Introduction
Well, it’s a new year and this is my first major guide of twenty-eleven. It hasn’t even been a year since my first guide (SABnzbd+ for Linux Mint 9) but my approach and continual development of this site has become something I wouldn’t have even imagined just twelve months ago.
I’m very appreciative of all the support and feedback I’ve received as well as the Free and Open Source community at large which provides a basis for this site. I plan to continue expanding and developing this site for the foreseeable future (adjusting and tweaking as I learn along the way) so stay tuned and bear with me as I plan to allot more and more time for this in the future!
With that said this will be the first of my guides that is not tied to a specific version of Linux Mint, Ubuntu, or the program of focus (in this case XBMC). These guides will essentially be of a “rolling release” nature.
I will be updating these “rolling release” guides on an average of six months (more or less as the situation dictates and hopefully with more frequent minor updates throughout). Also, as different software options come and go and things change, I may retire certain antiquated guides outright, but this will be clearly marked and indicated as to why!
To compliment the “rolling release” type guides I will also have another static type of guide or article which will likely not receive any major updates. These “static” guides however will definitely be in the minority and likely be much shorter and simpler in general (and will again be clearly marked!).
As with my previous guides this one is written in light-hearted, plain-spoken, casual English and should be accessible by most anyone. With that said, the guide does assume that you have a base understanding of using a personal computer (which mouse button to use when, how to navigate menus, etc.) and of general computing concepts. For more details please see my About page.
In this guide we will also not be using the command line or terminal. It’s an anachronism to think that to use a modern GNU/Linux based operating system such as Linux Mint or Ubuntu you will have to use the command-line. This simply isn’t true. Linux is no longer just for nerds!
Throughout this guide I try to provide in-line “further reading” type links (mainly pointing to Secure Wikipedia) for anyone that’s interested in learning more or is unfamiliar about a given topic or term. I will intentionally generalize and only graze some very technical topics for the sake of simplicity, ease of use, and not wasting time.
Operating System Details
This guide was written using the latest version of Linux Mint with all the available updates installed. LinuxMint is based directly off of Ubuntu and as such the steps for Ubuntu should be almost identical in terms of installation, configuration, and setup.
Note: The main difference is going to be which menu items you navigate through to get to where we’re going, but all of the modern desktop environments provide easy to navigate menus so this shouldn’t be a problem (and if you get stuck feel free to ask me in the comments below!)
Similarly, Linux Mint and Ubuntu are based upon Debian and as such this guide should be a close approximation for Debian Testing, and Sid as well as other Debian derived Operating Systems such as Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) and aptosid.
For our recommendation of personal computer operating system please see here.
Application Details
With that said, on to the topic at hand! XBMC Media Center, also known simply as “X-B-M-C,” is a full featured, skin-able, and extensible, media front-end, library manager, and, who’d of thought, media player. It can play nearly any media you might throw at it. Video and music files, CD’s, DVD’s, Blu-rays, you name it! (Though anything with “DRM” requires some extra unnecessary work.)
With the right skin (Simplicity), XBMC Media Center provides a highly polished (second to none) front-end for any media playing computer along with oodles of art, posters, ratings, trailers, lyrics, plot summaries, TV guide like functionality, and so many more bits of supplemental information that I cannot feasibly cover them all here.
For those that have used my Sick Beard and SABnzbd+ guides (and upcoming Couch Potato guide) XBMC Media Center rounds out the whole suite by providing the polished front end media player and library.
Anyway, with that mountain of an introduction out of the way, lets get to installing XBMC Media Center shall we (next page!)?
this is great, I had lots of trouble installing xbmcin mint and this did the trick,now I am gonna follow rest of your suggestions, thanks again.
Hey, good to hear Gychang! Best of luck!
i just keep getting
W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc/ppa/ubuntu/dists/natty/main/source/Sources 404 Not Found
W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc/ppa/ubuntu/dists/natty/main/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found
Hey Eddknightuk,
If you’re running Linux Mint 11 or Ubuntu 11.04 that’s why. XBMC has yet to add a PPA repository for Natty Narwhal. You can still use the Maverick Meerkat one though (which is what I’ve been doing without any issues. Simply replace “natty” in both the sources to “maverick”. You will need to got to Sources or Edit Sources and edit the specific entries.
I’m currently stuck on a work computer so can’t give exact instructions. If you get stuck let me know or Google it.
Best of luck!
XBMC is informing me that the Simplicity Add-On cannot be installed as it has broken/missing dependencies, any idea how to fix this?
Hey Catman,
Right off the top of my head I’m not sure. Try another theme like Neon and see if you get the same result. It may just be that Simplicity is broken currently or that something is borked in your XBMC install. As soon as I get my guide updated, I’ll likely be switching from Simplicity to Neon anyway so if that works you may be in for a treat.
Best of luck, and let me know if you have anymore questions!
This guide helped me a lot! I tried installing xbmc on Windows, Fedora, Ubunutu but this guide is definately the clearest! Great work and thank you!
Hey Aegir81,
Glad it worked well for you!
Thanks for the comment!
Excellent detailed instructions on all of your guides! Wish I would have found you sooner. Make all this so much easier to understand. Goodbye torrents!! :)
Hey SAB_Addict,
Thanks for the feedback! I’m glad my guides helped ya out!
Cheers!
Nice guide any plans to do it on Mint 12…????
These instructions don’t work with Mint 12. Adding the PPA does not result in XMBC appearing in the Software Manager..
Hey Johnny,
Nice generalization there. Anyway, since XBMC does not do a great job at maintaing a PPA with the current Ubuntu releases you may need to manually edit the Other Software entry for XBMC to reflect the code name of the highest Ubuntu release that they do support (Maverick currently). If that doesn’t fix your issue the PPA authentication bug may be getting you. In which case the easiest fix is to add the PPA via the Terminal Emulator (sudo add-apt-repository ppa:PPANAMEHERE).
Good luck,
daemox