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VLC media player for Gentoo Linux

VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.

Install VLC through emerge

VLC is included in the Portage package system of the Gentoo Linux distribution. So you can simple type emerge vlc and you will have VLC installed.

However, we advise to always use the latest (and 'unstable') version of VLC. For this you will first need to add the following line "media-video/vlc ~x86" to the file "/etc/portage/package.keywords". If the file does not yet exist you should create it.

When you don't set the correct USE variables, you will get a very bare bones version of VLC. We recommend to emerge with the following USE variables:

dvd ffmpeg mpeg mad wxwindows aac dts a52 ogg flac theora
oggvorbis matroska freetype bidi xv svga gnutls stream vlm httpd cdda
vcd cdio live lua

You can set these variables for VLC by adding the line

media-video/vlc dvd ffmpeg mpeg mad
wxwindows aac dts a52 ogg flac theora oggvorbis matroska freetype
bidi xv svga gnutls stream vlm httpd cdda vcd cdio live

to the file "/etc/portage/package.use". This will give you a fully functioning VLC. Be very careful if you decide to disable some of these USE flags. You can lose more functionality than you might expect.

Older versions

Older versions can be found by browsing our archives