Medibuntu : The Only 3rd Party Repo I Use

By | 2008/01/29
11 Comments

UPDATE: This article has been updated for Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala”. Medibuntu on Ubuntu 9.10.

I am generally very wary of suggesting the use of 3rd party repositories. I rarely, if ever, use them myself, even if it’ll make installing an application a bit simpler. The bottom line for this is that I want my machine to be as supported as it can be, so I generally only use the official Ubuntu repositories (main restricted universe multiverse). Adding this repository will add unsupported packages to your system, but it is considered far more trusted than other repositories.

Medibuntu is the one repository that I find I can suggest to people, and this solves most all of the non-free issues people have. Everything from DVD playback to non-free codecs–even Google Earth!

A breakdown of what is available via Medibuntu:

  • Non-Free Media Codecs (w32codecs, libdvdcss, etc)
  • Acroread
  • Google Earth
  • RealPlayer
  • Skype
  • Popular Media Players without stripped codecs (amarok, xmms, mplayer, kaffeine, k3b)

Adding the Medibuntu Repo

To add the Medibuntu repository we’ll need to grab the sources.list available there. Note: the following is for Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy”. Replace gutsy.list with feisty.list, etc for your version:

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/gutsy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

We’ll also need the key in order to validate the packages as they come in:

wget -q http://packages.medibuntu.org/medibuntu-key.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add - && sudo apt-get update

Installing Packages

So the heavy lifting is now done, now for a few examples of adding some of these codecs or applications.

To install DVD playback use:

sudo aptitude install libdvdcss2

To install non-free codec support:

sudo aptitude install w32codecs

(w64codecs for 64bit, ppc-codecs for PPC architecture)

More documentation is available at the Ubuntu Community Medibuntu Wiki.

Installation via apturl

If you’ve added the repository in the above step you can now install any of the below by clicking on the link. These will install from the Medibuntu repository ONLY if you’ve configured them as above. These packages are not distributed or downloaded from my servers:

Adobe Reader – Adobe’s PDF Reader

Adobe Reader Plugins – Ability to complete fillable forms

Adobe Mozilla Plugin – Adobe Plugin for Firefox, Galeon, Konqueror

Google Earth – Google Earth : Explore, Search and Discover

Win32 Codecs – nonfree media playback (wma, realplayer, quicktime)

Amarok – The popular media player + mp3/mp4 integration

Skype – VOIP with Skype

ffmpeg – Multimedia player, server and encoder (mp3,mp4,h264,amr support)

Ubuntu Restricted Extras

You may also want to read my previous, Installing Ubuntu Restricted Extras for a wider list of the packages that are not installed by default.

Disclaimer: These are not in base Ubuntu for a reason. Either they are patent encumbered or not free software.

Patent and copyright laws operate differently depending on which country you are in. Please obtain legal advice if you are unsure whether a particular patent or restriction applies to a media format you wish to use in your country.

11 thoughts on “Medibuntu : The Only 3rd Party Repo I Use”

  1. Michael R. Head

    yes, Yes, YES!

    A thousand times yes. Medibuntu is really great. Whenever I set up a new ubuntu install for myself or friend, it’s the first place I go (after installing the restricted extras).

  2. Tomáš Hnyk

    Are you sure Opera is included? I think it is not (it is not here: http://medibuntu.org/packages.php). Oh, and their Skype (2.something version) does not work for me (version from Skype does)- otherwise they are great.

  4. gouki

    Personally, I use the Skype repositories whenever I have to install Skype.

  5. Rambo Tribble

    Medibuntu is a wonderful asset to any who use Ubuntu derivatives for multimedia applications.

    It should be mentioned that Medibuntu is the beneficiary of Christian Marillat’s work, to be found at debian-multimedia.

  6. Jim

    Medibutnu is great. I just wish it was more obvious to new users that it’s available. I do a lot on helping on launchpad answers and a lot of people have no idea it’s there. Ubuntu probably can’t advertise it but somehow the word needs to get to new users. Of course if they would just google they’d find it :).

  7. beerfan

    The only 3rd party repo I have at the moment is WineHQ. Keeping up to date with Wine is pretty helpful for running windows games.

    If I were going to install Skype or many of those other packages I’d get them from the provider repo where available. I only see disadvantages to getting them from another source.

  8. Loye Young

    Instead of installing figuring out which of (w32codecs | w64codecs | ppc-codecs) you need to install, use the package non-free-codecs, which was created to allow architecture-neutral scripting and installation. non-free-codecs depends on the other three and the magic of the APT system figures out which to install.

  10. Morghan

    Yeah, medibuntu is great, takes the place of livna (now rpmfusion) on fedora after I switched over. It’s nice to have a well managed repo for some of the things you know you’re going to want.

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