Installing DVD & MP3 Playback support in Ubuntu

Warning...

In some countries, the United States in particular, decrypting DVDs without properly licensed codecs is illegal. There was a time Cyberlink, the publishers of PowerDVD for Windows, had a version for Linux, but it currently doesn't appear anywhere on their site. Please check your countries laws regarding DVD decryption before using this information. These instructions work with Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10. Older versions may use libdvdread3.

Steps

Download libdvdread4:

sudo apt-get install libdvdread4

Run the install script which then downloads libdvdcss2:

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

Other codecs and proprietary stuff

You will also want mp3 support and other codecs, and you can do it with one software package:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

Not only will you get MP3 support, but a few fonts, Adobe Flash, etc.