The VLC team has announced the release of VLC 2.0, code named, Twoflower. VLC 2.0 is a major upgrade for VLC. The latest version of VLC offers faster decoding on multi-core, GPU, and mobile hardware and the ability to open more formats, notably professional, HD and 10bits codecs.

Now, you may want to install VLC in your Ubuntu and Linux Mint machines. The latest version is not yet in the repos (at the time I was writing this article). So, if you don't want to wait for it to hit the repos, here is a quick howto.

It is recommended that you remove or uninstall the current version of VLC.

How to install VLC 2.0 on Ubuntu 11.10 or Linux Mint 12
First you need to add a PPA so that you can install the latest version of VLC. Open Terminal/Kosole (depending on if your are using Gnome or KDE) and then run this command:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:n-muench/vlc

now update the repos
sudo apt-get update

And now install VLC
sudo apt-get install vlc

How to install VLC 2.0 on Ubuntu 10.10 or Linux Mint 10
If you are running Ubuntu 10.10 and corresponding Linux Mint try this PPA
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lucid-bleed/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vlc vlc-plugin-pulse mozilla-plugin-vlc

You will be running the latest version of VLC.