How To Install VLC Media Player on Debian 11

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install VLC Media Player on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, VLC is a free and open-source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files. VLC can play almost any multimedia file, as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of the VLC Media Player on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Debian 11 (Bullseye).
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install VLC Media Player on Debian 11 Bullseye

Step 1. Before we install any software, it’s important to make sure your system is up to date by running the following apt commands in the terminal:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Step 2. Installing VLC Media Player on Debian 11.

• Install VLC Media Player using APT Manager:

By default, VLC is not available on Debian 11 base repository. Now we run the following command to install the latest stable VLC:

sudo apt install vlc

Verify installation and build version:

vlc --version

• Install VLC Media Player using Snap:

First, install Snap packages to your Debian system:

sudo apt install snapd
sudo snap install core
sudo ln -s /var/lib/snapd/snap /snap

Finally, install the VLC Media Player package using the following command below:

sudo snap install vlc

Step 3. Accessing VLC on Debian.

Once successfully installed, use the following path on your desktop to open with the path: Activities -> Show Applications -> VLC media player. If you need a command line in the media player, VLC has got you covered. Launch VLC in CLI by entering the following:

vlc

Congratulations! You have successfully installed VLC. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the latest version of VLC Media Player on Debian 11 Bullseye. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official VLC website.