The Xbox Media Center (XBMC) is a media center application for Linux, Mac, and Windows that allows you to manage/watch/listen to/view your videos, music, and pictures. It has a nice interface, can be controlled from the desktop or a remote control or via its built-in web interface, and it can be extended by custom scripts. This guide shows how you can install XBMC on an Ubuntu 8.04 desktop.

1 Installing XBMC

First, open a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal):

Open /etc/apt/sources.list…

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

… and add the following repositories to it:

[...]
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc-hardy/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc-hardy/ubuntu hardy main
[...]

Run

sudo apt-get update

afterwards to update the package database.

Afterwards, you can install XBMC as follows:

sudo apt-get install xbmc

(Optional) To install additional skins, run

sudo apt-get install xbmc-skin-*

(Optional) To add support for more remote controls, run

sudo apt-get install xbmc-eventclients-*

(Optional) To install a scripting example, run

sudo apt-get install xbmc-scripts-example

You can now start XBMC by going to Applications > Sound & Video > XBMC Media Center:

To learn how to use XBMC (especially how to use custom scripts, use remote controls, etc.), take a look at the XBMC online manual.

2 XBMC Screenshots

Here are some screenshots of the XBMC interface:

3 Activating The XBMC Web Interface

XBMC has a web interface that you can use to control XBMC remotely. It is disabled by default, but can be enabled under Settings > Network > Servers:

I couldn’t find the default XBMC web user in the manual, that’s why I did not set a password (if you find out the user, you can set a password, but otherwise you will not be able to log in). If you find out what the name of the web user is, please let me know.

Afterwards, you can fire up a browser and go to http://:8080/ – replace with the IP address of the Ubuntu system where XBMC is installed; in my case it’s 192.168.0.8, so the URL is http://192.168.0.8:8080/.

This is how the web interface looks:

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