XBMC 10.0 "Dharma" Released With Built-In Addons System, VAAPI Support, Improved VDPAU, More

XBMC is a free and open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub for digital media for for Linux, OSX, Windows, and the original Xbox.

XBMC 10.0 "Dharma" has been released yesterday. Most of the work in the new version has been done to the addons framework. Until XBMC 10, you had to search for new skins and addons through the forums, manually download and install it and so on - starting with version 10, installing new skins and addons got a lot easier: in XBMC 10, installing a new skin or addon is done from the XBMC interface (the Addons section).

I must say I'm loving the Grooveshark addon! There was an issue with it not playing for some reason but after chaging the playback core to "DVDPlayer" under the Grooveshark plugin settings it finally worked.

XBMC 10.0 also comes with improved XBMC's GUI Engine / Skinning Framework, initial gesture support, Broadcom Crystal HD decoders support, native support for unencrypted Blu-ray Disc playback without menus, Blu-ray Disc detection for external players, WebM support and much more.

Linux specific features in the latest XBMC 10.0 include initial support OpenGL ES 2.0, VAAPI (Video Acceleration API) support (requires VAAPI compatible hardware and drivers), OpenMAX Video Acceleration support (requires OpenMax IL compatible hardware, like Tegra2), NEON (ARM) Video Acceleration support (requires NEON compatible hardware, like OMAP3) as well as improved VDPAU Hardware Video Acceleration support and its upscaling/deinterlacing capabilities.

Read the complete XBMC 10.0 changelog.

Install XBMC 10.0 "Dharma" in Ubuntu

XBMC 10.0 is already available in a PPA for Ubuntu users. Add the PPA and install the latest XBMC using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xbmc

There is also a bootable XBMC Live ISO available for download which you can use to create a bootable USB with Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator or Unetbootin or just burn it onto a CD and directly boot into XBMC.

Download XBMC 10.0 for Windows, Mac OSX, Linux

Thanks to bhaismachine for the tip!