On Thursday 18 June 2020, William Morder via trinity-users wrote:
> On Thursday 18 June 2020 15:28:46 BorgLabs - Kate Draven wrote:
> > > This is directed mostly to Nik (since I've heard him mention both
> > > Devuan and VLC); but also to anybody else who might have some inkling
> > > what is causing this issue.
> > >
> > > VLC is (or would be) my media player of choice on most of my machines
> > > or devices. I use it on my smartphone, and don't need anything else to
> > > play music, movies, stream videos or radio. (I've tried other media
> > > players, yes, but they are all inadequate by comparison, at least for
> > > my own needs.) So many good things to say about VLC ... until about a
> > > year or two ago.
> > >
> > > Ever since Jessie it will start up, but then immediately crashes. I've
> > > gone through looking for conflicts, but nothing obvious jumps out at
> > > me.
> > >
> > > Any suggestions about where to look, or what might be causing such an
> > > issue?
> > >
> > > Bill
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Hi Bill
> >
> > the only thing I can think of is, purge all settings, config, cache etc.
> > and try again from the command line. See what it pops out.
> >
> > If you are up to it, grab the source code and build it. If you get it
> > working like that, that means the deb package is likely faulty somehow.
> >
> > Kate
>
> Hi Kate!
>
> Yes, I do hate building from source, but I can do it; it's just that there
> is no single "right" way to do it, so I waste a lot of time futzing with
> it.
>
> Since I haven't found too much online about similar problems, I would guess
> that the problem lies not with the deb packages themselves, or it would
> have been hunted down by now; but I could be wrong.
>
> Regarding a purge of settings: Do you mean using "apt-get purge"
> or "dpkg --purge"? or do you mean some kind of manual search? My hunch is
> that the fault may be there, even though I haven't changed anything (not
> even my socks) since about 2006 or so.
>
> Bill
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
No apt anything bad human!
No soup for you!

I mean, go to your user directory ~/foo and look for references to vlc.
For example...

~/Bill/.vlc
~/Bill/.local/share/vlc
~/Bill/.config/vlc
and rename or delete the content of.
I would rename....
~/Bill/.vlc.old
~/Bill/.local/share/vlc.old
~/Bill/.config/vlc.old
and let vlc reload those directories/files with clean ones.

Obviously those directories may differ depending on distro and version etc.

You can also try creating a new blank user, login as such and try vlc from 
there. If it launches then it's definitely a config/settings file problem.

Also try to start vlc as root. It could be a perms problem, though I doubt it.

good luck,

Kate