I'm trying to use some Youtube videos to sort problems wihtout posting on here, but they refuse to load/run - I just get a whirling white circle or a black screen. Any ideas?
I looked at replies for previous posts about videos and ran this sudo apt install ubuntu-restricted-extras, but it made no difference - first attempt, got stuck at the agreement till I worked out how to highlight OK!
3/2/25 Update
Update.
Videos don't run on my old machine with Zorin Pro installed
Videos don't run on my old machine working from a Zorin Pro Try USB, so not the installed stuff
Videos DO run on my newer machine from the same Zorin Pro USB, so machine specific
On what browser ?
You can try turn off hardware acceleration under settings.Or if it's off ,turn it on. See if that helps
Lol I can't remember if it's supose to be on or off
I've tried turning off graphics acceleration in Chrome, installing ffmpeg and I still get nothing but a spinning wheel when I play YouTube videos. Just installed Zorin yesterday to escape the MS world and things are not going smoothly. Any other ideas please?
@Tombar (& @mwhitson).
Are you running Edge in Zorin? I had multiple issues when running it in Windows 10 until I found a way of removing it and stopping it reinstalling itself. It is resource-hungry and runs continually in the background. I had the same problems on Friday, at work, when I had to use a spare laptop that has both Edge and Firefox installed. I was trying to play videos on YouTube but nothing would play.
I would try uninstalling Edge (you can always reinstall it, if you need to) and only have Firefox. Google tries to stop you using it without logging in, and you can't use adblockers, so I use DuckDuck Go with either Firefox or Zen. You do still need to configure FF as stated by others. I use AdGuard and Adblocker for YouTube.
•••
Very protective of user privacy
"DuckDuckGo does not collect or share any personal information. Their privacy page has a great rundown on why privacy is important. The most important repercussion of this is that DDG doesn't use the data collected to tailor results, avoiding exposure to the "Filter Bubble" https://www.slant.co/topics/23761/~browsers-not-based-on-chromium.)
As I've been watching YouTube yesterday and today, without the issues I had on Friday (on Zorin & Windows), I can only conclude that Edge was causing the problem. Good Luck!
Do You have beneath ubuntu-restricted-extras the Codecs in Gnome Softare installed? When You open it, scroll down to the end and there You see a Codecs Button:
After that, it could be that You need to install ubuntu-restricted-extras again because there are some Codecs what could replace them. Simply type sudo apt install ubuntu-restricted-extras again in the Terminal.
What I meant to say is that I'm trying Zorin out because I hate Microsoft for many reasons and I want to get away from them. Edge browser is one of many things I hate - OneNote being tricked onto you is another.
That being said, I didn't even think of trying to install the MS Edge browser on Zorin. I have installed Google Chrome which has allowed me to try YouTube on both it and Mozilla Firefox, which I think was preinstalled. I getthe spinning wheel on both.
Also, It's my understanding that DuckDuckGo is a search engine and not a web browser so I don't understand why you have mentionedit.
Hi @mwhitson , and welcome to Zorin and the forum!
My response about Edge was to the original poster, but as I didn't want to write two replies, I included both of you. Sorry for the confusion.
I mentioned DuckDuck Go because you need a search engine as well as a browser, and Google Chrome can also cause problems - especially recently - when trying to load / play YouTube videos (especially if you use certain addons to block ads). This is not a problem with Zorin_OS.
Using DDG (or another search engine) could fix the problems you are experiencing. I had the same problems with YouTube on Friday when using a borrowed Windows laptop. On my own Windows laptop, and on the ones I have Zorin_OS on, using DDG and Firefox or ZEN (a fork of FF), I have had no problems whatsoever, even on Friday evening after work, when I was using 2 computers, one Windows the other Zorin, but both with Firefox and DDG.
Have tried again - gone through the multiverse (added multiverse to everything), then update (none to do), then this
om@OldMesh:~$ sudo apt install ubuntu-restricted-extras
Waiting for cache lock: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend. It is heWaiting for cache lock: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend. It is held by process 25158 (synaptic)
Waiting for cache lock: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend. It is heWaiting for cache lock: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend. It is held by process 25158 (synaptic)
Waiting for cache lock: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend. It is heWaiting for cache lock: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend. It is held by process 25158 (synaptic)
Released it was open in Synaptic, so closed Synaptic and ran again.
Still same video problem in Firefox.
