Both pieces of software are amazing and capable of so much, but nearly unusable. VLC has been around for decades, just google how many people ask how to enable click to pause. Millions of people over decades just want the most basic and intuitive functionality. If you were to make a ranked list of the most necessary functionalities of a video player, making it play with a click would be at the absolute top. How could anyone after years of being begged by thousands justify not even making it an option?

So you have to install a plugin. Can you use the built in plug in manager to do it? fuck no. Does the plugin work after you install it? fuck no. Does it work after changing the setting in 3 different tabs of the 1000 settings tabs in this shit app? No. You gotta restart the app first of course.

And then you wanna watch your movie on your big screen, the one that's not part of your desk setup and that's so big you always lose your mouse cursor on it when its not in use. The one that therefore should never be an extension of your main screen. Can you mirror it though? Arbitrarily no, because you have a 3rd monitor, and linux mint doesn't think you could want 2 out of your 3 monitors mirrored.

So getting ready to watch a movie on linux mint just took me over 2 hours. The movie doesn't even last that long.