There are VLC binaries available for the many OSes, but not for
all supported OSes. If there are no binaries for your OS or if you want
to change the default settings, you can compile VLC from sources.
Under Windows
VLC works under Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP.
Download the self-extracting file from the VLC Windows
download page. Launch the .exe to install
VLC.
Under BeOS
Download the Zip file from the VLC BeOS download
page. Unzip the file in a directory to install VLC.
Under Mac OS X
Download the Mac OS X package from the VLC
MacOS X download page . Double-click on the icon of the
package : an icon will appear on your Desktop, right beside your
drive(s). Open it and drag the VLC application from the resulting
window to the place where you want to install it (it should be
/Applications).
Under Linux Debian
Edit as root /etc/apt/sources.list and add
the following lines :
deb http://www.videolan.org/pub/videolan/debian $(ARCH)/
deb-src http://www.videolan.org/pub/videolan/debian sources/
Then install the packages :
# apt-get update
# apt-get install gnome-vlc libdvdcss2
Under Linux Mandrake
First, VLC is included in the Mandrake Linux distribution,
thus if your are running cooker, just get it from
you preferred cooker mirror.
As it is not possible to update softwares in a previous
distributions, you have to install the RPMs "by hand" if
you don't use cooker. The simplest way
is to use urpmi (command line interface)
or rpmdrake (you will find in the Mandrake Control
Center). General instrctutions about urpmi can be found
on http://www.urpmi.org
(both in french and english). urpmi-setup will make
it easier to setup urpmi to your needs: see http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon/
. You need at least to add main, contrib and plf sources.
get libdvdplay, vlc, vlc-plugin-mad, vlc-plugin-a52,
gnome-vlc (or vlc-gtk) RPMs from this page and all the plugins you want.
install them with:
# urpmi libdvdplay*rpm *vlc*rpm
(urpmi will complete all the dependencies)
Under Linux Redhat
Download the RPM package vlc and the packages
listed in the required librairies and codecs
section (the other packages are just optional) from the VLC Red Hat
download page and put them all into the same directory.
Then install the RPM packages you have downloaded:
# rpm -U *.rpm
If you have not installed all the RPM packages included with your
distribution, you may be asked to install a few of them first.
Compile the sources by yourself (for every other OS)
The method below is for any Unix system supported by VLC, for
which there is no packages available. It explains how to compile and
install VLC and the needed librairies from their source code.
You can also compile the VLC under Linux this way if you want to
modify the default supported modules
Install the libraries
Many libraries are needed for particular uses :
libdvdcss if you want to be able to
read encrypted DVDs,
libdvdplay if you want to have DVD
menu navigation,
libdvbpsi if you want to be able to
read from the network,
a52dec if you want to be
able to decode the AC3 (i.e. A52) sound format often used in
DVDs,
ffmpeg, libmad
and faad2 if you want to read MPEG 4 / DivX
files,
libogg and
libvorbis if you want to read Ogg Vorbis
files.
Download the libraries from the VLC sources
download page.
For each library :
uncompress :
% tar xvzf library.tar.gz
or
% tar xvjf library.tar.bz2
configure :
% cd library
% ./configure --enable-shared
compile and install :
% make
# make install
Check that the configuration file /etc/ld.so.conf
contains the following line :
/usr/local/lib
If the line is not present, add-it and then run (as root):
# ldconfig
Install VLC
Download the sources of the lastest release : get the
file vlc-version.tar.gz from the VLC sources
download page. Uncompress-it :
% tar xvzf vlc-version.tar.gz
% cd vlc-version
To get the list of configuration options, do :
% ./configure --help
Please note that all the modules are described in
the Modules section of the VLC User
Guide.
Examples of very simple configurations:
if you want a basic VLC, do :
% ./configure
if you want the Gnome interface instead of the GTK
interface (you will need the developement packages of Gnome) :
% ./configure --enable-gnome
Then, compile and install :
% make
% su
Password: [Root Password]
# make install
Please note that the installation (make install
command) is not mandatory. You can execute VLC from where you compiled
it.