This simple tutorial is going to introduce the new Ubuntu PPA for installing VLC media player as native .deb package format.
VLC is easy to install in Ubuntu through either Snap (available in Ubuntu Software) or Flatpak.
If you don’t like applications run in sandbox, then a third-party PPA can be a good choice besides building from the source tarball.
Rob Savoury is maintaining a PPA with most recent VLC as native .deb package. However, the dependency PPA goes private recently. So, I created a new one for choice.
Install VLC 3.0.18 from PPA:
The package in this unofficial PPA is just a backport from Ubuntu 23.04. No change except for the build and run-time libraries depends on your Ubuntu edition.
It seems working good but without well testing. So, there’s always use it as your own risk!
1. First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open a terminal window. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/vlc
Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it asks for sudo authentication, then hit Enter to continue.
2. For Linux Mint, also run command to refresh package cache, which is done automatically while adding PPA in Ubuntu 20.04 +.
sudo apt update
3. Finally, either update VLC package using ‘Software Updater’ or install/upgrade the package directly by running apt command in terminal:
sudo apt install vlc
Uninstall:
If you found any issue about the VLC package, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command:
sudo apt install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/vlc
This command will install ppa-purge tool and use it to purge the PPA, which also downgrade VLC and its dependencies to the stock versions in system repository.
For choice, you may run command to just remove VLC media player:
sudo apt remove --autoremove vlc
Then remove the PPA either from ‘Software & Updates’ -> ‘Other Software’ tab, or by running command in terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/vlc