Installing Boxee turns your computer into an incredible HTPC. These instructions will help you get it up and running on Ubuntu.

Update:
Boxee has recently made the latest version (9.20) of their software available for Ubuntu 64 and 32-bit. If you are installing this new version simply download the deb package off their website directly and install it.

The instructions below pertain to older Boxee versions < 9.20

Start by downloading the repository off the website. Since the 32-bit repository is the only one available simply adding it to your sources.list will not work.

$ wget http://apt.boxee.tv/dists/jaunty/main/binary-i386/Packages.gz

Find the latest version of Boxee in the repository.

$ zcat Packages.gz | grep Filename

Filename: ./dists/intrepid/main/binary-i386/boxee-0.9.6.4578.intrepid.deb
Filename: ./dists/intrepid/main/binary-i386/boxee-0.9.7.4826.intrepid.deb
Filename: ./dists/intrepid/test/binary-i386/boxee-0.9.11.5777.deb
Filename: ./dists/intrepid/test/binary-i386/boxee-0.9.12.6570.deb
Filename: ./dists/intrepid/test/binary-i386/boxee-0.9.13.6684.deb
Filename: ./dists/intrepid/test/binary-i386/boxee-0.9.14.6795.deb
Filename: ./dists/intrepid/test/binary-i386/boxee-0.9.14.6992.deb

Download the latest version.

$ wget http://apt.boxee.tv/dists/intrepid/test/binary-i386/boxee-0.9.14.6992.deb

Install the package, since your system is 64-bit and you are installing a 32-bit package you will see that your system is missing some required libraries.

$ sudo dpkg -i --force-all boxee-0.9.14.6992.deb

dpkg: warning: overriding problem because --force enabled:
 package architecture (i386) does not match system (amd64)
Selecting previously deselected package boxee.
(Reading database ... 144498 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking boxee (from boxee-0.9.14.6992.deb) ...
dpkg: boxee: dependency problems, but configuring anyway as you requested:
 boxee depends on liblzo1; however:
  Package liblzo1 is not installed.
 boxee depends on libfaad-dev; however:
  Package libfaad-dev is not installed.
 boxee depends on libxmlrpc-c3; however:
  Package libxmlrpc-c3 is not installed.
 boxee depends on libdirectfb-1.0-0; however:
  Package libdirectfb-1.0-0 is not installed.
 boxee depends on libkrb53; however:
  Package libkrb53 is not installed.
 boxee depends on xsel; however:
  Package xsel is not installed.
Setting up boxee (0.9.14.6992)

To fix these dependency problems download the getlibs package and install it.

$ wget http://frozenfox.freehostia.com/cappy/getlibs-all.deb
$ sudo dpkg -i getlibs-all.deb

Now resolve those missing libraries.

$ getlibs /opt/boxee/Boxee

libfaac.so.0: libfaac0
libhal-storage.so.1: libhal-storage1
libjasper.so.1: libjasper1
libenca.so.0: libenca0
No match for liblzo.so.1
libmysqlclient.so.15: libmysqlclient15off
libfribidi.so.0: libfribidi0
libGLEW.so.1.5: libglew1.5
The following i386 packages will be installed:
libenca0
libfaac0
libfribidi0
libglew1.5
libhal-storage1
libjasper1
libmysqlclient15off
Continue [Y/n]? y
Downloading ...
Installing libraries ...

Install the lib32nss-mdns library.

$ sudo apt-get install lib32nss-mdns

You also need to manually install the liblzo library which is no longer available in the 9.10 release.

$ wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/universe/l/lzo/liblzo1_1.08-3_i386.deb
$ getlibs -i liblzo1_1.08-3_i386.deb

You should now be able to launch Boxee normally, enjoy!

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The Medibuntu repository (Multimedia, Entertainment & Distractions In Ubuntu) contains packages that cannot be included into the Ubuntu distribution for legal reasons. Some of these packages include Skype Acrobat Reader, Google Earth, and multimedia codecs.

Add Medibuntu to your sources.list. Make sure you specify the correct version of your distribution. This example uses Intrepid Ibex (Ubuntu 8.10).

# wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/intrepid.list --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

Then add its GPG key to your keyring.

# apt-get update && apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && apt-get update

Now you should be able to install packages in this repository.

Related posts

1. Fix Skype audio on Ubuntu with Dell XPS M1530/M1330
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