Documentation:Installing VLC

There are VLC binaries available for the many OSes, but not for all supported ones. If there are no binaries for your OS or if you want to change the default settings, you can compile VLC from sources.

Windows

 VLC media player is compatible and works under Windows Operating Systems 2000/XP/Vista/7. It can also be used under Windows 95/98/Me using KernelEx.

1. Download the self-extracting package (or the 7-zip/zip package, which requires an extraction first) from the VLC Windows download page.
2. Launch the .exe to install VLC.
3. Follow the steps in the installer.

Unattended/silent installation: Use "filename" /L="languagecode" /S. Example for english installation: vlc-1.1.0-win32.exe /L=1033 /S

Mac OS X

1. Download the Mac OS X package from the VLC MacOS X download page.
2. Double-click on the icon of the package: an icon will appear on your Desktop, right beside your drives.
3. Open it and drag the VLC application from the resulting window to the place where you want to install it (it should be /Applications).

BeOS

1. Download the Zip file from the VLC BeOS download page.
2. Unzip the file in a directory to install VLC.

Debian GNU/Linux

Debian stable (lenny)

Add the following lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/debian stable main
deb-src http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/debian stable main

Then, for a normal install, write the following commands in Terminal:

# apt-get update
# apt-get install vlc libdvdcss2

Debian testing (squeeze)

You should not be using Debian testing unless you perfectly know what you are doing. It is almost impossible to support Debian testing and there are no plans to do it.

For more information on Debian testing, please look at the Testing Page.

Debian unstable (sid)

Add the following lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/debian sid main
deb-src http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/debian sid main

Then, for a normal install, write the following commands in Terminal:

# apt-get update
# apt-get install vlc libdvdcss2

Linux Mandrake

There are VLC packages for Mandrake 9.1 and Cooker.

To install them, add the following sources for either Mandrake 9.1 or Cooker (you can use Easy urpmi for that): contrib from the core distribution and plf (Penguin Liberation Front) from the external add-ons.

Then install the required packages with urpmi:

# urpmi libdvdcss2 libdvdplay0 wxvlc vlc-plugin-a52 vlc-plugin-ogg vlc-plugin-mad

Linux CentOS (EL5)

1. Download and install the latest rpmforge-release rpm (eg rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm)

2. Either;

# yum install vlc 

or (if you have epel-release installed);

# yum --disablerepo='epel' install vlc 

Linux Redhat

Download the RPM package vlc and the packages listed in the required libraries and codecs section (the other packages are 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)

For more detailed information on compiling VLC by yourself, please have a look at the documentation on our developers website.

This page is part of official VLC media player Documentation (User Guide • Streaming HowTo • Hacker Guide • Modules)
Please read the Documentation Editing Guidelines before you edit the documentation

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.