Kodi media center, formerly known as XBMC, reached the 17.4 release a few days ago with a bunch of bug-fixes. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 17.04, and their derivatives.
Changes in Kodi 17.4 include:
- Potentially fix crashing on Windows due to an issue in Python
- Potentially fix crashing on Windows when enabling zeroconf
- Fix sporadic crash on Windows when installing or updating add-ons
- Fix issue for users with reverse proxies attempting to forward websockets.
- Fix possible issue if Linux distro uses system ffmpeg and cause black screen with 10-bit H.265
- Properly throttle scraping music information online to prevent overloading the provider
- Fix native keyboard on iOS 11
- Fix potential crash on Android O loading App icons
- Fix non showing Kodi banner on Android O
- Fix potential crash on Android with certain keymaps
- Fix wrong detection of VP6 and VP8 videocodec on Android
- Update FFmpeg to 3.1.9
- Set hard requirement to use FFmpeg 3.1.x only
- Fix for Hangup when viewing recording and pressing next/previous
- Fix merged scraped album type and label correctly with that derived from tags from music files
- Fix possible crash on Linux when using ALSA
- Save skin settings immediatly after they have changed instead of only on shutdown
How to Install Kodi 17.4 in Ubuntu:
Kodi has an official PPA that contains the latest packages for Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 16.04, and Ubuntu 17.04.
1. Open terminal via Ctrl+Alt+T or by searching it from app launcher. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc/ppa
Input your password (no visual feedback while typing) when it asks and hit Enter.
2. For those who have previous release installed, upgrade the media center via Software Updater:
or run commands to check updates and install kodi:
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install kodi
Once installed, log out and log in back with Kodi session, or launch Kodi from Unity Dash, Gnome app launcher, or other app launcher.
Uninstall:
Run command to purge the PPA which also downgrade Kodi to its stock version in your Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:team-xbmc/ppa
To remove kodi, either use your system package manager or run command:
sudo apt-get remove --autoremove kodi
