It took me some time to figure out the surefire way to get DVD playback working in Ubuntu. I have seen MANY tutorials and forums all giving clues to the solution, but noone seems to post a complete step by step solution. This solution works for me every time. I use it to configure 4 different systems with completely different components. Simply run this script as root, reboot*, and enjoy the show with the totem command, or Movie Player in the Sound & Video submenu of the programs menu.

* If you don't reboot, it probably will not work. I have not bothered figuring out what service needs to restart to make things play nice. Maybe someone can tell me, and I will add an automatic service restart to the script.

Download Script or copy and paste the following code into a file:

#!/bin/bash
 
# This is a single command to enable DVD playback on any version of ubuntu desktop.
 
################################################################################
#
# This script distributed free of charge by HildoerSystems.com
#
# This script comes with no warranty or guarantee. Please review the script
# before you run it to ensure that it will not cause adverse effects on your
# system.
#
# If you have any questions or comments, please e-mail: Anthony@HildoerSystems.com
#
################################################################################
 
ubuntuDistro=`lsb_release -a 2>&1 | grep Codename | sed 's/\s*//g' | cut -d: -f2`
 
echo
echo Adding Medibuntu Repository for $ubuntuDistro
 
sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/$ubuntuDistro.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list
sudo wget -q http://packages.medibuntu.org/medibuntu-key.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo aptitude update 
sudo aptitude -y install medibuntu-keyring 
sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude -y dist-upgrade
 
echo 
echo Installing DVD plugins and tools
sudo aptitude -y install totem-xine libdvdnav4 libdvdcss2 libdvdread3
sudo aptitude -y purge totem-gstreamer
 
echo
echo
echo All Done. Now Reboot.