I have found that the vlc media player will not close the window properly when the window close button is pressed. I have to use control-q to stop the player, then I can close the window properly. This has never happened in the past with any other mate distro - I have to show the window, then kill the process with the "force misbehaving applicaton to quit" button I had to install on the task bar. Really annoying - vlc has been my go to media player for many years and this little quirk is a cause for concern! 
1 Like
I have had this happen to me, also on a older version of Mint. I took it off on both occasions, otherwise I had to restart to close VLC down. It came right last time as VLC upgraded to a more newer version. So i use Celluloid for now and wait. Unless one our gifted programmer types looks at this and can see the real issues we are stuck.
1 Like
I have to use control-q to stop the player
Correct. I think this bug came as part of the VLC 3.x series but it's still there even now.
If you don't close it the "right" way, you get left with zombie vlc instances.
"killall -9 vlc" in a terminal is the easiest way to clean up the mess.
@johnf, @Richard_Graham-Green and @arQon,
Is it a bug or a feature introduced? I mean, some applications like rhythmbox for example, don't quit when you click close button on the window but only minimize to tray; it continues to play music in the background. You have to actually 'quit' the application to completely close it. Are you talking about this behavior or I got it wrong? If so,
- is it still happening?
- are you using .deb package or the snap package?
- what steps I have to follow to reproduce it?
Is it a bug or a feature introduced
Very much a bug. Only spyware and crapware (Steam, and apparently Rythymbox) likes to pretend that you didn't REALLY mean to close it. The bug appears to be common knowledge, and I expect has had a ticket on fftrac for months already.
(Rythymbox gets uninstalled immediately after every fresh OS install, so I'm not familiar with it. Good to know that was the right call though, thanks).
More pertinently, if the zombie is there because VLC barfed on a damaged file, you may well be stuck with all further attempts to play anything failing, which is a significant user-facing problem that most users will only be able to "fix" by rebooting - and will obviously then just run into again next time. 
is it still happening?
My post is from 4 days ago, and I checked it at that time, so that's an easy "Yes".
are you using .deb package or the snap package?
I'm on 18.04, so it's a .deb (VLC 3.0.8). The 20.04 machine also has it as a .deb, though I have no idea what version that's on. I also have a pi with 20.10 and, well, whatever version THAT ships with, which also has the same bug.
what steps I have to follow to reproduce it?
Play a video, close VLC via e.g. the window's close button.
Sidenote: I stopped using VLC for anything other than 1 or 2 rare/specific formats a long time ago, because of how insanely broken the 3.x series is, so I don't really have horse in this race. It's only because I came across it again on the pi recently that I even remembered this bug. So I can't help you with timeframes etc.
(I see they still haven't fixed the focusing bugs either though, so it's still basically useless anyway).