I switched to Workstation two months ago with no Linux experience. Sure, I had to learn a thing or three but it’s not that complicated.
VLC on Linux is a major disappointment for me. Constant issues playing sound in many videos. I guess I never noticed the update issues because I switched to Glide early on. Glide has never failed to play a video.
I am sorry but if you started to use Linux 2 months ago you still have not seen anything yet. Even more so if you just used 1 distro. Ofcourse anything can be learned but that does not mean it is user friendly. Also depends how techie is the user ofcourse. Setting up the OS is just one side of the coin for user friendliness. The other is dealing with things breaking after updates.
This is probably because you do not have all the codecs installed on your Fedora PC. Now you see what i mean. You must download the codecs from rpmfusion.org
Many video files will not play with Workstations default video player, VLC, or MPV (at least back in April). Been using Glide and haven’t had a single issue.
Those commands look familiar. Fairly sure I tried those in April and they didn’t solve the problem.
I’ve given up trying to fix it as Glide works just fine. Thanks anyway.
You could also try installing VLC, mpv, or other video players as Flatpaks from Flathub; they should include all the codecs. The VLC and mpv Flatpaks are not verified, fyi.
I had the same problem as you. Here is what i did to make it work:
First you need to UNINSTALL VLC.
Then you need to install the codecs from rpmfusion.
And then you need to install VLC (as rpm, NOT flatpak) from the repo. Preferably make a reboot of the pc before that.
As for Flatpak VLC - codecs or not codecs installed it does not play many videos for some reason. You should stick with the rpm VLC.
Now you see it is not so user firendly and there are minor details and tweaks that are frustrating for the normal user.
I’ve had one issue with Workstation so it seems user friendly, to me. There are other distros that are more user friendly and others that are less so.
Having to uninstall an app or copy/paste a line of code from a website into terminal is no more complicated than creating the account for Privacy Guides and turning on 2FA.
I’ll let you have the last word as I’m tired of talking about video players that I don’t use.