Is vlc going to take the place of smplayer?

mdre808 · 2025-11-15 13:36

First, I see some linux DEs take vlc as the default player, even LXQT DE included. Therefore ,to me, vlc would be much preferable.
Second, with smplayer installed and make update&upgrading ,terminal showed something abnormal of smplayer's URL, which gives me a sense of it is going to be abandoned anyway. I see that smplayer's webside's download page have changed recently, not as its used to be "installing by debian mantainer' or "apt install smplayer',( They are seem to be so in my memory), instead a direct package appears.
Third, why is Okular depend on some of the vlc's packages? As I want to purge vlc, I shall have to uinstall okular... thus... vlc can be much relate to others, perhaps one day this will make it a whole suit of DE.
I did not mean vlc is bad, in fact I keep it install on my smartphones and for itd goodness. Just wondering what happened or is goning to happen to smplayer.

swarfendor437 · 2026-01-09 13:19

Interesting post. I hear a lot of complaints about vlc on other forums. In terms of video I use videos on other distributions (formerly Totem) and Audacious for Audio using ALSA for my sourround sound Ligitech 5.1 surround system (not PipeWire or PulseAudio). I installed SMPlayer on Mint (LMDE 7) the other day without any issue. (I installled Plasma 6.3.6 to use instead of Cinnamon, which you can't do on the core release of LM.)

I find it disturbing that removing one application looks at removing another one. This is where GNU/Linux is failing users who want to customise the desktop without losing anything. You cannot totally remove Pulse Audio on some distributions without destroying the desktop. Systemd isn't much better.

Last edited by swarfendor437 (2026-01-09 13:21)

Q4OS Forum

#1 2025-11-15 13:36

Is vlc going to take the place of smplayer?

#2 2026-01-09 13:19

Re: Is vlc going to take the place of smplayer?

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