VLC 3.0 Recently Released – And Here’s How to Install it on Ubuntu 16.04 / 17.10 Desktops

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:

https://www.videolan.org/vlc/releases/3.0.0.html

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!

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