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When comparing VLC vs Chocolatey, the Slant community recommends Chocolatey for most people. In the question“What are the best power user tools for Windows?” Chocolatey is ranked 2nd while VLC is ranked 11th. The most important reason people chose Chocolatey is:
Chocolatey has a massive community package repository of installs (more than 4,000 packages), and its open nature allows everyone to contribute more as needed.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Free, open source, and cross-platform
VLC is licensed under the CC-SA v3.0+ and available on Windows, OSX, and Linux with source code available here.
Pro Simple to setup and use
VLC is an incredibly robust application but very simple on the surface. It makes playing music simple, yet still manages to give the user all the tools he/she wants in a music player.
Pro Very versatile and easy to use
Pro Doesn't require additional codecs
Everything VLC needs to play media files is contained within which means no outside codecs are needed. This makes it one of the most hassle-free music players as it can play virtually anything as soon as it's installed.
Pro Tons of advanced settings
Besides basic configurations, video player has an extensive amount of adjustable settings.
Pro Doesn't manage your music library for you
You organize your music into folders any way you want. Want to play an album? Drag and drop. No tags, no confusion, no fluff. Easy.
Pro Can be almost completely keyboard-driven
VLC includes keyboard shortcuts for most actions. The video player can be controlled with simple and customizable keyboard commands.
Pro Surprisingly Lightest on Resources
Yes. Lightest. Even better than the ones known to be light. Both when playing music, only a single song or when playing a video. Either in terms of Ram and Cpu. Compared with almost all, including the ones from Windows like mpc-hc .. or light ones from Linux like Alsa Player, Audacious, SmPlayer .
Pro Can play every format video available (as of 2017)
Pro Supports a GUI interface and an ncurses terminal interface
Pro Can easily stream music across your home network from any device on the network
Using sftp/ssh music (and videos) can be streamed from any server on the network to any device running VLC. VLC can also be used as a webcam for streaming and snapshots. Amazing all in one package
Pro Large amount of extensions
VLC has a large amount of extensions.
Pro Large number of applications/utilities available
Chocolatey has a massive community package repository of installs (more than 4,000 packages), and its open nature allows everyone to contribute more as needed.
Pro Sieg
Installs silently without crapware.
Pro Easy to use
Just open powershell and type choco install firefox to install Firefox, or choco install java to install Java.
Pro Straightforward install process
To install Chocolatey simply copy the text from their site and paste it into either cmd.exe or powershell.
Pro Upgrade all software with one command
choco upgrade all is like Windows Update for all of your 3rd party software. ... or for the more succinct command use 'cup' !!
Pro Downloaded files are verified by checksums
Chocolatey requires checksums by default for files downloaded over non-secure locations and highly recommends it for HTTPS/SSL locations. It is moving towards requiring checkums by default for downloading from secure locations.
Pro Manages the entire software lifecycle
From install to upgrade to uninstall, Chocolatey manages the whole process.
Pro Scriptable
You can put Chocolatey install commands into your powershell scripts.
Pro Free and open source
It's licensed under Apache License 2.0 with source code available on GitHub.
Pro Decentralized package sources
Packages can be installed from multiple sources, including private sources.
Pro Builds on technologies you know
Unattended installation and PowerShell.
Pro GUI available
There's a package called ChocolateyGUI that can be installed and lets you use Chocolatey with a UI frontend.
Pro Integrates with almost every configuration management / infrastructure automation / RMM tool
Chocolatey integrates with almost every infrastructure automation tool out there.
Pro Support and features available for organizations
There is a business edition available for organizations that need more support. The business edition also includes a Package Synchronizer, Package Internalizer, Package Builder, and a host of other features.
Pro Can be extended with PowerShell
Chocolatey allows installing extension packages that add PowerShell functions to your package automation scripts.
Pro More Selection
It has programs that can't be found in scoop or ninite.
Pro Custom sources
It has ability to add custom sources.
Cons
Con Not really meant to be a music player
VLC is made to be a video player. Therefore, it won't carry out actions such as managing your music library.
Con Lacks libraries and advanced music player features
VLC is a media player first and foremost. There is no library management (aside from playlists), limited usage of tags, and no rating system. VLC is best at playing a file directly from a folder, but falls behind when it comes to helping you manage or find good songs in your music library.
Con Absence of personalization
VLC Player has only one basic interface in white or black, and overall personalization opportunities are quite narrow. Unfortunately, you're pretty much stuck to the default look.
Con Contains some insignificant but irritating flaws
Despite all keyboard shortcuts, the width of the picture can't be controlled by trackpad. Besides that, the VLC start-up window doesn’t open at the same place or the same width at which it was previously closed.
Con Sometimes hard to know which package to install from community package repository
The community repository contains multiple packages with similar names, making it hard to know which one to install. This is of course only related to using Chocolatey with the community repository, and you can look up the number of downloads to see which are the most widely used.
Con Some package installs aren't good or polished or don't install well
Macrium downloads the online installer, 7-zip doesn't associate files, PotPlayer is outdated, etc.
Con Unable to easily change your install directory in the free version
In the free version you must know the native installer switches and pass them through with install args. In the paid versions you have a ubiquitous install directory option where Chocolatey determines how to properly pass that to the underlying native installer.
Con Buggy
Slow, many packages fail to install, and config can corrupt causing it to not be able to manage packages anymore, leading to a bunch of installed and non-updateable software
Con Incomplete and conflicting package options
Not enough maintenance done to package library so there are different similarly-named or -versioned packages available, some broken and some not.
Con Can not download asynchronously
Con No support for ARM64
Users with Windows on Arm can't install native ARM64 binaries. Apps installed with Chocolatey run slower and need more resources on Windows on Arm because they have to be emulated.
![[deleted]](https://avatars.slant.co/identicons/50/eb641207-4f56-47e7-903e-e7b5d8f48db4)
Con Uploading packages can be time consuming
It can take weeks to have a package accepted and with a fair amount of resubmitting for the dev/ maintainer.
Con Doesn't care about supporting the community
They used the community to make it the largest repository of packages. Now that they're the de facto standard package manager, they only care to support those that pay them and refuse to fix problems with popular packages.
