The first point release of Kodi 20 ‘Nexus’ is out today after almost 2 months of development.

As the title said, the new Kodi 20.1 includes mainly bug-fixes. It introduced a new algorithm to look to overcome some audio issues on Android devices. Fixed DVD playback folder structures over network sources (e.g. SMB/NFS/HTTP, etc.)

Other changes include:

• Assorted fixes to the new Savestate Manager to improve usability.
• An assortment of OSD improvements
• A number of performance improvements (memory reads, faster dialogs/savestates).
• Input fixes allow resetting multitap controller inputs
• Sync of some of the common controller types
• Fixes various overflows when using new chrono infrastructure.
• A fix for an issue on 32-bit systems that affected the sorting of items.
• Resolve PVR Channel Groups to correctly show channels ordered as provided by a PVR backend.
• A couple of fixes for WebVTT subtitles

How to Install Kode 20.1 in Ubuntu

Kodi website provides the downloads for all supported platforms.

For Ubuntu and Linux Mint users, the official PPA repository is one of the best choices to install the media play. So far, it supports Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 22.10, Ubuntu 23.04, Linux Mint 20/21.

1. First, open terminal by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc/ppa

Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it asks and hit Enter to continue.

2. Software Updater may not upgrade the media center if an old version was installed in Ubuntu 22.04. Instead it show ‘Partial Updates’ issue.

As a workaround, either run apt install command below:

sudo apt install kodi kodi-bin

Or run sudo apt full-upgrade to install all available updates (you may still need to install kodi-bin manually). For Linux Mint, run sudo apt update before doing updates!

How to Uninstall:

For choice, you can either run command in terminal to purge the PPA, which will downgrade Kodi to stock version in system repository:

sudo apt install ppa-purge && ppa:team-xbmc/ppa

Or manually remove the software package via command:

sudo apt remove kodi kodi-bin --autoremove

And remove the PPA via command as you prefer:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:team-xbmc/ppa

The popular FFmpeg multimedia library announced the new major 6.0 (updated to v6.1). Here are the new features and how to install guide for Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 20.04, and Ubuntu 18.04.

FFmpeg 6.0, code name “Von Neumann”, features new decoders support, including Bonk, Micronas SC-4, APAC, ViewQuest VQC, RKA, Radiance, WavArc, CBD2 DPCM and a few ADPCM formats.

There are also QSV and NVenc AV1 encoding, VAAPI and QSV decoding and encoding for 10/12bit 422, 10/12bit 444 HEVC and VP9.

Other changes FFmpeg 6.0 include:

• New audio and video filters, such as adrc, afdelaysrc, corr, showcwt, backgroundkey, a3dscope, ddagrab, ssim360, hstack_qsv, vstack_qsv and xstack_qsv filters
• Radiance HDR image support
• Add new mode to cropdetect filter to detect crop-area based on motion vectors and edges
• WBMP (Wireless Application Protocol Bitmap) image format
• LAF, SDNS demuxer
• DTS to PTS reorder bsf
• backgroundkey filter, showcwt multimedia filter
• hstack_vaapi, vstack_vaapi and xstack_vaapi filters
• MediaCodec decoder via NDKMediaCodec and encoder
• oneVPL support for QSV
• ffmpeg CLI new options: -stats_enc_pre[_fmt], -stats_enc_post[_fmt], -stats_mux_pre[_fmt]
• media100 to mjpegb bsf
• ffmpeg CLI new option: -fix_sub_duration_heartbeat
• CrystalHD decoders deprecated
• RKA, WavArc, XMD ADPCM, WADY DPCM decoder and demuxer
• filtergraph syntax in ffmpeg CLI now supports passing file contents as option values

NOTE: Upgrade FFmpeg library in Ubuntu may break other apps and/or run into dependency issue!! You must know how to restore. And don’t do it in production machine!!

How to Install FFmpeg (6.1 Updated) via PPA in Ubuntu:

As many users reported, the Rob Savoury’s PPA seems broken due to dependency issue.

So, I upload the  FFmpeg 6 and its dependency libraries into this unofficial PPA for those need FFmpeg 6.

NOTE: 1. The PPA so far is for Ubuntu 22.04 only!
NOTE: 2. The packages seem working good in my case. But it may or may not work for you! Use it at your own risk!

1. First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open a terminal window. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/ffmpeg6

Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it asks and hit Enter to continue.

2. For Linux Mint 21, you need to manually refresh package cache after adding PPA. To do so, run command:

sudo apt update

3. Finally, run the command below to either install or upgrade to FFmpeg 6.1:

sudo apt install ffmpeg

In case of in-complete installation, it’s HIGHLY recommend to run sudo apt upgrade to upgrade all the packages to the latest versions.

4. After installation, run the command below in terminal to verify:

ffmpeg --version

How to Downgrade FFmpeg library:

In case you want to downgrade the FFmpeg library to the stock version available in system repository. Open terminal and run command:

sudo apt install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/ffmpeg6

NOTE: Keep an eye on terminal output before answering yes to confirm! It MAY remove some other useful app packages.