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I want (and use) VLC 2.2 because I like one addon that does not work with previous versions. But my 2.2 version has a bug, losing sound sometimes when scrolling, so it would be useful to have at hand different versions: not necessarily to start them at the same time, but to start one or the other... like I do in Windows with the portable versions etc.

(I have tried a lot alternatives (if not all) to VLC but on the long run it is the more stable, and lately its customisation has also improved a lot, so it is the best as far as I can tell.)

  • Looking around the download page, it seems VLC only has packaged binaries. I think you'll have to compile from source (which shouldn't be that difficult, since you can get all the dependencies using sudo apt-get build-dep vlc). – muru Jan 21 '15 at 16:13
  • @muru - never built anything successfuly yet !! :) –  Jan 21 '15 at 16:16

1 Answers1

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Some portable linux apps here including VLC 2.1.2 x64.

How to use the downloaded portable VLC

To create a launcher for that can be useful:

The simplest way is to copy/paste lines from a pre-existing VLC desktop file if present in /usr/share/applications. (First, change the name of the downloaded appimage so that it is shorter and without spaces (it's just simpler that way). I changed mine to VLC21.)

The launcher should contain lines like

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=VLC 2.1 portable
GenericName=Media player
Comment=Read, capture, broadcast your multimedia streams
Exec=/home/cipricus/Desktop/VLC21 --started-from-file %U
TryExec=/home/cipricus/Desktop/VLC21
Icon=vlc
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=AudioVideo;Player;Recorder;
MimeType=video/dv;video/mpeg;video/x-mpeg;video/msvideo;video/quicktime;video/x-anim;video/x-avi;video/x-ms-asf;video/x-ms-wmv;video/x-msvideo;video/x-nsv;video/x-flc;video/x-fli;video/x-flv;video/vnd.rn-realvideo;video/mp4;video/mp4v-es;video/mp2t;application/ogg;application/x-ogg;video/x-ogm+ogg;audio/x-vorbis+ogg;audio/ogg;video/ogg;application/x-matroska;audio/x-matroska;video/x-matroska;video/webm;audio/webm;audio/x-mp3;audio/x-mpeg;audio/mpeg;audio/x-wav;audio/x-mpegurl;audio/x-scpls;audio/x-m4a;audio/x-ms-asf;audio/x-ms-asx;audio/x-ms-wax;application/vnd.rn-realmedia;audio/x-real-audio;audio/x-pn-realaudio;application/x-flac;audio/x-flac;application/x-shockwave-flash;misc/ultravox;audio/vnd.rn-realaudio;audio/x-pn-aiff;audio/x-pn-au;audio/x-pn-wav;audio/x-pn-windows-acm;image/vnd.rn-realpix;audio/x-pn-realaudio-plugin;application/x-extension-mp4;audio/mp4;audio/amr;audio/amr-wb;x-content/video-vcd;x-content/video-svcd;x-content/video-dvd;x-content/audio-cdda;x-content/audio-player;application/xspf+xml;x-scheme-handler/mms;x-scheme-handler/rtmp;x-scheme-handler/rtsp;
X-KDE-Protocols=ftp,http,https,mms,rtmp,rtsp,sftp,smb
Keywords=Player;Capture;DVD;Audio;Video;Server;Broadcast;
Path=
StartupNotify=false
Name[en_US.UTF-8]=VLC 2.1 portable

Than save the file with a name like VLC 2.1 portable.desktop. You may copy that in /usr/share/applications, ~/.local/share/application or anywhere else.

To make that portable VLC version default player for some video file type, select the file's properties and change the default program for that ('open with') to the launcher (.desktop file) that you just created.

(Setting 'open with' directly to the appimage does not work.)

How to create new portable versions of VLC

At the link above (http://portablelinuxapps.org/) one can find also an application designed to help create portable apps in a few steps. It is called AppDirAssistant and it is itself portable. The idea is that it can run a scan of your system before and after installing a program and then create a portable application (appimage) of that program.

Here is a youtube video exemplifying the process.

After following the steps that I presented above in order to create a launcher for the portable 2.1 VLC and to make it default player, I thought best to just install the main stable release (now 2.1.5) in the normal way and use the later 2.2 (that I needed for a VLC addon that doesn't work with 2.1.x) as portable. But for that one I didn't have a portable version. So, first I uninstalled in Synaptics VLC 2.2 and its dependencies, then ran AppDirAssistant ('Prescanning'). When it got to the page that says "Please install your application now", I opened the terminal and ran

sudo apt-get install vlc

That installed 2.2 again given that the necessary sources where already added to the system.

Then, in AppDirAssistant window pressed forward ('Postscanning'). In this way it is created a folder containing a portable executable of VLC 2.2 called AppRun, a ready made desktop launcher and a usr directory. (Uninstalled VLC to test the portable version.)

To create a single "appimage" out of this directory, one has to use another application, called AppImageAssistant, from the linked address, but that didn't work for me for some reason. In case that works, the steps above may be considered after creating the appimage file out of the AppDir folder.

But I do not find that necessary, as the AppDir folder is enough for me. A funny thing is that while appimages cannot be made default for opening files (so that a new launcher/desktop file was needed for 'open with'), the executable AppRun file from the AppDir folder can (while the ready-made desktop there cannot). So, one could set a file to be opened by default with that AppRun executable. Only that it would look odd in the context menu an entry like 'Open with AppRun'; renaming that one is the way I used, only that now the ready-made desktop file doesn't work any more (why? because its Exec and TryExec lines direct to usr/bin/vlc, which I guess means the AppDir/usr directory, and that one may need the initial name AppRun not to be changed etc). But all I want is a readable entry in a file's context menu for the portable application. (In case the AppImageAssistant works, the steps from the begining may be preferable, but that didn't work for me with VLC 2.2.)

To install a different version of VLC - one may look here.