VLC is arguably more or less useless in this state in default Manjaro XFCE install

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I noticed that VLC Media Player fails to read many media files on the most recent image of Manjaro XFCE ISO image. Here’s an example of a classic .mp4 files.

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Recently, many plugins for VLC got separated from the application by the Arch Linux maintainer for this piece of software and are now provided in separate packages as optional dependencies that has to be installed manually. Among those plug-ins, there are many things that ranges from pretty cool to have by default to kinda “crucial” for a good experience for VLC, like FFMPEG codec support, DVD and Blu-Ray support, x264 and x265, SMB access, etc. etc. I have no idea why they decide to do it this way suddenly, but whatever.

The lazy solution would be to install all plugins with the vlc-plugins-all metapackage, that will install every optional plugins as a dependency.

Another lazy solution would be not to provide VLC at all, and optionally provide something else by default, like SMPlayer maybe, or just no multimedia application by default.

The not-lazy solution would be to decide and cherry-pick each plugins you want to provide by default or not. It would cut some bloat I suppose, but you’d have to deal with an eternal debate of what is “essential” and what isn’t.

I have only tested on the most recent Manjaro XFCE ISO image (manjaro-xfce-25.0.8-250902-linux612.iso to be exact), but other profiles are most likely affected the same way too.

Since Gitlab is locked, I can’t do a proper bug report, so sorry for the improvised bug report here.

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sudo pacman -S mpv and be happy

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Pinging @philm to add some plugins in the iso.

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MPV is a bit too simplist for me, hence my suggestion for SMPlayer, which is a friendlier frond-end for it.

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Manjaro Xfce minimal ISOs do not include VLC

Manjaro Xfce 25.0.08 full ISO includes 2 packages:

manjaro-xfce-25.0.8-250902-linux612.iso.pkgs:vlc-plugins-base 3.0.21-28
manjaro-xfce-25.0.8-250902-linux612.iso.pkgs:vlc-plugins-video-output 3.0.21-28

Manjaro Extra repository also has:

vlc-plugins-visualization  3.0.21-28                                                                               extra
    Free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework - visualization plugins
vlc-plugins-extra  3.0.21-28                                                                                       extra
    Free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework - extra plugins
vlc-plugins-all  3.0.21-28                                                                                         extra
    Free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework - all plugins

vlc-plugin-ffmpeg  3.0.21-28                                                                                       extra
vlc-plugin-dvd  3.0.21-28                                                                                          extra
vlc-plugin-bluray  3.0.21-28                                                                                       extra
vlc-plugin-x264  3.0.21-28                                                                                         extra
vlc-plugin-x265  3.0.21-28                                                                                         extra
vlc-plugin-smb  3.0.21-28                                                                                          extra
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I don’t know what you’re expecting from Live Manjaro, or why you’d be using VLC from there, but obviously it’s not a full blown version. All distro installers provide just very basic requirements, that’s usually sufficient for fixing many problems apart from the installation itself. That’s why early in the install process you’re asked if you want to install codecs now or after the installation has completed.

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I dunno, I kinda expect from a distro that if they pre-install something, it works decently, which isn’t the case here. Plus, it’s in order to restore functionalities that used to work before the split of the package.

Isn’t that on Ubuntu-based distros? I don’t recall seeing this on Manjaro. The only option offered in the installer is for the office suite.

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Not everyone wants all of those codecs. Plus, the package wasn’t split up by us, it was split up by Arch.

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A basic list of codecs should be included with a video player though. Maybe not dvd playing, but mp4 and alike.
Just saying, maybe it is already the case.
@OP: i deeply suspect vlc is only there because one of the libraries is integral part of plasma as a dependency, so removing it altogether is not an option.

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If you can make a list of what you deem as

Please make a list of the package names to be referenced by the ISO maintainer…

Another option would be to include SMPlayer - my personal favorite :slight_smile: - and it uses mpv as backend :slight_smile:

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One more vote for smp :slight_smile:

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There is no bug to report.

Something like this?

And if you also class yourself as;

you could simply install the meta-package;

sudo pacman -S vlc-plugins-all

and then (optionally) remove all but those plugins you wish to keep. Note that it is recommended to then mark those plugins you wish to keep as explicitly installed.

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Topic title and original post does not mention Manjaro KDE

I do not agree that VLC is “more or less useless” on Manjaro Xfce but I cannot dispute that VLC is
less useful than it used to be since VLC packages were split

I have been using VLC longer than I have been using Linux. VLC was a better alternative on XP to Windows mediocre player

If VLC does not include all the plugins that a new user would expect on any OS, most of them will probably keep on truckin’ to another distribution

vlc-plugins-extra
  vlc-plugin-aalib
  vlc-plugin-aom
  vlc-plugin-aribb24
  vlc-plugin-aribb25
  vlc-plugin-ass
  vlc-plugin-avahi
  vlc-plugin-bluray
  vlc-plugin-caca
  vlc-plugin-cddb
  vlc-plugin-chromecast
  vlc-plugin-dca
  vlc-plugin-dvb
  vlc-plugin-dvd
  vlc-plugin-freetype
  vlc-plugin-gme
  vlc-plugin-kate
  vlc-plugin-lirc
  vlc-plugin-live555
  vlc-plugin-mad
  vlc-plugin-matroska
  vlc-plugin-mdns
  vlc-plugin-modplug
  vlc-plugin-mpeg2
  vlc-plugin-mtp
  vlc-plugin-musepack
  vlc-plugin-nfs
  vlc-plugin-quicksync
  vlc-plugin-samplerate
  vlc-plugin-sdl
  vlc-plugin-sftp
  vlc-plugin-soxr
  vlc-plugin-srt
  vlc-plugin-udev
  vlc-plugin-upnp
  vlc-plugin-zvbi

vlc-plugins-all
  vlc-plugin-ffmpeg
  vlc-plugin-firewire
  vlc-plugin-fluidsynth
  vlc-plugin-gstreamer
  vlc-plugin-jack
  vlc-plugin-kwallet
  vlc-plugin-libsecret
  vlc-plugin-lua
  vlc-plugin-notify
  vlc-plugin-pulse
  vlc-plugin-smb
  vlc-plugin-svg
  vlc-plugin-x264
  vlc-plugin-x265

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It’s a few years since I installed Manjaro, and I’ve not had to re-install it since, so you may be right. Linux Mint definitely has the codecs-install option on its installer. Regardless, I would not expect any installer that includes ‘optional user’ applications like VLC or Libre Office, etc to be a fully blown version at that stage. although I would expect them basically to work, rather than not at all, else what’s the point of having them there in the first place.

If codec h264 is not supported at installer stage I’d agree that’s not acceptable.

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Mpv is not nearly as good as vlc

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I use it exclusively.
Years ago it was mplayer, now it is mpv.
It may not have as many capabilities as vlc can have through it’s many plugins.
But it does the job as a media player for local files and media and through the network.
There is a choice of GUIs for it (I use none of them), some better than others.
I need nothing more. :man_shrugging:

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It’s by far (!) better than VLC, but okay…

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From that list, the extras definitely shouldn’t be in the iso, since they are not that widely used. We don’t want a 10 GB iso, do we?

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I didn’t check any of this - I wonder and my intuition would be:
if all this functionality was previously included, but is now split up into separate packages,
of which only a few (or none?) are included by default,
why would the summed up size of all these now be significantly larger than before?
Should that not amount to about the same size as before?

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