For VLC users who prefer installing the player via the classic .deb, here’s Ubuntu PPA update for the latest VLC 3.0.20 (Updated).

The VideoLAN website does NOT announced the release of v3.0.19 at the moment of writing. However, the source code has been rolled out. And, both Snap (in Ubuntu Software) and Flatpak packages have been updated to the new release version.

VLC 3.0.19 adds Super Resolution scaling with nVidia and Intel GPUs, activates hardware decoding of AV1 on Windows (DxVA), improves AV1 HDR support with software decoding, and improves SMB compatibility with Windows 11 hosts.

There are as well many other improvements and bug-fixes, including:

• Support RIFF INFO tags for Wav files
• Fix AVI files with flipped RAW video planes
• Improve playback of QNap-produced AVI, and some old RealVideo files
• Multiple fixes on AAC handling
• Multiple fixes for hardware decoding on D3D11 and OpenGL interop
• Fix rendering issues on Linux with the fullscreen controller
• Fix some MPRIS inconsistencies that broke some OS widgets on Linux

See more about VLC 3.0.19 (and v3.0.20 with some quick fixes) via the official changelog file.

How to Install VLC 3.0.20 via PPA in Ubuntu

As mentioned, the new release is available as Snap package in Ubuntu Software, and Flatpak package in Flathub repository.

For those hate running app in sandbox, here’s the unofficial PPA contains the package for Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 23.04, and Ubuntu 23.10. Not only for x86_64, but also arm64/armhf CPU architecture types are supported.

1. First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open a terminal window. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/vlc

Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it asks for sudo authentication, then hit Enter to continue.

2. For Linux Mint, also run command to refresh package cache, which is done automatically while adding PPA in Ubuntu 20.04 +.

sudo apt update

3. Finally, either update VLC package using ‘Software Updater’ or install/upgrade the package directly by running apt command in terminal:

sudo apt install vlc

Uninstall:

If you found any issue about the PPA package, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command:

sudo apt install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/vlc

This command will install ppa-purge tool and use it to purge the PPA, which also downgrade VLC and its dependencies to the stock versions in your system repository.

For choice, you may run command to just remove VLC media player:

sudo apt remove --autoremove vlc

Then remove the PPA either from ‘Software & Updates’ -> ‘Other Software’ tab, or by running command in terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/vlc