Setup
Much of XBMC’s setup is dependent upon your specific hardware and audio-video setup I will only be able to offer general recommendations in many cases. Fortunately, the defaults should work for most systems!
Some of the Setup options will also be entirely personal preference. So, if you prefer things a different way please feel free to adjust it once you’re comfortable and understand what the options do (or before if you like experimenting and don’t mind the risk of messing something up!).
Note: If you have a receiver and an HDTV getting digital audio out can be a trick depending on your hardware. As such, if you’re building a new computer to be used with XBMC I suggest researching your choice of audio/video card BEFORE buying something that might cause you headaches for years to come.
The good news is with each release of Linux Mint, Ubuntu, NVIDIA’s drivers, ALSA and other key components hardware support becomes better and better and there are already some very good supported options available depending on your needs!
So, lets begin. Navigate to SETTINGS from XBMC’s Home window and then select Appearance.
Appearance
Skin
Under the Skin tab of Appearance you should see Simplicity selected as well as several options underneath it. One that we will want to change here is the Show RSS news feeds.
Disabling this will allow us to use the TV Alerts from Simplicity and by default the RSS feed doesn’t really show anything relevant to most users (the same information can also be seen by simply going to XBMC.org).
Another option that may be beneficial to disable (if you’re planning to use digital audio anyway) is Navigation sounds. If you’re using coaxial or optical outs (and maybe HDMI) disabling this can help prevent media sounds and navigation sounds from conflicting.
International
Now under the International tab this should just be the same as your system’s information. So we’ll move on.
File lists
Under File lists we have settings that are more relevant if, for some reason, you choose not to use Library mode in XBMC. Library mode is one of THE features to use XBMC for so I strongly recommend using it (we’ll cover this more in Configuration). As such, once again we can move on from this section without making any changes.
Screensaver
Under Screensaver we have some nice options to change. For screensaver time pick whatever you prefer here. I’d recommend the default or less.
This is not to save your screen (which likely doesn’t need it) but to showcase the Screensaver mode Slideshow (and another reason to use Library mode). Once this is selected I recommend leaving both the Use visualization if playing audio and the Use dim if paused during playback options enabled.
Once you’re satisfied with your selections here hit Escape and migrate to the Videos settings which we’ll cover on the 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