Linux Finally Getting XBMC

B47h0ry'5 CuR53 writes "XBMC is getting ported to Linux. A few developers of Team-XBMC have begun the porting of XBMC to Linux using OpenGL and the SDL toolkit. In this effort, they are recruiting developers. XBMC is, by far, one of the finest projects to come out of the open source community; and to think it is homebrew. XBMC is a massive project, with the current SVN branch weighing about 350M before compilation. Porting it will be a big effort and any hackers willing to contribute should check out the Linux port project."

Re:What is XBMC?

[jonwil]

Actually, I believe XBMC is for the first XBOX. I don't think homebrew is possible on the 360 unless you can somehow get a certain firmware version onto your 360 (without ever having something later that blows the hardware fuses and prevents a downgrade)

PS3?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess this is so that it will run on the PS3.

Re:What is XBMC?

[Ant P.]

For reference, for the 99% of us out here who have no frickin' clue what something like XBMC might stand for, it would be nice to spell out the whole abbreviation at least once in summaries. Since it wasn't mentioned, XBMC is the Xbox Media Center, an open source media center project to play images and videos of various formats and from various sources, such as streaming from your PC or even the Internet, on your Xbox 360. It will let you use your Xbox 360 kind of like a beefed-up and free Apple TV

All it takes to avoid looking like an idiot is to use some common sense and hover over the first word of the summary.

Re:What is XBMC?

[twistedsymphony]

yeah I did notice that actually. You can extend that standards compliance to bluetooth devices like headsets, as well as flash media, wi-fi, etc.

I really like that direction and the PS3 makes a great media device for those reason IMO. I'd own one except I don't need a media device and there's nothing on the console yet that excites me as a game machine.

The number of people looking for a media device and game machine wrapped into one at a price to reflect that I would suspect is much smaller then the number of people looking for just a media device or just a game machine and not wanting to pay for things they don't need.

Why bother with humility ?

[Etyenne]

XBMC is, by far, one of the finest projects to come out of the open source community

Clearly, it is in the same league as Apache, Firefox, gcc and the Linux kernel.

Re:XBMC

[Gamester17]

Note! You do not need Visual Studio to develop XBMC for Linux, nor do you need the XDK (Xbox Development Kit), you do not even need Microsoft Windows. Those are only needed when you develop XBMC for Xbox.

If are are competent with C/C++ programming-language then all you need to start with developing XBMC for Linux (to help in the porting project) is a x86-based computer running Linux, (Ubuntu 7.04 is recommended). The software development tool used to develop XBMC under Linux is called Kdevelop, which is also free and open source.
http://xbmc.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/*checkout*/ xbmc/branches/linuxport/XBMC/README.linux [sourceforge.net]

Re:Why bother with humility ?

[Builder]

Not even close. I could use Zeus to replace Apache. I could use an Intel or a Sun compiler to replace gcc. I can use FreeBSD to not only replace the Linux kernel, but to get a full OS. I can use Opera to replace Firefox.

XBMC is FAR more important than all of these things - it gives me a full media extender that my wife can not only use, but loves for around 90 quid. It brings peace and harmony to my home. It replaced my VCR and DVD recorder.

Re:What is XBMC?

[jgoemat]

All it takes to avoid looking like an idiot is to use some common sense and hover over the first word of the summary.

What does it take to avoid looking like a dick? I'm probably asking the wrong person...

Of course hovering over the first link in an article and looking at the url in the bottom of the browser (which could have simply been "http://www.xbmc.com" but still only tells you "xboxmediacenter") is much simpler than reading a one-sentence description in the article. Heck, why even have sentences, just make articles a list of links...

Whatever

[KingSkippus]

All it takes to avoid looking like an idiot is to use some common sense and hover over the first word of the summary.

And all it takes to keep people from having to jump through idiotic non-intuitive hoops that may or may not yield a modicum of an explanation of what the hell you're talking about is to spell out your obscure abbreviation at least once in the summary.

I'm glad that people like you, who blame problems with a user interface on those "idiot" end users, are becoming fewer and fewer. And next time you want to lecture me on what is and isn't "common sense" (let alone who is the real idiot), try counting how many URLs in summaries here, completely independent of the summary text, indicate the subject of the article. Oh yeah, that's obvious.

Re:What is XBMC?

[multisync]

For reference, for the 99% of us out here who have no frickin' clue what something like XBMC might stand for, it would be nice to spell out the whole abbreviation at least once in summaries

I used to tell myself this is a geek site, if I don't know what an acronym stands for I should look it up myself yada yada etc etc. Then I see this [slashdot.org] story yesterday about "altruism," and the submitter bothered to give us a definition of that word (I'm pretty sure it was the submitter; I didn't see the definition in the linked article).

Completely off topic with this but it struck me as funny that we're expected to know every obscure acronym under the Sun but apparently need to have the concept of altruism explained to us.

Re:Finaly?

[speculatrix]

the source has always been GPL... the problem is that the tools for building are Microsoft proprietary (i.e. no gcc/g++), and therefore once you've built XBMC from source you're effectively violating MS's rights, and so the binaries are not downloadable except from "interesting" sources.