Codec unavailability? I have VLC media player.

I am a music freak and I needed something in which I could play music files and videos after installing Ubuntu. Of course, Kaffeine and Mplayer exists by default (in almost all Linux distros I know), but the mp3, avi and other propriety codecs are not provided (This is the reason you hate Linux, right?). And I didn't want to download just the codecs. So I downloaded the Open Source player that I have been using for the last 2 years on my Windows system. VLC media player is small, useful and incredibly sexy.
I downloaded the source code and compiled it myself. This because I had to install the software on another system running Fedora. (This is a huge advantage about downloading source tarballs. You can use the same source code files to install a software in different OSes. Also I like reading the humorous cookie file which comes with the VLC source code files in its source tarball.) But if you want to install it only in Ubuntu, then use 'apt-get' or download the .deb package from http://www.videolan.org/vlc (Details about installation and use are provided in the documentation in the website.)



The interface is similar to its Windows version. The only difference in the interface which I noticed was that instead of 'File' menu there is 'Media'. All said about the interface. If you have used VLC in Windows can use it in Ubuntu. (Actually, anybody who has ever touched a computer can operate VLC. It is that simple... :) )
However, it doesn't run as smoothly here as it does on Windows, as the Linux version still lacks a few codecs. You can also install the Windows version using Wine. (No, I am not asking you to get drunk. Wine is a software with which you can run Windows applications inside Linux. More on that later.)
That is all for now. I am dying to watch a few music videos. S.O.A.D is awesome. They should regroup and release more albums.