I went to the repo manager and added a bunch of repos until I saw more up to date versions of VLC and other programs in the package manager, then used AntiX Updater again and said yes to the over 1,200 updates.
Debian tells us that you should never add repositories to a Debian distro. It's the first rule on the Don't Break Debian page. "don't make a franken-debian" https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian
Third party repositories could have malware or be compiled incorrectly for your system.
Also 1200 package updates means that probably every package on your OS was replaced. Your computer reenacted the Ship of Theseus. There's probably no AntiX left in your system.
I went to the repo manager and added a bunch of repos until I saw more up to date versions of VLC and other programs in the package manager, then used AntiX Updater again and said yes to the over 1,200 updates.
Lol, a lesson we have all learned the hard way. It's probably salvageable but if you're not going to lose anything important wiping and reinstalling will be way easier.
Mixing a bunch of packages from incompatible repos just produces conflicts, and it's not just because apt is complaining, programs actually have constraints about library versions they need to work and so on.
You can try to set your apt sources to one and only one repo that actually works (probably a newer one like Debian unstable is better, downgrading isn't really supported), then remove all the packages except the base system, and then upgrade and hope that works. Then start installing stuff again.
But if this does not work you're going to need to reinstall, so just reinstalling is maybe easier. I would recommend trying to fix it though, for the challenge.
You'll need to do this from the virtual console w/o graphics (that's not part of the base system), and you probably want a wired network connection. I hear you can use an android phone over usb for that somehow, in case you don't have anything else.
There are cases where trying to repair a broken Linux system can be a good learning experience (i.e. it stopped booting because a kernel driver is missing, you somehow managed to uninstall util-linux, you messed up some important config files in /etc, you managed to install a version of libc which is not ABI compatible with the rest of the system), but I imagine this install is so cooked that it would be more practical and educational to just do Linux From Scratch instead. :)
It is good to learn how to fix things when they break, but learning to fix a problem created by several arbitrary steps which cannot even be replicated is not the most useful knowledge in the world. And then there is always the lingering possibility that something minor is still screwed up causing problems which nobody else in the world will ever run into, which you cannot find any documentation for in a web search.
If it's been a few years you might as well start over. Maybe just regular Debian?
MPV > VLC
But without any error messages or some such info theres little I can do to help you.
I went to the repo manager and added a bunch of repos until I saw more up to date versions of VLC and other programs in the package manager, then used AntiX Updater again and said yes to the over 1,200 updates.
What are these repos? Sounds like you probably installed a bunch of conflicting packages or different versions of packages from different repos.
I'm not familiar with antix but it appears they have a rescue CD you should probably start there. Also try their forums
If you're trying to run on old 32bit hardware you might want to try https://www.devuan.org
Its also Debian based and actively maintained and without systemd.
If you hit "Ctrl-Alt-F1" after you get to the graphical login, does it drop you into a non-GUI terminal (virtual terminal) where you can log in? Does logging in work there?
I just wanted the latest version of VLC
Use Flatpak or set up an Arch distrobox.
I am pretty sure most flatpaks aren't built for i386 but some probably are. Same for the OCI images distrobox uses.
