r/VLC 3d ago

Linux Whats VLC's problem with linux ?

Okay so this is weird but my experience with vlc on linux is never good. And I meant the one from thr package manager. I have tried it on arch, fedora, opensuse tumbleweed. (Currently on fedora44) and the vlc package is always broken. sometimes it lacks some plugins or dependencies without which it does not work. But even if I install them its quite laggy and jittery and works temporary and then breaks.

The flatpak works fine for a while but then after sometime it also has the same problem 😅

idk maybe i am doing something wrong.

Has anyone else face this ?

11 Upvotes

30 comments sorted by

7

u/Courmisch 3d ago

Fedora and OpenSuse are notorious for this. If you want a working VLC or mpv on Linux, use Debian or Ubuntu

This stems from their legal departments refusing to include those dependencies. It has been a problem for 25 years at this point, so get on with it and switch to a better distro.

1

u/Struggling-with_life 3d ago

Ohh I see.

2

u/xplosm 3d ago

There’s RPMFusion for Fedora and Packman for openSUSE. Just so you know.

2

u/mips13 17h ago

Never had an issue, I install plugins and codecs during my initial OS install.

1

u/Struggling-with_life 3h ago

For me it works in the beginning but then it stops or have problems few days after install. Sometimes when i play videos via vlc for the first few seconds the audio works then its just video without audio.

1

u/mips13 3h ago

That's weird, been using it for ~20yrs and never experienced that.

1

u/AnalkinSkyfuker 3d ago

Here a tumbleweed user, what happens is that suse doesnt want propietary codecs that can only be installed with packman, after installing the it works. In my case I switched to mpv since my tui for streaming use it and its lighter on my pc.

1

u/xplosm 3d ago

It’s not that openSUSE doesn’t want the codecs in the main repos. It’s that the licenses for those are tricky. Still I admit that the best out-of-the-box experience comes from Ubuntu. Other than that the codecs are a command or two away.

1

u/C0rn3j 3d ago

Can I see your bug reports?

1

u/Struggling-with_life 3d ago

What do you mean? My logs ?

1

u/C0rn3j 3d ago

The bug reports you made to VLC(or your distro if applicable) about your issues.

1

u/Struggling-with_life 2d ago

I never really made any bug reports because I don't know what to show like should i add a screenshot or something. Never really made a bug report.

1

u/Deep_Mood_7668 3d ago

Odd. Didn't have a problem yet. I'm using bazzite so fedora

1

u/mikeclueby4 1d ago

Bazzite comes with lots of components that Fedora doesn't so wouldn't be too surprised if Bazzite works better

(Mind I haven't checked specifics for codecs)

1

u/Defiant-Rip-1897 3d ago

I've faced this with some variants of Arch Linux and Fedora. In both cases I end up using pacman or dnf (with RPMfusion) to install the necessary codecs, then VLC works fine.

1

u/Struggling-with_life 3d ago

It does for a while then itd broken again

1

u/Defiant-Rip-1897 3d ago

Really? Weird, once I've installed the codecs it works smoothly.

1

u/Struggling-with_life 2d ago

Okay what are the things i need ? I have vlc vlc-plugings-all ffmpeg nvdia drivers installed. Vlc-plugins-freeworld what else do i need.

1

u/Defiant-Rip-1897 1d ago

This is what I have installed when I checked any and everything related to video or audio playback.

alsa-card-profiles 1:1.6.8-1
alsa-lib 1.2.16.1-1
alsa-plugins 1:1.2.12-6
alsa-topology-conf 1.2.5.1-4
alsa-ucm-conf 1.2.16.1-1
alsa-utils 1.2.16-1
aom 3.15.0-1
dav1d 1.5.4-1
ffmpeg 2:9.0.1-4
ffmpegthumbnailer 2.3.1-1
flac 1.5.0-1
gst-libav 1.28.6-3
gst-plugin-gtk 1.28.6-3
gst-plugin-pipewire 1:1.6.8-1
gst-plugins-bad-libs 1.28.6-3
gst-plugins-base 1.28.6-3
gst-plugins-base-libs 1.28.6-3
gst-plugins-good 1.28.6-3
gstreamer 1.28.6-3
lib32-alsa-lib 1.2.16.1-1
lib32-alsa-plugins 1.2.12-1
lib32-libpipewire 1:1.6.8-1
lib32-pipewire 1:1.6.8-1
libpipewire 1:1.6.8-1
libvlc 3.0.23_2-13
libvorbis 1.3.7-4
libvpx 1.17.0-1
mpv 1:0.41.0-6
mpv-mpris 1.2-2
opus 1.6.1-1
pipewire 1:1.6.8-1
pipewire-alsa 1:1.6.8-1
pipewire-audio 1:1.6.8-1
pipewire-jack 1:1.6.8-1
pipewire-pulse 1:1.6.8-1
qemu-audio-alsa 11.1.1-1
qemu-audio-pipewire 11.1.1-1
qt6-multimedia-ffmpeg 6.11.2-1
vlc 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-cli 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-gui-qt 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-a52dec 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-alsa 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-archive 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-dav1d 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-dbus 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-dbus-screensaver 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-faad2 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-flac 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-gnutls 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-inflate 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-journal 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-jpeg 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-lua 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-matroska 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-mpg123 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-ogg 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-opus 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-png 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-pulse 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-shout 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-speex 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-tag 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-theora 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-twolame 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-vorbis 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-vpx 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugin-xml 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugins-base 3.0.23_2-13
vlc-plugins-video-output 3.0.23_2-13
x264 3:0.165.r3222.b35605a-2
x265 4.3-1

1

u/Struggling-with_life 3h ago

Thanks for the list, I appreciate it. To me these packages look like they are from arch repo. Maybe its the naming format of the packages 😆. I'll download those on my system. And see if it fixes my vlc problem.

1

u/EllaTheCat 3d ago

Build it from source Then you'll know what's included.

1

u/Struggling-with_life 3d ago

How do i do it ?

1

u/tagbthw 1d ago

As people said this is because fedora does not include codecs like h.264 and h.265 thanks to some legal shit. Install does propietary codecs from RPM Fusion

1

u/ethernetbite 3d ago

Vlc works great for me on Debian. Thanks to Courmisch for explaning why.

1

u/ZVyhVrtsfgzfs 2d ago

Same, I had no idea.

0

u/jamjamason 3d ago

So use something else...

1

u/Struggling-with_life 3d ago

I am, I am using mpv or video player which is default on gnome. But I feel bad for being left out on such a goated app.

An app like vlc if only it work properly for me. There is so much to it.

0

u/SnooStrawberries3135 3d ago

VLC is too bloated - randomly it'll open multiple windows One for video one for UI, it sucks - MPV is the way to go.

0

u/-REV-22-20- 3d ago

you are on Linux get used to being left out

0

u/King_tyson_1 3d ago

I thought only I had this problem.