Kodi is undoubtedly one of the most popular media center software in the market. For the uninitiated, it’s a free and open source application that came to life way back in 2003 as XBMC (short for Xbox Media Center) – a media center app for the first-gen Xbox – but has since been available as a native application for almost all major platforms including Android, Linux, Mac OS X, iOS, and Windows.
The installation of KODI media software is fairly easy and straightforward procedure. The objective is to install KODI media software on Ubuntu 16.04 Linux Desktop via PPA repository.
Install and Setup to Get Started with Kodi
Requirements
Privileged access to your Ubuntu System as root or via commandsudo is required.
Download and Install Kodi
Assuming that you’ve already upgraded your Ubuntu box to version 16.04, here’s a set of commands that you need to run in order to install Kodi:
sudo apt-get install software-properties-common sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc/ppa sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install kodi
If everything goes fine, the latest version of the media center application will be installed on your system. For example, in my case, version 16.1 – which is the latest stable version – was installed, something which I confirmed by running the following command:
$ kodi --version 16.1 Git:c327c53 Media Center Kodi Copyright (C) 2005-2013 Team Kodi - http://kodi.tv
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How to Setup Kodi on Ubuntu
Once the installation is complete, launch the Kodi Media Player from the Ubuntu Dash Home or App Menu on the left. Now you will see different categories like Pictures, Videos, Music, Programs, and System on the home window.
We can play different media either from local storage or various online streaming websites. To play media from online streaming websites we need to install and enable an Add-On for each streaming website.
How to Install Add-ons
We can add various add-ons across various categories in Kodi Media Player. For example, we will add YouTube add-on in Video category of Kodi.
Step01: On the Kodi, home window clicks on Add-ons under the Videos category.
Step02: Now select YouTube from the list of various video streaming add-ons.
Step03: Now click on the Install button in new a window and wait for Kodi to install and enable the add-on.
Step04: Once the installation is complete go back to Videos and click on Youtube.
Step05: Now you will be asked to Sign In to your YouTube account. Just click on Sign In and go to youtube.com/activate and enter the given code.
Step06: You will be signed into your YouTube account and you can access all the recommended and liked videos from your subscribed channels.
That’s it. You can follow similar steps to install add-ons in different categories like Music, Programs, etc.
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How to Access Media Files from Local Storage
To listen or watch media files from your computer storage you need to add files into various categories of Kodi. For example, we will add video files from local storage in Kodi.
Step01: Click on Files under Videos tab on the Kodi home screen.
Step02: Now click on Add Video and browse to the location of a video file on your local storage.
Step03: Then click OK to add the file to a Kodi playlist.
Step04: Now you can play the video by double clicking on it.
We mainly focused on the installation and basic set-up of Kodi in this article. However, as far as functionality goes, we’ve barely scratched the surface here as Kodi offers a lot of features. Head to the official Kodi Wiki to learn more about the media center’s capabilities.
