Sharing of the day.
Keep wondering why my subtitle (srt) cant be displayed when I watch my avi movie with VLC. Though it was not compatible in Ubuntu whereby I was using XP last time which displayed well. Ah Hah. I got the luck solving the problem by edting a file /usr/share/applications/vlc.desktop .
Just need to edit vlc.desktop with su privileges and replace %U for Exec=vlc with %m .
Here we go, double click your avi file and the subtitle will be displaying well.
Without editing this file, you actually can get this problem done by drag the avi file straight into opened VLC. Kinda annoying. Why dont try this way to save the trouble. 