Thanks for your responses. I did a search and uncovered this link:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW...Step_Guide
that I had not found on the XBMC site directly (and still can't find directly).
I've added the repo for XBMC. The linked article didn't specify what VERSION of Ubuntu the instructions would work on, and the article isn't dated (apparently they didn't read the link topfs2 provided). I'll work through it and report back with my results.
update: in Synaptics Package Manager I marked the 18 "packages" in xbmc (not xbmc-live) using Ctrl to multi-select. Several would not mark cleanly (red bang) because of dependencies not satisfied. I hit "Apply" and was reminded to "fix broken packages". As I unmarked the broken packages, it unmarked OTHER packages too, and by the time I had the errors cleared, almost nothing survived.
I did learn that xbmc depends on skin-confluence, that depends on xbmc-data, that depends on xbmc-bin, and that tries to load ten libs. There is no hint about which ones are causing that package to break. Here's a screenshot of the possibly-offending libraries.
I also read and typed them, but with no way to distinguish capital O's from zeros, I can't depend on what I typed.
libfaacO
libhal-storage1
libhal1
liblzo2-2
libmikmod2
libpcrecpp0
libsidl-image1.2
libsdl-mixer1.2
libsmpegO
libvdpau1
Is this related to XBMC not being "packaged for natty"?
I'll continue working on this because I'd like to have a good media computer and XBMC seems promising. Details about the on-board (DQ670W mobo) network and video adapters that XBMC-live 10.1 doesn't support: I installed the Gnome device manager and it says the video is
2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller and there is apparently no "properties" function I can use to see details on the driver being used.
The network says
82579LM Gigabit Network Connection
To refresh, the XBMC-live 10.1 distro doesn't recognize the on-board network adapter, and the mouse is very sluggish (a problem others are having too), which I attribute to using a too-generic video driver due to non-recognition of it as well.
The mobo is a current product, and Intel isn't particularly obscure. Even though Linux is a popular platform for extending the life of older hardware, there will no doubt be others loading it onto current platforms too.
new update:
http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Natty...positories is a Natty-specific URL and it mentions XBMC including the info to go after the repository from another source, and reference intrepid rather than jaunty.
I tried it, but when I hit Reload, it fails due to a lack of availability of a pub key! I get:
W: GPG error:
http://ppa.launchpad.net intrepid Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 43C0AFF0D7FAE680
I used the url provided by the second link and substituted this newer key number to search and got one.
I authorized the package then tried to install it.
This time it's xbmc-common that is loading libraries that produce the "bang"! (that shoots the install square in the head)
All this trial and error is really quaint.
So now I'm left to wonder...
A) If the unspecified error related to (now) xbmc-common can be corrected.
B) If "intrepid" was a custom build or one that never actually worked.
C) When XBMC will be packaged soon for Natty (Ubuntu 11.04).
The fact that both builds seem to blow up in similar ways is oddly hopeful since the lib names don't seem to be XBMC-specific. That leads me to suspect there is some other package out there I can load that will resolve the issue.
Thanks