with ubuntu, have you try PClinuxOS 2009.1?

I recommended this distro to my friend and he loves it.

It is simple to use and it has a windows XP look and feel. My friend told me he installed additional software without any problems including the libdvdcss2 package to play encrypted DVD movies.

Give it a try, the website is http://pclinuxos.com/

Here's a youtube video of PclinuxOS 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5sAj...eature=related

Okay, first things first, lets fix your DVDs. Open a terminal (in case you don't know how, Applications->Accessories->Terminal)

Which should have that sorted.

As for wireless card. Type in the following and tell us what they output

Your hard-drive isn't an OS issue, or if it is, theres a really major problem, it may be time to replace it. Try the mhdd bootdisk (http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/) to have a look at your HDD, see what it's read times are