The Linux hivemind on HN would say that's OK, but that mindset is also why Linux has such a dismal consumer base. There should be a video player built it by default, yes, but it should also be easy to remove if you so choose.
Don't know when you last tried a Linux distro but most Linux distro's come with a video player out of the box and have done for the better part of the last 10 years at the very least
Correction: most Linux distros come with 12 video players out of the box (and at least 7 calculator apps)...... the philosophy of "we can't decide so just include them all" is pretty strong.
That's usually from installing multiple window managers which all pull their own dependencies. It should be possible in principle to install enough of a window manager without installing unnecessary packages.
Distros not shipping with programs like video players installed by default isn't the reason Linux hasn't found mainstream traction. The real reason is because Linux simply doesn't solve the sort of problems most users need solving; there aren't many compelling reasons for a casual computer user to use Linux in the first place. For normal users, not technical/power users, Linux could work fine but Windows or MacOS also work fine, so they'll stick with what they and most other people know already. Oh you get the source code? Most users don't know what that is, they don't have a reason to care. You get the power to customize things? They don't want to. These things are important and valid to some people, but not important to many more. And that's fine. I've been using Linux for about 20 years and I love it, but I don't recommend it to normies anymore because I figured out that it wasn't doing them any favor. If Linux gave normies some great advantage over the alternatives then more would use it, but that's just not the way it is.
