If you have ever tried playing more than just music on your Eee PC, you may have noticed that the stock media player is sub-par in the video playback department. To fix this, the simplest thing to do is to install a better video player. Now, you may have your favorite in mind, but this tip will walk you through the steps to installing the free and open source media player called VLC Media Player.
This process will require use of the console, but I will do my best to walk you through each step and give you all of the commands you need to type. You may also opt to copy and paste the commands into your console window. You will also need to be connected to the Internet to perform the download and install. So, bear with me a bit. It’s worth it when VLC is finally up and running.
- Click on the Work tab on your Eee PC desktop
- Open the File Manager
- Click on the Tools menu
- Choose “Open Console Window” (a console window will open with a prompt)
- type: sudo bash
- type: apt-get update
- type: nano /etc/apt/sources.list
- Add the following to the end of the file:
- deb ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
- Hold the Ctrl key and press the ‘X’ key (release both keys)
- Press the ‘Y’ key to save the file
- Press Enter to save the file to the same name as it was originally
- type: apt-get update
- type: apt-get install vlc
If all went well, you should be asked to verify that you want to download packages. Just type “Yes” (without quotes), press Enter, and VLC will begin to download and install. It may take several minutes to complete. When it is done, and if it was successful, you should just simply open the console window (as shown above) and type “vlc” (without quotes) and press Enter. With that command VLC will open and be ready to play your media. Close the console when you are finished.
Once you get VLC up and running, be sure to remove the line you added to the ’sources.list’ file in step 8. Just follow the steps again up to step 11, except delete the line you added in step 8. Then, close the console.
ALTERNATE DOWNLOAD SITES:
If you are having problems with the download site in step 8, try one of the following sites.
- deb ftp://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
- deb ftp://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
- deb ftp://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
Get fed!
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every time i try to follow your instructions my eee pc keeps saying no file or directory exists
David,
At what point do you get this error?
when ever i go to save the sources information into the sudo nano ect/aps/sources.list
when i hit enter it says no file or directory with that name exists
David,
I see the issue. You are trying to open the “aps” directory, which doesn’t exist. Take note that the sources.list file is in the “apt” (with a ‘t‘ ) directory. So, try step 7 again, but this time with the correct directory name. I hope this helps. Have a great day!
tryed it again at the same place proper spelling this time still refuses to work
David,
OK. Let’s verify this. Now, you are typing in the exact file path given in step 7 above, correct? That is:
nano /etc/apt/sources.list
I also noticed you had one other spelling error in your previous comment. You had “ect” instead of “etc” as the first directory. That will make a difference as well. See if that works.
thanks for the guide, mine works like a charm.
i was wondering though if i could open the VLC player without going through the Console. would be nice if there’s a VLC player icon on the desktop.
Pragmatician,
Excellent question. There is a way to get a VLC icon for your EEE PC, but it will require a bit of work. For some very strange (and trivial) reason, Asus has locked the Linux desktop for the EEE PC down tight. It is terribly annoying. What you need to do is read the article in the link below. Pay particular attention to the section with the title, Tweaking the Easy Mode Interface with Easy Mode Editor.
http://www.linux.com/feature/127890
The icon is a different issue. I have tried many different methods of getting the actual VLC icon, but none have worked. So, I just use the default Media Player icon.