VLC may go down as the greatest FOSS product in history. They’ve stated their mission since the beginning and 20 years later, are still flying that route. It’s unbelievable how much money they’ve turned down to remain on their original mission.
Yeah definitely Blender. It’s not that hard to write a media player (hence why there are others like MPC). It’s also not that hard to write a Unix kernel (hence why there are others like *BSD). A 3D modeller as complex as Blender though? I can easily imagine a world where it didn’t exist and we were all stuck with Povray or whatever.
Kind of like the situation with CAD. (Though the FreeCAD 1.0 release seems to be finally vaguely usable based on my brief play with it so that might have changed.)
The fact that Linux runs on so, so many servers (let alone Android and embedded systems) means that Linux has orders of magnitude more users than VLC. That’s not “getting weird with what you quantify as Linux”; both of those things are definitely Linux.
VLC has over 6 billion downloads, obviously there are people who downloaded it multiple times, but that’s getting close to averaging one per person in existence.
obviously there are people who downloaded it multiple times
Its been around and on enough different platforms that most people who use it would have lost count of how many times they have downloaded it.
I currently have it installed on 4 android devices (my phone, my tablet, my sons tablet, google TV dongle), 3 windows devices (personal PC, loungeroom PC, work PC), and 1 Xbox. That’s 8 installs in current use but if you factor in a history of device replacement and software updates I would easily account for hundreds of downloads.
Edit: they edited their comment to add the 6 billion link, and it’s super weird that VLC’s website then lists 400 million. Nonetheless, that’s not the actual point. They also edited their comment to spitball estimate the number of Linux servers. What they’re plainly failing to account for is that 1) Android and an unfathomable amount of embedded devices are Linux, and much more importantly 2) those servers aren’t just sitting there doing nothing. They’re doing their job of serving to billions of people. Literally everyone directly uses Linux in some capacity unless you’re part of some remote tribe. This isn’t a debate; it’s just a fact that Linux is 1) much more used (see below examples that are critical to modern society that don’t even all represent servers), 2) used by more people, 3) more useful, and 4) much more irreplaceable. You have to genuinely have no idea how any modern technological infrastructure works on even the most basic level to think that VLC wins out in usage because of 6 billion downloads. Google alone received 3.5 billion search queries per day in 2024. Linux absolutely trounces VLC’s usage by several orders of magnitude, and its usage is absolutely critical to modern society. If you’re thinking exclusively of the Linux desktop and excluding things like embedded systems, servers, Android, etc., you don’t know what Linux is.
Their own website’s count shows 400 million downloads if this were even a meaningful metric for anything (it isn’t).
Even accounting for duplicates (e.g. I have VLC on my Windows partition which hasn’t ever been used even a single time; it exists solely “just in case”), downloads as a metric doesn’t even remotely correspond to how much use has been gotten out of it. That is, treating “user” as a binary thing for the importance of a piece of software is ridiculous unto itself. One clearly sees much, much more usage than the other by orders of magnitude. Maybe every week I’ll use VLC (and that’s clearly above average), but almost every computerized aspect of my life and yours is attached to Linux in some way.
If VLC disappeared out of existence today, that would really suck, but functionally it isn’t crucial, and the gaps would quickly be filled with other products (some worse like Windows’ built-in; some like mpv which actually has higher compatibility).
If Linux disappeared out of existence today, the global economy would collapse, billions would lose access to their computers (Android, Linux desktop, and ChromeOS), the Internet and telecomms in general would practically vanish (and even if it didn’t, your router wouldn’t work to access the Internet anyway), almost any “smart device” in your home like TVs and appliances would stop working, modern cars, planes, traffic control, and much of public transit would stop working, the energy grid would probably go offline, tons of kiosks and signs would stop working, I guess game consoles would be fine since PS and Switch run BSD while Xbox’s is MinWin-based, a lot of people with pacemakers would drop dead, critical military systems would stop working, and generally the world would be plunged into absolute chaos.
I’m sorry, your argument is just patently nonsense. Linux is clearly vastly more important and vastly more used than VLC. In terms of the “greatest piece of FOSS software” as the prior comment discussed, Linux wins on amount of usage, importance of usage, number of users, irreplaceability, and technical complexity – hands-down in every category.
I think the thing is u don’t realise ur using Linux often. For u to send that message it probably went through multiple routers switches servers and other devices that run Linux in some capacity.
I’m reading this on my android phone, which is linux. Connected with wifi to a router router running linux. This lemmy server is most likely running on linux. Maybe even in a virtual machine, hosted by linux. And on the route, there are definitely multiple linux routers that the message passes through.
I would definitely say VLC because just about everyone and their grandma knows about and probably use VLC on their computers/laptop even if they’re not tech savvy. It’s easy to download and install on windows, making it more accessible than Linux to the average computer user. Linux is definitely more impressive, but is used by way less people and is still mostly used in servers.
Edit:
I’m not including Android in the Linux count because I’m talking straight computer/laptop and not mobile devices. Don’t know how many people would bother with VLC on android. I know I don’t because I don’t need it on my phone.
The reason I don’t include Android has more to do with the fact that it’s Linux in the same way macOS is. Sure android uses Linux and the kernel to varying degrees, but at this point I would consider android a distinct entity that is separate to Linux. I honestly can’t find the right words to really explain what I mean by that in a more specific way than just what I said, though, so this is the best my tiny beaver brain can do for the moment.
Linux is really only a thing because it ISNT Unix (which macos is). Theyre more related than windows because they’re both POSIX compatible, but share essentially no codebase.
A rooted android phone on the other hand is just plain ol linux compiled for ARM, with some custom google jazz. It utilises a lot of Linux components like cgroups and SELinux - commonly found on desktop Linux (especially with containers).
Its not really that important in a broad sense to be honest, but it definitely makes android a Linux distro.
If there is something historical to talk about, it’s how shit Windows was for both not providing basic functionality in a minimally serviceable media player. And worse, how it couldn’t get the basics of OS-ing right in being susceptible to DLL hell and other similar issues.
In other platforms where such inadequacies were never present, VLC never became a big deal, because…VLC was never great in its own right.
VLC may go down as the greatest FOSS product in history. They’ve stated their mission since the beginning and 20 years later, are still flying that route. It’s unbelievable how much money they’ve turned down to remain on their original mission.
Blenders right beside VLC too
Yeah definitely Blender. It’s not that hard to write a media player (hence why there are others like MPC). It’s also not that hard to write a Unix kernel (hence why there are others like *BSD). A 3D modeller as complex as Blender though? I can easily imagine a world where it didn’t exist and we were all stuck with Povray or whatever.
Kind of like the situation with CAD. (Though the FreeCAD 1.0 release seems to be finally vaguely usable based on my brief play with it so that might have changed.)
I would day Linux is probably the greatest piece of foss software tbh
It’s an arguable point, but unless you get weird with what you quantify as Linux, I think VLC might honestly have more users.
Android takes up 47% of the usage share of all computers, I’d be surprised if VLC managed to overcome even just android.
Mayyybe in america this would be true, but I’d still be suprised
There’s also other things that people probably use more often, even if they don’t know it, like apache, nginx, or ffmpeg
The fact that Linux runs on so, so many servers (let alone Android and embedded systems) means that Linux has orders of magnitude more users than VLC. That’s not “getting weird with what you quantify as Linux”; both of those things are definitely Linux.
VLC has over 6 billion downloads, obviously there are people who downloaded it multiple times, but that’s getting close to averaging one per person in existence.
6 billion download announcement (eventually leads to X/twitter): https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/09/vlc-tops-6-billion-downloads-previews-ai-generated-subtitles/#%3A~%3Atext=VLC+media+player%2C+the+popular%2Can+AI-powered+subtitle+system.
Not directly comparable, but guesses at the number of Linux servers out there are in the 10s-100s of millions.
Its been around and on enough different platforms that most people who use it would have lost count of how many times they have downloaded it.
I currently have it installed on 4 android devices (my phone, my tablet, my sons tablet, google TV dongle), 3 windows devices (personal PC, loungeroom PC, work PC), and 1 Xbox. That’s 8 installs in current use but if you factor in a history of device replacement and software updates I would easily account for hundreds of downloads.
Edit: they edited their comment to add the 6 billion link, and it’s super weird that VLC’s website then lists 400 million. Nonetheless, that’s not the actual point. They also edited their comment to spitball estimate the number of Linux servers. What they’re plainly failing to account for is that 1) Android and an unfathomable amount of embedded devices are Linux, and much more importantly 2) those servers aren’t just sitting there doing nothing. They’re doing their job of serving to billions of people. Literally everyone directly uses Linux in some capacity unless you’re part of some remote tribe. This isn’t a debate; it’s just a fact that Linux is 1) much more used (see below examples that are critical to modern society that don’t even all represent servers), 2) used by more people, 3) more useful, and 4) much more irreplaceable. You have to genuinely have no idea how any modern technological infrastructure works on even the most basic level to think that VLC wins out in usage because of 6 billion downloads. Google alone received 3.5 billion search queries per day in 2024. Linux absolutely trounces VLC’s usage by several orders of magnitude, and its usage is absolutely critical to modern society. If you’re thinking exclusively of the Linux desktop and excluding things like embedded systems, servers, Android, etc., you don’t know what Linux is.
I’m sorry, your argument is just patently nonsense. Linux is clearly vastly more important and vastly more used than VLC. In terms of the “greatest piece of FOSS software” as the prior comment discussed, Linux wins on amount of usage, importance of usage, number of users, irreplaceability, and technical complexity – hands-down in every category.
Sure, I concede. I don’t think of Linux because I don’t use it often, but I understand.
I think the thing is u don’t realise ur using Linux often. For u to send that message it probably went through multiple routers switches servers and other devices that run Linux in some capacity.
I’m reading this on my android phone, which is linux. Connected with wifi to a router router running linux. This lemmy server is most likely running on linux. Maybe even in a virtual machine, hosted by linux. And on the route, there are definitely multiple linux routers that the message passes through.
I would definitely say VLC because just about everyone and their grandma knows about and probably use VLC on their computers/laptop even if they’re not tech savvy. It’s easy to download and install on windows, making it more accessible than Linux to the average computer user. Linux is definitely more impressive, but is used by way less people and is still mostly used in servers.
Edit:
I’m not including Android in the Linux count because I’m talking straight computer/laptop and not mobile devices. Don’t know how many people would bother with VLC on android. I know I don’t because I don’t need it on my phone.
I tried to use VLC on my phone because it claimed to support playing videos over NFS, but I never got it working.
Seems a bit biased to ignore 47% of the global OS userbase with android.
Even if VLC was great for ghetto windows, android alone almost has double its userbase.
The reason I don’t include Android has more to do with the fact that it’s Linux in the same way macOS is. Sure android uses Linux and the kernel to varying degrees, but at this point I would consider android a distinct entity that is separate to Linux. I honestly can’t find the right words to really explain what I mean by that in a more specific way than just what I said, though, so this is the best my tiny beaver brain can do for the moment.
Linux is really only a thing because it ISNT Unix (which macos is). Theyre more related than windows because they’re both POSIX compatible, but share essentially no codebase.
A rooted android phone on the other hand is just plain ol linux compiled for ARM, with some custom google jazz. It utilises a lot of Linux components like cgroups and SELinux - commonly found on desktop Linux (especially with containers).
Its not really that important in a broad sense to be honest, but it definitely makes android a Linux distro.
VLC was never great in its own right.
If there is something historical to talk about, it’s how shit Windows was for both not providing basic functionality in a minimally serviceable media player. And worse, how it couldn’t get the basics of OS-ing right in being susceptible to DLL hell and other similar issues.
In other platforms where such inadequacies were never present, VLC never became a big deal, because…VLC was never great in its own right.