Part 2: Debian Lenny 64bit on a Dell Precision M4300 - Audio / Video Codecs

Coming from the Ubuntu world I missed out on the fine pleasures of manually obtaining and installing codecs for audio and video playback. It was pretty simple in Ubuntu where you just double-clicked the source file and automagicaly Synaptic would open and confirm the packages to add and then everything was all happy. In Debian it's not automatically as simple but it can be. I'm a creature of habit and although there may be alternate methods for this, I prefer to have things like this installed on the fly. I followed a couple of steps to enable this feature and now back in musical bliss!

Open a terminal and become root

# apt-get install gnome-app-install

Open Synaptic Package Manager through the System / Administration / Synaptic Package Manager drop down

Close Synaptic (we just want to initialize it with the new add-on)

Navigate to your media file (an mp3, avi, wmv, aac, etc.) and double-click on it

When prompted to search for the appropriate codec, click on search, then update, then checkmark the appropriate packages

Repeat from navigating and double-clicking for any other codecs