Fedora 35 How to fix YouTube videos not playing

Fedora 26 audio video Codec configuration

Fedora prioritizes security over convenience and therefore, audio and video codecs are not automatically installed as they are in Manjaro or Ubuntu. If you do not work on sensitive information such we web server administration or software development and use your computer mostly for pleasure then you would want to be able to watch at least YouTube vidoes.

Here are the step by step instructions to install all necessary audio and video codecs

There are a few ways to do this but simple works for me so lets go to rpmfusion.org which makes installing everything Fedora is missing easy. Once the rpmfusion.org/Configuration website is open, click the RPM Fusion free for Fedora Branched and what will become Fedora 35 link which will prompt to download a small file. You can ether save this file or open it with the software installer as all it does is adding the repository.

Right after that has completed, proceed to step two which is opening the RPM Fusion nonfree for Fedora Branched and what will become Fedora 35 link. Again, accept to open it with the default software installer.

We are almost done. Just a few lines to copy/paste into the terminal. Here they are:

1. sudo dnf groupupdate core
2. sudo dnf groupupdate multimedia –setop=”install_weak_deps=False” –exclude=PackageKit-gstreamer-plugin
3. sudo dnf groupupdate sound-and-video

During the above steps (especially nuber2), a terminal will open and you have to read and agree to several prompts in order to install the PGP keys.
All that happens at this stage is the installation of about 80 MEG of code which contains all of the codecs. Again, some of the trendy Linux distributions include all of this by default and receive rave reviews for doing so. Then again, if security is a requirement then you definitely don’t want anything else than the absolute minimum to do your work.

Conclusion

If you want to set up a computer for watching YouTube or other online video content then you can easily do so by installing the missing audio and video codes in Fedora. If you visit risky sites then a virtual Linux install running inside Gnome Boxes or even better, via live boot (USB stick) would be safer.

I’ll leave you with a little food for thought and recommend that you watch one of the last interviews of John McAfee where he explains the danger of watching free porn online.

If you have never heard of McAfee Antivirus then I’d suggest you do a little searching of who this man was. If you’ve watched the YouTube video then hopefully you also understand why Fedora does not include hundreds of megabytes of code which, not doubt, can be exploited. We live in interesting times and since things are not going back to normal anytime soon we have to be smart. Segregate your browsing and set up one computer for online use and another for private use. This is a huge topic and I could talk for days about security but I’ll have to leave it here.

Enjoy Fedora 35 Workstation and if something isn’t right then reinstall the OS. It only takes a few minutes and gets rid of everything that might have crawled in “while you were watching“.
Thanks for reading. Comment if you have question(s).