Ubuntu TV? It’s not a science fiction but pure reality … Here’s how!

Mar 272012

Just some time ago, at the Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas, Canonical has debut among the big names in the industry. Canonical has stunned the expectations of themselves and members of the organization staff. He brought in his stand, an innovation that has created so much interest among the participants that there were hundreds of curious on average every minute.

You know the news? The Ubuntu TV! It’s a really interesting project, but especially ambitious from Canonical.

Ubuntu TV, is not a simple Media Center, is something more … Something which, it says Canonical is so ambitious as to make it interesting in that Canonical is negotiating with major TV manufacturers to ensure that, by the end of the year, it will be placed on the shelves of electronics stores, the devices with the legendary logo of Ubuntu among the thousands of features. But now let’s return, down to the earth …

In fact, this article is not for informational purposes-futuristic, but is a little tutorial to start leveraging this ambitious Ubuntu TV with your every day PS. I should point out, it is clear that this is still an experimental project to be recommended to those who, like me, are so curious!

First we must remove from our Distro, a software that can create unpleasant hassles. So let’s do an “apt-get remove lens-video“, with the necessary permissions for root. So, on Ubuntu before that command you must put the command “sudo”, though with Debian or derivative you can also use “su” and then issue the command.
If it gives some error, as the package is not present, no problem! It means that you attempted to remove something that was not there … so nothing to worry about!
Now, again from the terminal with the appropriate permissions to root: add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/test3 and after that issue a normal update with apt-get update

Now install Unity 2D. From the terminal apt-get install unity-2d
Now reinstall properly the software that initially asked you to uninstall: "apt-get install unity-lens-video ". At this point the installation is finished!

Now we start our Ubuntu TV with the command “ gsettings September com.canonical.Unity2d form-factor tv “. We just have to open the interface … launch the OpenGL interface of Unity, with: “ unity-opengl-2d-shell " followed by ENTER. You should now, after clicking on the icon, have something innovative and ready to be discovered!

We begin by clarifying some points. What will open up before you is not a real software like can be XBMC . It’s an integration of Unity targeted to the TV. In the usual interface of Unity you’ll have so many possibilities! Surfing the Internet directly, without need to install a browser, a full integration with YouTube, the possibility of a TV Guide, WebTV, Streaming of what you like … well, you’ll have a lot of choices. Of course, it all fits perfectly with the loved and hated Ubuntu One.

It’s definitely something you can try that may be of interest for a scenario of very large users. From simple user who likes TV and movies and the crazy hacker who wants it all integrated and want, at home, all the PCs and laptops of every type and gender!
What are you waiting for? Try it and see what the future has in store for you!