VLC (VideoLAN Client) is an open source and free simple fast and much powerful cross-platform player and framework for playing most of multimedia files like CD, DVD, VCD, Audio CD and other various supported streaming media protocols.
It was written by the VideoLAN project and can be available for all operating platforms such as Windows, Linux, Solaris, OS X, Android, iOS and other supported operating systems.
Recently, VideoLan team announced the major release of VLC 3.0 with some new features, number of improvements and bug fixes.
VLC 3.0 Features
- VLC 3.0 “Vetinari” is a new major update of VLC
- Activates hardware decoding by default, to get 4K and 8K playback!
- It supports 10bits and HDR
- Supports 360 video and 3D audio, up to Ambisonics 3rd order
- Allows audio passthrough for HD audio codecs
- Stream to Chromecast devices, even in formats not supported natively
- Supports browsing of local network drives and NAS
Find out all the changes in VLC 3.0 in the release announcement page.
This is our ongoing Best Linux Players series, in this article, we will show you how to install latest version of VLC 3.0 Media Player in RHEL 8/7/6, CentOS 7/6 and Fedora 25-30 systems using third party repositories with Yum automated package installer.
Suggested Read: 10 Best Open Source Video Players For Linux in 2015
Install VLC 3.0 Media Player in RHEL/CentOS and Fedora
VLC program doesn’t included in the RHEL/CentOS based operating systems, we need to install it using third party repositories like RPM Fusion and EPEL. With the help of these repositories we can install list of all updated packages automatically using YUM package manager tool.
Suggested Read: Install Latest VLC Media Player in Debian, Ubuntu and Linux Mint
Install RPM Fusion and EPEL Repositories on RHEL/CentOS
First, install Epel and RPM Fusion repository for your RHEL/CentOS based distribution using following commands. Please select and install it according to your Linux supported system versions.
For RHEL/CentOS 8
# subscription-manager repos --enable=rhel-8-server-optional-rpms [on RHEL] # yum install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm # yum install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/el/rpmfusion-free-release-8.noarch.rpm
For RHEL/CentOS 7
# subscription-manager repos --enable=rhel-7-server-optional-rpms [on RHEL] # yum install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm # yum install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/el/rpmfusion-free-release-7.noarch.rpm
For RHEL/CentOS 6
# subscription-manager repos --enable=rhel-6-server-optional-rpms [on RHEL] # yum install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-6.noarch.rpm # yum install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/el/rpmfusion-free-release-6.noarch.rpm
Installing RPMFusion Repository on Fedora
Under Fedora distributions, the RPMFusion repository comes as pre-installed, if not you can follow below commands install and enable it as shown:
For Fedora 25-30
# dnf install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm
Check the Availability of VLC in RHEL/CentOS/Fedora
Once you’ve all the repositories installed on your system, do the following command to check the availability of VLC player.
# yum info vlc # dnf info vlc [On Fedora 25+ releases]
Sample Output :
Last metadata expiration check: 0:01:11 ago on Thursday 20 June 2019 04:27:05 PM IST. Available Packages Name : vlc Epoch : 1 Version : 3.0.7.1 Release : 4.el7 Arch : x86_64 Size : 1.8 M Source : vlc-3.0.7.1-4.el7.src.rpm Repo : rpmfusion-free-updates Summary : The cross-platform open-source multimedia framework, player and server URL : https://www.videolan.org License : GPLv2+ Description : VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player and multimedia framework : capable of reading most audio and video formats as well as DVDs, Audio CDs VCDs, : and various streaming protocols. : It can also be used as a media converter or a server to stream in uni-cast or : multi-cast in IPv4 or IPv6 on networks.
Installing VLC Player in RHEL/CentOS/Fedora
As you see the VLC player is available, so install it by running the following command on the terminal.
# yum install vlc # dnf install vlc [On Fedora 25+ releases]
Starting VLC Player in RHEL/CentOS/Fedora
Run the following command from the Desktop terminal as normal user to Launch the VLC player. (Note : VLC is not supposed to be run as root user). if you wish, follow this article to run VLC as root user.
$ vlc
VLC Player Preview
See the preview of VLC Player under my CentOS 7 system.


Updating VLC Player in RHEL/CentOS/Fedora
If you would like to Update or Upgrade VLC player to latest stable version, use the following command.
# yum update vlc # dnf update vlc [On Fedora 25+ releases]
Unable to install VLC on RHEL 8
Anyone, please suggest any other installation or solution for VLC installation.?
Thanks in advance!
@Mahi,
What errors you getting during installing VLC on RHEL 8?
@Ravi Saive,
I getting below error after running ‘yum info vlc‘. I have already previous 2 commands and they both work fine but even after that yum cannot able find vlc package (RHEL 8)
[[email protected] ~]# yum info vlc
Updating Subscription Management repositories.
RPM Fusion for EL 8 – Free – Updates 19 kB/s | 74 kB 00:03
Error: No matching Packages to list
@Mahi,
Let me try again on my RHEL 8 Box, will get back to you with solution.
@Ravi,
I got an error while checking the package information (yum info vlc) of VLC in terminal.
First 2 two commands related to downloading are working fine.
[[email protected] ~]# yum info vlc
Updating Subscription Management repositories.
Last metadata expiration check: 0:00:33 ago on Saturday 21 September 2019 07:50:15 PM IST.
Error: No matching Packages to list
vlc is not available in rpmfusion for el8. Also no other media player for playing videos is till now not available for rhel 8 and oracle Linux 8.
Please update if you find any video player for rhel8/oracle Linux 8.
@Ashwin,
I think VLC yet not included in the EPEL and RPMFusion of RHEL 8, once it is available will update the article.
I ran through the instructions (on this page) to get vlc-3.0.7.1 installed, and they failed at the very bottom, with the following errors:
Error: Package: 1:vlc-3.0.7.1-4.el7.x86_64 (rpmfusion-free-updates)
Requires: libQt5X11Extras.so.5()(64bit)
Error: Package: 1:vlc-3.0.7.1-4.el7.x86_64 (rpmfusion-free-updates)
Requires: libQt5Svg.so.5()(64bit)
Error: Package: 1:vlc-3.0.7.1-4.el7.x86_64 (rpmfusion-free-updates)
Requires: libQt5X11Extras.so.5(Qt_5)(64bit)
Error: Package: 1:vlc-3.0.7.1-4.el7.x86_64 (rpmfusion-free-updates)
Requires: libQt5Svg.so.5(Qt_5)(64bit)
You could try using –skip-broken to work around the problem
For RHEL, you need to enable additional repositories as stated in the EPEL install wiki: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL#How_can_I_use_these_extra_packages.3F
subscription-manager repos –enable rhel-7-server-optional-rpms –enable rhel-7-server-extras-rpms
If you do not have a valid subscription, please consider using CentOS instead.
This will allow to install the official qt5-qtx11extras package from Red Hat.
kwizart, thanks for your reply.
Does this really require a RHEL 7 Server subscription just to run a desktop application (VLC)? It seems silly to me that they did that.
But is that correct?
kwizart,
thanks for that hint. We had to enable the CentOS repository on our RHEL machine.
That worked, thanks!
Using CentOS repositories on RHEL isn’t recommended and will lead to issue at some point.
I’m not speaking for Red Hat, but you really need a subscription to access any repositories no matter what is your use-case.
If it’s a problem for you, then you should migrate to CentOS fully.
kwizart, thanks.
We run off isolated networks for security purposes, and we have used maybe 3 or 4 CentOS packages on our RHEL7 baseline, and currently RHEL is the requirement from our customer.
Thanks for the collaborative support.
Sorry. but these instructions did not work for me on my RHEL7 machine. In fact they married up perfectly to the instructions on videolan.org (the Provider’s website); and those instructions failed as well.
There were some dependencies for some libraries and symbols inside those libraries and they were nowhere to be found during my installation.
The file dependencies missing were:
So, I tried the instructions on tecadmin(dot)net and those actually DID WORK. The difference was in the repositories being used for RHEL7.
Your site suggest, just like videolan.org, to use the two Repos of:
So, tecadmin(dot)net suggest using these two Repos (notice what is the same and what is different!!):
@Warron,
Thanks for the tip, but it didn’t worked for me on my RHEL 7.6 version. I used EPEL and Nux Repos, still giving dependency errors..
Ravi, I replied to your email directly.
I just noticed that in your post you indicated the use of EPEL and NUX; like my notes indicate.
Please tell me, what was the version of BOTH of those packages after they were installed? Also, do you have localpkg_gpgcheck=0.
I believe I had to make that adjustment too in order to get the NUX package to install properly.
I will retry my steps to ensure they are repeatable today; or to validate the steps are broken as of last night.
Ravi, I reattempted the installation instructions and they did actually work for me.
Try these steps:
Go into /etc/yum.conf and set the following lines as indicated (they will exist, and just need to be altered):
1. This sets the option so that the RPMs will remain on disk).
2. This sets the option so that the nux-dextop-release-0-5.el7.nux.noarch package is installable due to the GPG Key not being on disk until after installation of this package.
3. Now install EPEL and Nux repository with the following commands.
4. Finally, install the VLC product and all of its 45 extra dependencies.
@Warron,
I tried your these settings, and try to install VLC again on my RHEL 7.6 and RHEL 8. On both machines I recevied following error..
Thanks !!!! VLC install perfect at Centos 7
RPM Fusion is in the process to update vlc in RHEL and CentOS 7 to latest vlc 3.0.x. (along ffmpeg-3.X).
Fixing waste of my time for 5 min, centos and rhel only 2.x.x supprted.
@Wood,
Why not install from source? also CentOS and RHEL only used for server purpose, not for desktop, go for Linux Mint or Ubuntu.
Because from source, yum (dnf) does not update it automatically… Linux Mint and Ubuntu are for Enthusiasts, Pros use RHEL/CentOS/etc. Install once and forget. Need to play, use a VM, docker, etc. Pros don’t have time to waste reinstalling or upgrading systems.
EOL of RHEL/CentOS/etc. > EOL hardware. Any other Linux distribution EOL Linux < EOL hardware.
give me a starting vlc player in a fedora 23 steps
Please consider moving to use RPM Fusion for RHEL, CentOS, SL and Fedora.
There is a maintained version of vlc (2.2.8 for EL and 3.0.0 for Fedora).
Also please don’t mix packages for EL and Fedora, that’s completely scary