media player on linux

I had to buy my young son an Acer Aspire One for school a few years ago. He has since changed schools and no longer uses his netbook. My wife and I would like to get it up and running again, but neither of us is familiar with Linux (we both have Acer laptops but with Windows as their OS).

To start with, we'd like to be able to watch videos on the netbook, but when we insert a USB pendrive containing .mpg or .avi file, nothing happens. Could someone kindly explain how to correctly set up and use the media player on the Aspire One?

Many thanks,

Florio

 

The Ubuntu.org website has full instruction for installing Media Codecs from 'the Ubuntu Software Centre', I use Movie Player or VLC together with the 'nonfree' licensed codecs necessary.

Look for "10 things to do after installing Ubuntu" and you'll have your OS fully configured.

I have Ubuntu 11.10 running very swish on my AOA!

G.L.

 

If I'm not mistaken, you bought the AAO for your son and no one has changed anything on the machine. If this is true, you should be running Acer's trimmed down version of Linux called Linpus. I can't be 100% sure, but from what I've read this OS is crippled in many ways. You may want to think about upgrading to another version of Linux, try Ubuntu, it's well known as the most user friendly Linux out there.

However, if you've got to put the effort into reinstalling an OS, and you're comfortable with Windows, it might be worth your while to look at installing Windows XP on the AAO and just doing things the easy way. Under Windows XP and up, you can simply install CoDec packs from websites like www.free-codecs.com.

Having said that, if you're using Ubuntu it's always asked me to install CoDec's automatically when playing new file types.