Hello

I have downloaded vlc portable 2.1.4 media player on older ubuntu 10.10 from here http://sourceforge.net/projects/portable/files/

I have extracted in a folder, then I couldn't figure out how to make it work (those "configure", "make" steps from INSTALL instructions file)

Could you give me the set of accurate commands to run?

Thank you very much

Did you download AppDirAssitant?
The premade downloads don't work for me. even after making executable.

Post the instructions.

The only i.structions I saw is the you-tube video for appdirassistant which will ru.after making executable. http://portablelinuxapps.org
Other than that the other apps are just executables, which I made mine executable & they won't run. Appdirassistant will search comp & install only after installing a package thru packagemanager.

Your computer life might be simpler if you installed a current release of Ubuntu, 12.04 or 14.04 then you could install from the repositories. 10.10 hasn't been supported for over two years. The latest version is specifically available for Ubuntu at the site below but only shows as compatible with 12.04 and later.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-ubuntu.html

Th site that OP posted suggests older versions.

This is the parent directory:

total 2520
-rw-r--r-- 1 pv pv 93787 2013-07-02 19:27 ABOUT-NLS
-rw-r--r-- 1 pv pv 53683 2014-02-21 16:21 aclocal.m4
-rw-r--r-- 1 pv pv 15592 2013-12-03 11:12 AUTHORS
drwxr-xr-x 2 pv pv 4096 2014-02-21 16:55 autotools
drwxr-xr-x 2 pv pv 4096 2014-02-21 16:57 bin
-rwxr-xr-x 1 pv pv 1862 2013-06-24 21:00 bootstrap
-rw-r--r-- 1 pv pv 32003 2014-02-21 16:31 ChangeLog
drwxr-xr-x 2 pv pv 4096 2014-02-21 16:55 compat
-rw-r--r-- 1 pv pv 21132 2014-02-21 16:21 config.h.in
-rw-r--r-- 1 pv pv 244212 2014-08-29 10:41 config.log
-rwxr-xr-x 1 pv pv 1523009 2014-02-21 16:21 configure
-rw-r--r-- 1 pv pv 128754 2014-02-21 16:00 configure.ac
drwxr-xr-x 3 pv pv 4096 2014-02-21 16:55 contrib
-rw-r--r-- 1 pv pv 18092 2013-06-24 21:00 COPYING
-rw-r--r-- 1 pv pv 26530 2013-06-24 21:00 COPYING.LIB
drwxr-xr-x 5 pv pv 4096 2014-02-21 16:55 doc
-rwxr-xr-x 1 pv pv 945 2014-08-29 10:40 doltcompile
-rwxr-xr-x 1 pv pv 445 2014-08-29 10:40 doltlibtool
drwxr-xr-x 7 pv pv 4096 2014-02-21 16:55 extras
drwxr-xr-x 3 pv pv 4096 2014-02-21 16:57 include
-rw-r--r-- 1 pv pv 1563 2013-06-24 21:00 INSTALL
drwxr-xr-x 2 pv pv 4096 2014-02-21 16:57 lib
drwxr-xr-x 2 pv pv 4096 2014-02-21 16:55 m4
-rwxr-xr-x 1 pv pv 299 2013-06-24 21:00 make-alias
-rw-r--r-- 1 pv pv 40802 2014-02-14 19:40 Makefile.am
-rw-r--r-- 1 pv pv 123609 2014-02-21 16:21 Makefile.in
drwxr-xr-x 29 pv pv 4096 2014-02-21 16:57 modules
-rw-r--r-- 1 pv pv 144779 2014-02-21 16:20 NEWS
drwxr-xr-x 2 pv pv 4096 2014-02-21 16:57 po
-rw-r--r-- 1 pv pv 2759 2013-06-24 21:00 README
drwxr-xr-x 7 pv pv 4096 2014-02-21 16:57 share
drwxr-xr-x 20 pv pv 4096 2014-02-21 16:57 src
drwxr-xr-x 6 pv pv 4096 2014-02-21 16:57 test
-rw-r--r-- 1 pv pv 5540 2013-06-24 21:00 THANKS

*deleted and posted again*

Sorry, I don't know what is AppDirAsistant... I thought it's simple like in Windows: extract and run

INSTALL file for the VLC media player
=====================================

More extensive information for *nix, Windows and Mac OS X users can be
found here: http://wiki.videolan.org/Compile_VLC

People installing VLC for Windows from source MUST read:
http://wiki.videolan.org/Win32Compile

Bootstrapping VLC
=================

If you retrieved VLC from the git server and do not have yet a "configure"
script, please run:

./bootstrap

Configuring VLC
===============

A typical way to configure VLC is:

./configure

See `./configure --help' for more information.

If you intend to debug stuff, you may want to compile with debugging
symbols:

make distclean ; ./configure --enable-debug

We recommend using GCC to build VLC, though some people reported success
with the Intel C compiler (version 8) as well. GCC version 3.3 or higher is
required. On older systems (e.g. FreeBSD 4.x), please select a more recent
version manually by setting the CC and CXX environment variables
appropriately while running the ./configure shell script.


Building VLC
============

Once configured, run `make' to build VLC.


Installing and running VLC
==========================

You can install the VLC and its plugins by typing:

make install

But you don't need to install it if you don't want to; VLC can be launched
from the current directory as well:

./vlc


Building packages
=================

To build a Debian package, you need to get the packaging info
git clone git://git.debian.org/pkg-multimedia/vlc.git debian
and then
git-buildpackage

OK. Those instructions look like they are for a normal VLC. I kind of doubt they will work in this portable one.

You may have to contact someone who had installed this version.

I have used the windows portable app in wine in linux.

I believe they work if created usin AppDirAssitant

Hi,
Really, that link shows vlc 1.1.5

What folder? The link you provide above shows a single binary "VLC 1.1.5". What exactly did you download?

Finally, can you please give the bigger picture: in particular why are you trying to use an obsolete unsupported version of Ubuntu? Are you aware that if you used a current, supported operating system vlc would already be provided for you?

Evo2.

This is how I thought:

The computer (Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Li 1705 laptop) is manufactured in 2006 and has poor quality hardware. It has 768 RAM and 256 video memory. Windows XP (made in 2001) runs very good. Windows Vista (made in 2006) runs very slow.

I chose a version of Ubuntu from 2010, which I thought is not too old (because of drivers) but also not too new for such a problematic computer. After install I saw is not supported anymore, but it runs pretty good on given hardware resources, and since I use the computer only for simple tasks such as browsing the Web or playing multimedia, I need only 2-3 updated portable applications.

So I have downloaded the most recent Firefox Portable archive, have extract it in my home folder, and ran an executable. So simple!
Now, VLC was next. I found 2.1.4 version in the link supplied in my first post (now I see is not there anymore!), download the archive, extract it in my home folder, but where is the executable? I only found a instructions file, where they say something about "make", "configure" ... (make what? configure how?) ... I am definetely a beginner, I thought it has a simple, quick solution. If there is one maybe I'll find it when I have time.

Thanks everybody

ubuntu 10 is dead and unsupported
DO NOT USE !!

install the CURRENT VERSION of the " Long term support "
Ubuntu 14.04
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop