For most free software projects, reaching version 1.0 coincides with reaching a stated goal, or achieving a level of reliability and quality ready for the masses. This is untrue for VLC however, because VLC has had a production-ready quality for many years. Being one of the lightest and most robust video players (notable exception being Media Player Classic) has made it one of the most useful and widespread players.

Over the past 1 year several of the updates of VLC have introduced new problems for how I was used to using VLC. The main problem was that the video playing appeared in a different window that the controls, and the controls were not available when VLC was in full screen mode. I understand that there is a preference for changing this, but the preference had no effect. I am happy to report that with the 1.0 release, this issue has been resolved in all of my installations, and I am once again extremely pleased with VLC.

Get the latest 1.0 release of VLC for Ubuntu with instructions for adding their official repository for automatic installs and updates.