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!
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.
I followed these steps exactly on my Asus 900 but keep getting the error message
E: Couldn’t find package vlc
PurpleDragon,
I’m going to make an educated guess to say that you may not be located in the United States. So, the best option for you is to first try substituting “ftp.us.debian.org” in step 8 with “ftp.uk.debian.org” (both without quotes).
You may also try “ftp.fr.debian.org” if the above doesn’t work.
If that doesn’t work, make absolutely certain that what you are typing in the console is exactly what is shown here. As you can see from my comments to David (above), one wrong character voids the whole process.
after updating the sources.list file and then attempting to install i get the following error:
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming.
Since you only requested a single operation it is extremely likely that the package is simply not installable and a bug report against that package should be filed.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
libwxgtk2.6-0: Depends: libgtk2.0-0 (>= 2.8.0) but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken packages
so i tried installing libgtk2.0-0 and it tells me that its missing another dependency. i also tried doing this through synaptic and it wants to remove things (like asus-core) that i don’t feel needs to be removed.
any ideas?
Dan,
That’s an awkward error to get. I’ve never seen that before. The first thing I would try is using one of the alternate download sites. They might be a bit slower, but they may include all of the necessary files.
im assuming the link in step 8 does not work anymore. i installed vlc successully a few months ago using the site in step 8 however i had to do a reset and now i get the same error as dan
adam,
It might be possible that the link is broken. I don’t see why it would, but who knows? Have you tried one of the alternate download sites?
yes i have but they all return with errors “spice mine of kessel” have you tried installing linux with the same link.
adam,
I’m sorry to hear it’s not working. I haven’t installed anything else with that link. I’ve only installed VLC with it. I’ve also removed the Xandros Linux from my EEE PC and installed Xubuntu. Installing new software has become a lot easier since I did that.
awsome looked for 3 days to find a site like thiss never serched with eee only linux
I keep getting the error
E: Couldn’t find package vlc
I think the following is related but I’m a total linux newbie.
When I type in apt-get update at the end, the following message appears at the end
W: GPG error: ftp://ftp.uk.debian.org stable Release: The following signatures c
ouldn’t be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 9AA38DCD5
5BE302B
W: Couldn’t stat source package list ftp://ftp.uk.debian.org stable/main Package
s (/var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.uk.debian.org_debian_dists_stable_main_binary-i386_Pac
kages) – stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems
E: Some index files failed to download, they have been ignored, or old ones used
instead.
Please can you help
hi.
yesterday i sent a post but a few hours later my eee would not boot-up… it got to the point where I had to restore factory settings in the F9 menu…. anyway, long story short, when I recovered i tried installing vlc again with the aove steps and i got the same error as dan philips had on 3 feb 09, only the solution given there did not work for me…
this was my output
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
Since you only requested a single operation it is extremely likely that
the package is simply not installable and a bug report against
that package should be filed.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
vlc: Depends: libgtk2.0-0 (>= 2.12.0) but 2.8.20-7 is to be installed
Depends: libnotify1 (>= 0.4.4) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libnotify1-gtk2.10
Depends: libwxgtk2.6-0 (>= 2.6.3.2.2) but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken packages
I got to looking at your previous post and I was drawing a blank. So, I apologize for not being able to help there.
Dependencies can be a real pain sometimes. What you might try doing is this:
Type:
sudo apt-cache search [name_of_dependency]Do that for each of the dependencies listed above. You don’t have to know the whole name of the file, it can do partial matches.
Example:
sudo apt-cache search libnotify1That should show you all packages containing libnotify1. Then, if possible, try to install each dependency with the “sudo apt-get install [package_name]” command. After that, try VLC. Hopefully, that will give better results for the VLC install.
OMG thanks you, I have spent bloody ages trying to down load VLC on to my Eee 701, I have tried other sites explanations but just could not get it. Yours was perfect. I am traveling and bought the 701 as sometimes the Mac Book is too much to cart around all day.
So a big thank you.
I will put a link on my blog if that’s Ok with you.
I’m glad it worked for you. I have no problem with you linking my site.
Completely installed and full working on my Eee 701. After so much time spent in others sites, I’ve found your fantastic and correct explanation about how to do it. Thank you very very much. Greetings from Spain.