In this guide, I want to show you how to install the proprietary video codecs in Fedora via RPM Fusion. For anyone installing Fedora Workstation or one of the spins, this can be an almost mandatory step, as Fedora ships with free codecs, which don't support certain video types, even if VLC is installed from the Fedora repositories (the Flatpak version is a different story).
Back in April, I wrote an editorial explaining why users should opt for Fedora Silverblue over Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. My points from that article still stand, but I found myself needing Fedora LXQt because it is lightweight. As it doesn't have an atomic version like GNOME does with Silverblue, I went back to the traditional Fedora and ran into this codec issue, so I thought I'd share the solution.
The quickest and easiest way to install the codecs is via the terminal. I know a lot of people say the terminal is complicated, but it really isn't; just highlight the code below, right-click and copy it, then in the terminal, right-click and press paste, then hit enter and type in your password and press enter again. Here's the first command you need to run. This will enable the free and nonfree RPM Fusion repositories on your system:
sudo dnf install https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm
Once the terminal has finished executing that command, you need to enable the openh264 library. You do that with the following terminal command:
sudo dnf config-manager --enable fedora-cisco-openh264
If you need to install VLC, either get it from your software manager (Software or Dragora, depending on your spin) or use the following command:
sudo dnf install vlc
You can also optionally run the following command, as recommended by the VLC website:
sudo dnf install python-vlc
Once you've done all this, you should be able to play any video files in VLC and other video players without issue. It should be noted that on any Fedora spin that supports Flatpaks out of the box, you can install the Flatpak version of VLC, which comes with support for all video files. This guide pertains to the VLC version in the Fedora repositories.
Fedora LXQt is one spin that doesn't come with Flatpak support out of the box, so enabling RPM Fusion is a good solution for those users. For anyone wondering, Fedora LXQt uses the LXQt desktop similar to Lubuntu. It is extremely lightweight and runs fast even on very sluggish computers, so it's a good choice for reviving older or underpowered machines.
Let us know in the comments if you found this guide helpful. Do you even need to install these codecs nowadays, or are you content with the VLC Flatpak? It's worth noting that installing these codecs may also let you watch more video content online in Firefox, such as BBC News.
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