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You Should Know: Codecs in linux trick


When you install any new distro, most of the time it does not come with the video and audio codecs to play videos online and offline.

The best way in my opinion to use codecs without spending hours installing is:

Install needed apps as flatpak.

The most common apps that need codecs is browsers and video players like vlc and mpv.

Just install them(Make sure you enable flathub repo) as flatpak (installed by default in most distros) and you will not need to spend time installing codecs from untrusted third party repos ever again.

don't like this

in reply to Best Of Lemmy

What kind of issues do you have? Never had any using Debian, Ubuntu or arch
in reply to Lionel C-R

It's more of I don't want to spend hours installing essentials rather than a real issue.

Opensuse, stock debian, fedora, clear linux.

I suffered through this enough number of times till I learned to install browsers this way.

By the way the reason you did not notice any issue in codecs is that ubuntu and arch come with codecs.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Best Of Lemmy

I also never had problems with that. Almost all players come with the needed codecs. If you need more, it's a matter of looking at the optional dependencies or taking a look at the official wiki to know from which official repo to install the needed codec. But that's only for uncommon codecs.

The regular user should never have to deal with this with pretty much any distro I know of. Where did you have problems?
in reply to Stoned_Ape

Fedora as this issue where you need to have rpm fusion to install "non-free" drivers. Other than that you are right all beginner friendly distros have them installed by default (Ubuntu, mint, and friends)
in reply to Stoned_Ape

Opensuse, stock debian, fedora, clear linux.

I suffered through this enough number of times till I learned to install browsers this way.
Unknown parent

Best Of Lemmy
I am not calling for anything.

I am just posting a tip for linux users.

I hope it will make the people who want to use linux daily, do not think of the codecs as reason to not switch.