My hardware:

Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra SLI
	
AMD Athlon64 3000+
	
Nvidia Geforce 6200
	
WD 320GB SATAII
	
2GB DDR 400MHz
	
LG DVD-ROM
	
Hauppauge MCE-150 + remote control

Connectors:

SVHS to Sony 34″ CRT TV
Coaxial to Yamaha 595 DD/DTS receiver
RJ-45 to switch (prefer physical over wireless - call me oldfashioned)

Things to notice from the guide: graphics adapter, sound card, remote control.

I don’t believe that CPU/MoBo will make much of a difference.

But note that Geforce 6200 is actually a minimal requirement for this version. An older card will not even bring up X.
OK, let’s begin.
The installation is as dumb as it can be. You’ll have to press enter a couple of times.

Note: it will erase your whole hard drive.

Then the fun begins.

Basically, you may be very happy with the default setup, just add some media sources and you’re done.
I had to change some stuff.
Most of this guide is taken from here.

Note: - because of the 2GB space limit on XBMC Live root partition, XBMC rebuild from SVN is possible only once (after we install ASLA upgrade, there will be no space anymore to do another compilation of XBMC).
Although I think we can fix that with gparted, but let’s just leave it at that right now.

Please note that you have to disregard the “/” near the quotes signs in the “code” sections.
I still haven’t fixed it, so it adds that automatically.

STEP1

Download and install XBMC Live 8.10

STEP2
Download the newest nvidia linux driver from nvidia.com (the file name is „NVIDIA-Linux-x86-180.22-pkg1.run” today)

STEP3
Download ALSA upgrade script (AlsaUpgrade-1.0.x-rev-1.16.tar) from here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6589810

STEP4
Untar the ALSA upgrade sript (tar xvf ),   then you will get a file named: AlsaUpgrade-1.0.x-rev-1.16.sh

STEP5
ssh into  the box - it will make the whole thing much easier. the default user/pass is xbmc/xbmc,
unless you changed it during the installation.

STEP6

sudo mkdir install

and copy over the freshly downloaded nvidia driver and ALSA upgrade srcipt into this dir.

STEP7
Quit from XBMC (choose exit XBMC in the shutdown menu).

STEP8

sudo apt-get update

STEP9

sudo apt-get install make g++-4.1 gcc-4.1 libsdl1.2-dev libsdl-image1.2-dev
libsdl-gfx1.2-dev libsdl-mixer1.2-dev libsdl-sound1.2-dev libsdl-stretch-dev
libfribidi0 libfribidi-dev liblzo1 liblzo-dev libfreetype6 libfreetype6-dev libsqlite3-0
libsqlite3-dev libogg-dev libasound2-dev python-sqlite libglew1.5 libglew1.5-dev
libcurl3-dev g++ gawk x11proto-xinerama-dev libxinerama-dev libxrandr-dev
libxrender-dev pmount libmad0-dev libtre-dev libogg-dev libvorbis-dev
libmysqlclient15-dev libhal1 libhal-dev libhal-storage1 libhal-storage-dev
libpcre3-dev subversion libjasper-dev libjasper1 libfontconfig-dev libbz2-dev
libboost-dev libtool nasm libfaac-dev libenca-dev automake cmake libxt-dev
libxmu-dev gperf unzip libpng12-dev libjpeg62-dev bison libpulse-dev wget
build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`

To upgrade nvidia driver:

STEP10

sudo sh /home/xbmc/install/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-180.22-pkg1.run

In the nvidia installer: accept the License agreement, choose „YES” for „No precompiled kernel interface…”, choose „OK” for „No matching precompiled kernel interface…”, than choose „NO” to update X configuration file, than finally „OK” again at the end.

To update XBMC to the latest SVN

STEP11

cd $HOME

STEP12

svn checkout
https://xbmc.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/xbmc/branches/linuxport/XBMC

Accept the certificate permanently with „p”
Wait for downloading XBMC source files, might be a long time, depends on your Internet connection.

After it’s downloaded:
STEP13

cd XBMC

STEP14

./configure --prefix=/usr

STEP15

sudo make

STEP16
This again, can take some time, depends on your CPU speed. After it has compiled:

You have to preserve a file from the original XBMC Live system directory in order to have python (plugin) capabilities later:
STEP17

sudo mv /usr/share/xbmc/system/python/python24.zip /home/xbmc/install/

STEP18

sudo rm -r /usr/share/xbmc

STEP19

sudo make install

STEP20

sudo mv /home/xbmc/install/python24.zip /usr/share/xbmc/system/python/

STEP21
You will need to delete the source files (free up some disk space for next steps):

sudo rm -r /home/xbmc/XBMC

STEP22

sudo reboot

After the reboot, go to the shutdown menu in XBMC and check system info for compilation date. If it’s today, than you updated successfully.

STEP23
Quit from XBMC (choose exit XBMC in the shutdown menu).
SSH into the box again.
To check if nvidia driver update was OK:

grep -i \"x driver\" /var/log/Xorg.0.log

You will see the driver version here.

To upgrade ALSA and enable digital (SPDIF or HDMI sound):

STEP24

sudo /home/xbmc/install/AlsaUpgrade-1.0.x-rev-1.16.sh -d

It will tell you to wait. What you can do is login to another ssh session and tail the log to see the
current position.
STEP25

sudo /home/xbmc/install/AlsaUpgrade-1.0.x-rev-1.16.sh -snap

STEP26

sudo /home/xbmc/install/AlsaUpgrade-1.0.x-rev-1.16.sh -i

STEP27

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base

and add this line at the end of the file:
STEP28

options snd-hda-intel model=6stack-dig

STEP29

alsamixer

Note that you should see Alsamixer v1.0.19 (at the moment) in the title.
Navigate right with cursor keys until IEC958 and unmute all of them (IEC958, IEC958-D, IEC958-1) with „M” key. You should see in case of all IEC958 a „00” in green background. Press „ESC” to quit from alsamixer.
STEP30
After booted into XBMC switch to „digital” audio output, than choose the AC3 and DTS capabilities according to your receiver.
For SPDIF: leave audio output device: default and passthrough on IEC958
For HDMI: change both audio output device and passthrough to hdmi (you will loose analog sound eg. navigation sound in case of hdmi).

Now, as a cleanup, you might want to delete the temp, source dirs:

STEP31

sudo rm -r /home/xbmc/install/

STEP32

sudo rm -r /usr/src/Alsa-1.0.19a/

Here ends the part from the guide I followed and begins the part of other tweaks I did.
Most of them found on different threads of the forum.