VideoLAN or VLC, an open source cross-platform which plays huge amount of media formats including DVDs, Audio CDs and VCDs saw a major release recently. and this brief tutorial is going to show students and new users how to install it on Ubuntu desktops.
VLC is a very popular open source project. and its software works on Windows, Mac OS and Linux to provide users the ability to play different media formats. If you’re looking for a media player that plays almost all media formats, then VLC is a good place to start.
This major release brings new features and support for the following:
- Stream local media to Chromecast
- Allows audio passthrough for HD audio codecs
- Default hardware decoding to play 4k and 8K videos
- Limited 360-degree video and audio support
- HTTP/2 support
- Now uses OpenGL
- Support for network browsing with Samba, FTP/SFTP, NFS, and other protocols
- Autodetect external audio tracks (ac3, m4a, aac, dts…), similar to subtitles
- Adaptive streaming
- Improved support for Wayland
- Support for more codecs
For complete release notes please click the link below:
Step 1: Upgrade / Install VLC via Snap
To install or upgrade to the latest VLC on Ubuntu desktop, you have two options. you can either install it via Snap or from its stable PPA repository.
To install VLC via Snap, run the commands to install Snap package management on Ubuntu if you don’t already have it.
sudo apt install snapd snapd-xdg-open
After adding Snap, run the commands below to install VLC
sudo snap install vlc --classic
Step 2: Install / Upgrade VLC via PPA
Another way to upgrade or install VLC 3.0 is to use the package dev PPA repository. to do that, run the commands below to add the PPA repository to Ubuntu, then update and upgrade or install VLC 3.0
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonathonf/vlc-3 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonathonf/ffmpeg-3 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonathonf/meson sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install vlc
This is how one upgrades or installs the latest VLC media player on Ubuntu. Remember if you install VLC via Snap and PPA, you’ll have to separate VLC players. they both work. but they’re separate.
Step 3: Remove / Uninstall VLC from Ubuntu
To remove VLC installed via its PPA, run the commands below
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonathonf/vlc-3 sudo apt purge vlc
To remove VLC install via Snap, run the commands below
sudo snap remove vlc
Enjoy!
You may also like the post below:
Horribly bad info! Shame on you!
First of all you can’t install the vlc snap like that if you want to be able to open files on, say, your external drive or USB stick.
Second, vlc 3 isn’t available in the PPA that you’re suggeting, and wasn’t at the time you published this article.
Third, snaps are absolute garbage! They don’t integrate into the system, and they make awful additional mounts, and they take a long time to start, and they keep eating up your free space, and they don’t use your existing settings, and they are just a really, really horribly implemented bad idea.
How about assisting people to install vlc 3 *properly* instead?
This is how I installed vlc 3, using the official bionic repo:
Add file ‘/etc/apt/preferences.d/bionic’ with:
Package: *
Pin: release a=bionic
Pin-Priority: 10
Add this line to ‘/etc/apt/sources.list’:
deb http://ee.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic main restricted universe multiverse
Then upgrade ‘vlc’ manually.
There’s probably a much better way to do this (perhaps by pinning the vlc package to a version >=3), but at least this is much better than those awful snaps.
like a boss
SNAP bEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeah!
ROFL
Thank you! I was able to upgrade VLC on Ubuntu 16.04 successfully using the dev PPA repository.
I have this error:
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eric@box:~$ sudo snap install vlc –classic
error: snap “vlc” not found
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