Here are the installation steps (in this example, for v1.28.2.24):
- First, download the viewer from the website. In our example, the package is named: CoolVLViewer-1.28.2.24-Linux-x86_64-Setup
- You then need to make the downloaded package executable (because the file permissions are alas not preserved with web downloads). There are two ways to do this: either via the command line in a terminal, or from your preferred file manager.
Since there is a gazillion of different file managers for Linux, I'll assume you know yours or can find out how to make a file executable with it...
Let's show here the (old fashioned but universal) command line way:
As you can see, the key command is "chmod +x CoolVLViewer-1.28.2.24-Linux-x86_64-Setup", after which you can launch the installer with "./CoolVLViewer-1.28.2.24-Linux-x86_64-Setup".
- Once the installer is launched, you will go through the following dialogs:
Note that since, in this example, this is the "root" user doing the installation, the installer suggests to install the viewer in "/usr/local/". For a normal user, it would suggest the user's home directory (but you can install the viewer anywhere provided you got file creation permission for the directory you choose).
Whatever the directory you choose to install the viewer into, it will be automatically remembered by the installer as the default installation directory for future updates.
Nothing to say about this simple, progress dialog... Just watch and relax !
And we are done !... Note that if the viewer was installed by "root" (like in the above example), the menu entry is created system-wide (and will be available to all the users), while when installed by a non-root user, only that user will get the entry in their menu.
Before clicking the "Finish" button, and if it is the first time you install the viewer, you might yet want to check for the proper presence of all the system libraries dependencies. To do so, press the "Verify libraries dependencies" button and you will get something like this:
In the event a library is missing, use the software manager of your Linux distribution to find and install the corresponding package.
If you wish to use Vivox voice, and even if (like in the above example) you got all the 32 bits libraries needed by the deprecated 32 bits voice client, you yet might want to install the up to date Windows client, that will be ran via Wine. The "Install Wine SLVoice.exe" button is there for this purpose (it launches the installed install-wine-SLVoice.sh script); note however, that this is a per-Linux-account installation (in our example, and since we installed the viewer as root, only the root user would have the Wine voice client installed), and in such a case you should instead run the install-wine-SLVoice.sh script directly from the Linux account(s) you will actually use the viewer with. For WebRTC voice, you do not need to install anything.
IMPORTANT:
- WARNING: this Linux viewer is a genuine X11 application and cannot run under Wayland-only desktops ! Compatibility with Xwayland is not guaranteed either and I won't provide any support for bugs specific to Xwayland related issues (i.e. Xwayland bugs, and yes, there are quite a few); for best experience (and expected behaviour), please, run this viewer under a genuine X11 session and when using a distribution with Wayland desktops enabled/selected by default (this is usually the case for modern GNOME-based distros), be sure to instead start the Xorg/X11 flavour (with lightdm login screens, such options are available by clicking on the small icon above the login/password input line or in the top status bar).
- With recent versions of some Linux distributions (e.g. Fedora 33), the OpenAL libraries are not installed by default any more, and since they are not distributed with the viewer, this would cause a failure for the latter to start. Simply make sure that OpenAL is installed on your system (you may also use './cool_vl_viewer --check-libs' to check for any missing dependencies).
- Make sure you installed all the gstreamer v1.0 and gstreamer plugins packages ("good", "bad", "ugly", "libav", "ffmpeg", etc) of your Linux distribution if you wish to be able to play streaming media.
- The old Linux SLVoice client is a 32 bits application: you need the proper 32 bits support libraries to be able to run it under 64 bits Linux. See this message for using a newer voice client.
- See also the README-linux.txt file, in the installation directory, chapter 3 (INSTALLING & RUNNING), especially about the checking option for missing libraries, and, for sound issues, chapter 5 (ADVANCED TROUBLESHOOTING)
