[LINUX] HOW-TO make a minimal Ubuntu Jaunty install with XBMC

Thanks for a nice guide worked like a charm

Hi, thanks for a great guide! XBMC running smooth now, finally without gnome Had a little problem with HW acceleration though. Since my ATI-card is no longer supported (got an old ATI Radeon X1600 Pro, running Karmic), i had to use the default radeon-driver. The problem was I only got HW acceleration when I ran xserver as root, and only software rendering when I ran as any other user. After a bit of googling, I final found that I didn't have permission to use the video card, because I wasn't added to the "video"-group. Don't know if this is a common problem, but if anybody is experiencing similar problems, just add yourself to the video-group with the command:


Worked like a charm. Also had to use "/etc/init/tty1.conf" instead of "/etc/event.d/tty1", but I believe this is Karmic-only...

This is sort of a dumb question, but I'm new to Ubuntu and XBMC.

If I do this installation on my Revo, can I access the Ubuntu desktop if I close XBMC? I was going to just install XBMC Live on the Revo, but I would like to access Hulu Desktop, as well as be able to perform remote torrent downloads directly to Ubuntu (rather than have to download torrents on a separate computer and ftp them to the Revo).

That info's probably irrelevant. All I want to know is if I can access Ubuntu's desktop with this installation, or does this create a standalone XBMC box.

Thanks.

this guide is only for standalone, what you'll want is to install the ubuntu desktop edition, and then add the xbmc repos, and install xbmc.

Then you can setup auto start and stuff using ubuntu's GUIs.

Thanks. Can you tell me what the benefit is to doing a minimal Ubuntu install over just installing XBMC live?

Also, will performing a full Ubuntu install negatively affect speed or performance in XBMC (as opposed to installing Ubuntu minimal or the XBMC live version)?

EDIT: OK last thing: In my situation, what advantages (if any) are there to installing ubuntu rather than just running xbmc through the pre-installed Windows XP? If it makes a difference, I think my TV is only capable of 720p, not 1080i (old Olevia).

Thanks again - I'm a dummy.

you have an acer revo, with an ion chip, so you'll definitely want to use linux for the hardware accelerated HD playback. Windows has no ION acceleration.

Start looking at the ION howto threads. they'll be your best bet to setup a working ION htpc.

My guess for your machine is having a full desktop installed will not affect performance very much, if at all. The main reason for doing this is to reduce system resources and space used on the HTPC.

I myself have stopped using the minimal installations in my HTPC since doing the setup with a GUI is much easier, and there is no performance hit for my htpc.

Thanks again.

Thanks for this guide!

Does someone know if there is also a guide for installing xbmc on ubuntu minimal 10.04?