That is correct
vlc-nightly was replaced by vlc when you executed the sync command.
The reason you got a lot more - is caused by the latest stable snap on 2025-07-12
This message can be safely ignored.
With vmware you choose a base configuration targeting a specific kernel series when you intend to install an unsupported Linux.
Since it is 7 years the kernel could have been 4.x or 5.x.
It seems to be solely graphics related but I cannot know.
If you can access the system without the login manager - I would try to disable lightdm so I would at the very least be able to have an actual running instance using console only.
To disable display manager
systemctl disable --now lightdm
This should make it possible to boot the system to console.