Hi, i just installed the latest version of vlc on my ubuntu box. i thought it might be worth a share. Although the commands here are written for ubuntu they can be used to install vlc on any debian based linux distro with a few modifications.
Follow the commands sequentially in the specified order :
sudo apt-get build-dep vlc && sudo apt-get install libtool build-essential automake1.10 git-core libxcb-shm0-dev libxcb-xv0-dev libxcb-keysyms0-dev
This will install the necessary tools and dependencies required to compile and build vlc.
git clone git://git.videolan.org/vlc.git
Using this command you can obtain the source code from vlc’s repository. It will take time depending upon the speed of your internet connection.
cd vlc && ./bootstrap
This will bootstrap the source code and create the configuration file.
mkdir build && cd build && ../configure --disable-nls --enable-qt4 --prefix=/opt/vlc --exec-prefix=/usr
This will create a build directory and run configure to check whether all tools are present and all dependencies are met.
make
sudo make install
Voila done!
To create the icon on top panel for instant access follow these steps :
download vlc icon from internet, i downloaded a 48×48 pixels icon from here.
Save it to /usr/share/icons/hicolor/48×48/apps
Choose above directory against the size of your icon.
Create application launcher for the top taskbar for quick access.
Viola Enjoy playing anything using vlc!!
PS: now you can delete the 400 MB directory of the source code, you no longer need it.