I have spent 6 hours researching, found PPA repositories and I see it there, but it will not install. I am new to Ubuntu and just trying to learn and hitting a road block here. Help!
I used these commands:
sudo add-apt-repository -r -y ppa:team-xbmc/ppa
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:team-xbmc/kodi-old
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install kodi=2:16* kodi-bin=2:16*
I would advise against building this older version of Kodi on Bionic Beaver but I have undertaken it as a challenge anyway! (And of course I realise that you have a very specific need for this version). It builds many older libraries, downloads a huge number of files and is just plain hard workI
However despite it being a somewhat arduous process this guide gave me a working copy of Kodi 16.1 on Bionic Beaver and should work well enough on your Bionic system as well if you decide to use it. I have exhaustively tested this on a fresh VM, consider testing it in a Virtual Machine yourself before committing to your main machine?
1. Download dependencies:
Dependencies for the Kodi package can be found using
sudo apt-get build-dep kodiand this has assembled the following list which should be copied and pasted into a Terminal window. On a fresh Virtual Machine this was a 314mb download...2. Make a build directory & download source:
Now create a build directory, change to it and download and extract the source for Kodi 16.1. Use the following commands one at a time:
A patch is required to enable cximage to build with the newer gcc and the following 1 line command will download this patch from an older Kodi commit:
3. Build kodi:
First to create the required autobuild tools / configuration:
And now to build, download, compile and install even more required dependencies. I have divided these into sections for the sake of (hopefully) some clarity:
i) Build some dependencies from the Kodi extras folder:
Kodi has a build system in place for some of the more awkward dependencies and we use it here. Use the following commands 1 at a time:
ii) Find a decent copy of Jasper:
Jasper is gone from Ubuntu so retrieve it from our Debian colleagues, use the following commands one at a time in the given sequence: :
iii) Compile the older required version of libcec:
This version of kodi wants an older version of libcec and the following will install this. Not ideal using these older versions but this is part of the price to building older software on a newer release...
First for libplatform (required by libcec), from the Xenial xbmc PPA:
And then to compile the required version of libcec and install it to
/usr/local:iv) Compile kodi:
Finally to compile and patch the Kodi source:
(Note that the upcoming ./configure process will download and use its own copy of FFmpeg, this can be disabled but for this build we will allow it to happen! Details of this process are contained in
tools/depends/target/ffmpeg).5. Obligatory screenshot:
Below is a screenshot of Kodi 16.1 running on my Bionic Beaver system:
You will need to test this version to ensure that all appropriate options have been used to meet your specific needs. Tweaking is always possible :).
Notes:
The Kodi configuration created by following this guide is as follows, there are a few sections marked as 'No' which could doubtless be worked on if required:
The PPA you used has “old” in its name. This indicates it won’t likely work with new Ubuntu Bionic Beaver (18.04) – the newest Ubuntu release supported by this PPA is Xenial (16.04).
If you are OK with the current Kodi version, there is a “Kodi” team PPA without the “old” suffix, so please use:
This will install the current version
2:17.6+git20180430.1623-final-0bionicwhen running on Ubuntu Bionic.If you explicitly want to install Kodi Jarvis (version 16), then you should consider using Ubuntu 16.04 which is still supported (until 2021). If you don’t want to leave your current version, you can dual-boot the two Ubuntu versions or virtualize one of them. You can also try to build Kodi Jarvis for 18.04 yourself but it might be quite difficult.
As I tried andrew.46's answer today and was unsuccessful I researched alternatives. I use this version of Kodi because my clients do as OP as commented as well and likely many are here for the same reason. Therefor a headless client is actually better/preferred and currently what I believe is the only option for Ubuntu 18.
There is a maintained docker image of
kodi-headless:Jarviswhich runs on Ubuntu 18 and can be setup as follows:Note: This is not the most secure method of setup possible, the container runs as root, has access to host network etc. I leave it to end user to research security features.
Also, configs are stored under /root/.kodi/ on the host OS. I never had to touch the CLI in the kodi container, just moved my current userdata to /root/.kodi/ launch container and test!
Install Docker:
Setup DB:
Create Kodi Container:
Autostart Container:
Sources:
https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/kodi-headless/
https://libraries.io/github/linuxserver/docker-kodi-headless
https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-kodi-headless