June 23rd, 2012 
Jijo K Jose Graphical Way
Open Synaptic application
Click on System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager.
In Settings -> Repositories, make sure you have an universe repository activated.
Search for vlc and install it, as well as vlc-plugin-pulse. You may also want to install mozilla-plugin-vlc.
If you are interested in streaming or transcoding, you should additionnally install libavcodec-extra-52 from a multiverse repository.
Command Line Way
You need to check that a universe mirror is listed in your /etc/apt/sources.list file.
% sudo apt-get update
% sudo apt-get install vlc vlc-plugin-pulse mozilla-plugin-vlc
Note
Ubuntu includes whichever VLC version was the latest at the time the Ubuntu release was frozen (typically about two months before the official Ubuntu upgrade). Afterward, you can still get security and critical bug fixes, but no further VLC version updates until the next Ubuntu release.
Concretely, Ubuntu Natty has VLC version 1.1.9, Ubuntu Maverick has VLC version 1.1.4. If you need a more recent version, please consider upgrading Ubuntu.
Ubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.04 LTS
VLC version 1.0.6 in Ubuntu 10.04 is out-of-date. Recommend you install VLC 1.1.x manually.
If you wish to install VLC 1.0.6 anyway, Note that there will be some bugs; you are on your own.
At your OWN risks, install VLC from PPA
Command line way
% sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lucid-bleed/ppa
% sudo apt-get update
% sudo apt-get install vlc vlc-plugin-pulse mozilla-plugin-vlc
