How To Install VLC 1.1.0 (Final) In Ubuntu From A PPA (deb)

Like you already know, VLC 1.1.0 (final) has been released yesterday. I will take this opportunity to clarify some things regarding vaapi (GPU acceleration). Read on!

Before installing VLC 1.1.0 in Ubuntu, please note that the build in this PPA does not come with vaapi support so you won't get GPU acceleration!

Install VLC 1.1.0 in Ubuntu

To install VLC 1.1.0, simply paste the following commands in a terminal (for now, the VLC package is only available for Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx and 10.10 Maverick Meerkat users):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ferramroberto/vlc
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vlc mozilla-plugin-vlc

Important notes: Gnome Media Player and Linux SopCast Player will stop working if you upgrade to VLC 1.1.0 because both packages currently depend on VLC 1.0.x!

Remove VLC 1.1.0 and install VLC 1.0.x from the official Ubuntu repositories

If you want to revert the changes made by this PPA and install the VLC package from the official Ubuntu repositories, all you have to do is download and install PPA Purge (don't worry about the package name saying "Karmic" - it works in Lucid and Maverick too) which by the way is also available in the WebUpd8 PPA so you can install it from there if you have the PPA added to your sources.list, and then simply run the following command:

sudo ppa-purge ppa:ferramroberto/vlc

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Everything below is not related to the PPA above (I felt the need to clarify this so people don't get scared =) ).

Now, regarding vaapi (GPU acceleration): you basically can't compile VLC 1.1.0 with vaapi support without breaking stuff. To get it to work with vaapi, it would need newer ffmpeg packages which would mean every package using the ffmpeg packages in the Ubuntu official repository would be broken unless it is compiled against the same ffmpeg package (so you would need to either compile every package that uses ffmpeg yourself or a PPA should package all these packages - which is practically impossible).

There is a PPA which packages VLC 1.1.0 with vaapi support as well as fixed mplayer to work with the new ffmpeg/gstreamer. But since this PPA only has VLC and mplayer, it means that other video players / video editors will stop working if you use the following PPA and for this reason I won't post instructions for installing it here. You can however find both the PPA and exact instructions for installing VLC 1.1.0 with vaapi support, HERE. Remember: using it, a lot of applications will be broken! Also, the VLC package in the Cutting Edge Multimedia PPA (not the PPA in this post - that's stable and doesn't break anything!) doesn't yet have the latest VLC 1.1.0 but a GIT version dating back to June 16 - that's still very close to the final version.

Update: I've updated this post with a new PPA as the old one has been removed.