VLC install on SuSE Linux OS

[TACHIKOMA]

Hello, VLC is a great player that I've used in Windows, Palm, and PocketPC. I put SuSE on my old computer. None of the native media players included in the SuSE install play the media, so I tried to install VLC. Since there was no version specifically for SuSE, I tried installing VLC with a number of linux versions. The orange traffic cone icon is there, but VLC won't start. Does anyone know how to install VLC in SuSE correctly or how to trouble shoot it? Thanks

[nm]

There is a link in the VLC download page: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-suse.html

[TACHIKOMA]

Thanks, I installed vlc version 0.8.4a i586 for SuSE 10. Yast 2 tells me that "All package dependencies are OK" for the vlc installation. Yet it still doesn't run when you click on it. Can anyone sell me a clue? thanks!

[nm]

Have you uninstalled all the versions you tried previously before installing the unofficial SuSe package? If so, try to run VLC in a terminal window (konsole in KDE) by typing vlc (and then pressing enter). What does it print to the terminal?

[Guest]

Thanks again for the reply, nm. Ran the command line. the response is "vlc: error loading shared libraries: libdvbpsi.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory." So now I Scroogle the net for "libdvbpsi.so.4", download it, install it with the K (konqueror?) install utiliity that comes up, and vlc should work, right?

[robc]

Thanks again for the reply, nm. Ran the command line. the response is "vlc: error loading shared libraries: libdvbpsi.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory." So now I Scroogle the net for "libdvbpsi.so.4", download it, install it with the K (konqueror?) install utiliity that comes up, and vlc should work, right?

It would probably be better to download and install the complete libdvbpsi library - The source tarball for this library can be downloaded from http://download.videolan.org/pub/libdvbpsi/0.1.5/. Alternatively, there are likely to be pre-built packages (RPM, APT) available for your Linux distribution.

[TACHIKOMA]

I downloaded the tar.gz. I can extract all the files from it, but I don't know where to put them. No K installer comes up with the tar.gz. There doesn't appear to be an easy RHP installer for this vlc library in SuSE, only for Debian. I read the "install" file and the "readme" file from this tar.gz but it didn't help.

[Guest]

Like robc implied, you should always check if prebuilt binaries exist in the distribution or search for other binaries. That will save you from a lot of pain because compiling from source is not always easy and you'll probably need to do it again every time you update. The SuSE package manager (Yast2 if I recall correctly) might help you here, but perhaps you should try this first: http://packman.links2linux.org/?action=428

In case of other missing libraries, use Yast2 or put "suse LIBRARY-NAME" to Google. This problem of missing dependencies should not even happen anymore with modern packaging systems, but I'm not very familiar with the SuSE RPM implementation. Perhaps it is not really suitable for 3rd-party use, or the vlc package is just missing a reference to the libdvbpsi dependency.