VideoLan (VLC) is a versatile free and open-source cross-platform media player with support for almost any multimedia file and various streaming protocols. Designed to be simple, fast, powerful, and customizable, VLC has long become the most popular multimedia player in not only the Linux community but also among Windows and Mac users.
See Also: MPV – A Cross-Platform CLI-Based VLC Alternative
VLC got its latest major update v3.0.10 since the last one v3.0.8 in December 2019 and it now ships with a handful of significant improvements. The most notable is its support for handling SMB2/3 shares with libsmb2 which enables users to stream content from local Samba shares.
The latest VLC also features improved handling of RAW H264/HEVC and MP4 files, and an improved seek function on the HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) protocol.
This is coupled with a number of DVD-related fixes that mainly solve menu navigation bugs and DVD reading crashes, improved audio quality for Chromecast streaming, YouTube URL playback, and of course, important security patches.
Other changes include an update to Twitch and VLSub scripts, faster adaptive start, and new buffering control options, enabled Live seeking for HLS, multiple adaptive stack fixes, improved network buffering, added support for amem audio up to 384KHz, etc.
Are you interested in the full list of changes in this latest release? Find the official changelog here.
How to Install VLC Media Player in Linux
VLC is available for everybody on all platforms so installing it is as easy as searching for it in your app store and clicking on install.
Install VLC on Ubuntu and Mint
If you’re running Ubuntu or any of its derivatives/flavours, install VLC from the software center.
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If you prefer working with Snaps then you can just as easily install VLC from Snapcraft.
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Alternatively, you can install the latest VLC media player using the following PPA from the terminal.
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:videolan/master-daily $ sudo apt install vlc
Install VLC on Debian
On Debian buster, stretch and Jessie, you can install from the default repositories.
$ sudo apt install vlc
Install VLC on Fedora
On Fedora Linux distribution, you can install VLC media player from the RPMFusin repository as shown.
# dnf install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm # dnf install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm # dnf install vlc # dnf install python-vlc (optional)
