Xubuntu 20.04.1. This is completely weird. VLC is my go-to player for all video files, .mkv, .mp4, etc. If I double-click on a video file in the GUI file manager, VLC launches and plays the video.
No more. If I am in Thunar nothing at all happens. If I am in PCManFM the mouse pointer goes to a rotating 'busy' icon, but nothing else happens. If I right click on the video file and choose Open, then select VLC, it still won't launch. If I choose Open with ... Other, then select VLC, and tick the box to always open such files with VLC, it still won't launch. However, if I select Parole, then Parole launches and plays the file. If I double click on any other file that has a mime type (mp3, odt, etc) it opens with the appropriate program. The problem is only with VLC. The .desktop file for VLC in /usr/share/applications has not been changed. But I cannot launch VLC from the applications menu. >From the command line sudo apt install vlc says it is already installed and the latest version. A reinstall from the command line also accomplished nothing. This started happening just today, and it worked fine yesterday. There have been no updates or other changes to the computer. >From the command line 'vlc' launches the player, even if I can't launch it from the applications menu, and then I can use File > Open to play the file. Or I can just launch VLC from the command line and drag a video file from a file manager and drop it on the VLC window. I need to figure out what is the difference between launching from the command line and launching from the applications menu. The former works; the latter is broken. And then, how to fix the broken one. And while I'm at it, what the heck happened that caused the breakage? _______________________________________________ PLUG: https://pdxlinux.org PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
