I have installed SUSE 10.0 on a Compaq Presario 1800, I am wanting to be able to play AVI's and it appears that MPlayer is the program that need to install. I created a directory under /home/stripes/documents called download. I went to mplayerhq.hu and downloaded the source and codec to the download directory. My question is this. Should I move them to another directory to extract the files, if so where. I have researched and found How to install from source instructions. Is there a right place to put them so everything stays organized.

check the file 'README' that came with the MPlayer source archive. it gives very detailed instructions on how to configure and install your codecs and player.

hope it helps!

Thanks, I did read the readme, It also gave me instructions to read docs/html/en, that directory has 89 items. One of them is named install.html and it does give instructions on how to ./configure, make, and make install but not where to have the tarball to start with. I have not seen anywhere that it tells me to put the applications in the applications directory ( I don't think there is one ). The readme does tell me that the default directory for the codecs is /usr/local/lib/codecs. I also found somewhere that the codecs should be installed before the mplayer. Should I put the mplayer files in this directory also? I would like to keep things organized and that is why I ask this question.

Thanks

It's perfectly okay to extract and compile the source code there. When you extract it it'll probably place all the files in another directory inside downloads, called mplayer or something. After you've compiled it, you can go ahead and delete the mplayer directory out of your downloads directory.
If your installing the win32 codecs, you should put them in /usr/lib/win32 or /usr/lib/codecs/ (this might vary on your distro, but that's what I used, just linked codecs to win32).

Compiling is easy too:
#/home/stripes/documents/download/mplayer/
./configure
make
su
make install
make clean
exit

If you plan on using mplayer's GUI, then ./configure --enable-gui, and you'll have to download skins and place them in ~/.mplayer/skins/

Another great video player is xine. It has many offsprings and great functionality.

That cleared up most of my fog,

Now my next problem.

I read somewhere that I should do the codecs first.

The file that I downloaded from mplayerhq was essential-20061022.tar.bz2

I created a directory /usr/local/lib/codecs

I extracted the tarball
tar xvf essential-20061022.tar.bz2 -C /usr/local/lib/codecs

I cd to the new directory and did an ls to make sure the files were there in a new folder essential-20061022 then cd to this directory

When I tried ./configure I got the msg

bash: ./configure: No such file or directory

This was all done as su

This was a new SUSE linux 10.0 install using Novell disks. After the install I did an update using yast for both system and applications.

the files in the codecs folder you made, i believe, should just be the contents of the essential-20061022 folder. ill try and make this easier.

lets assume my home folder is /home/me, and i have downloaded this codec file to /home/me/essential-20061022.tar.bz2. open a terminal window and use 'su' to become root, and enter the following commands (double check what you type before pressing enter as root prompt isnt forgiving!!!):now lets install MPlayer, with the option of having a GUI. lets assume i downloaded the MPlayer source code to my home folder, the file is: /home/me/MPlayer-1.0rc1.tar.bz2. again, at your root prompt run:you can now delete this new MPlayer-1.0rc1 folder if you want. to play a file with MPlayer open a terminal and run the command 'mplayer fileName' or look at 'man mplayer' for info on how to use it. to run the GUI, you need to execute 'gmplayer', however you have to set up your skin. to do that read this page.

hope it helps

edit: ill try and narrow down what you have to do to install the skin.

after downloading one (here), extract using a similar 'tar' command as above. then use 'mv' to move the entire folder to the MPlayer skins folder. lets say ive downloaded a skin called 'foo' and the file is /home/me/foo.tar.bz2. at your root terminal run:you have to edit the file /home/me/.mplayer/config and add this line:substituting the appropriate filenames when necessary, of course.

I ran out of time on the liptop. My sister-in-law took it and went home. She needed a laptop to take with her to an archeology did and write reports. I never did get MPlayer to make. It had a lot of errors. I will have to try and install it on my computer.

Thanks again for all the help.
Stripes

try and follow the instructions in my last post. if it doesnt work, let us know exactly what doesnt work or what error message you recieve.