Hi Folks, I'm trying to install media codecs to /usr/local/lib/codecs. The codecs are in a tar.bz2 package (essential-20050412.tar.bz2). I've tried to install according to instructions from LinuxQuestions.org and others but (again, please excuse my ignorance) I am so new to Linux that I cannot seem to understand the instructions. Could someone please walk me through this step by step and very simply? I would really appreciate it. Thanks. Here's what I have the package: /home/hombre3/essential-20050412.tar.bz2 the target /usr/local/lib/codecs Thanks again!

You're not really "installing" the codecs, just extracting them. Use "tar xjf essential-20050412.tar.bz2". The x tells tar to extract, j indicates that it's bz2 compressed (z for gz compression is also common), and the final f indicates that the filename to extract follows. If you want to see the names of all the files, include a v. I suspect you'll end up with a directory called essential-20050412, so you'll then want to move the codecs to their desired location with "mv essential-20050412 /usr/local/lib/codecs". You'll need to be root to write to /usr/local/lib. Finally, for security purposes, if you extracted the codecs as your non-root user, change the ownership to root with "chown -R root /usr/loca/lib/codecs". When you install MPlayer, you'll have to extract it with tar the same way you extracted the codecs, cd to the directory that gets created, and run "./configure", "make", and then as root, "make install". After the ./configure you'll see a summary of what MPlayer found. If your codecs aren't listed, you did something wrong.

Where I say you need to be root, use the "su" command and "exit" when you're done. Use "ls" to list directory contents, for example "ls /usr/local/lib/codecs" to see if your codecs made it to their destination.

Success! Thanks Jake! I'm learning . . .