Objective
Popcorn Time streams movies and TV shows from torrents directly into your screen. The objective is to install Popcorn Time movie streamer on Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver Linux.
Warning: There are multiple projects under different domain names claiming to be the “Popcorn Time” movie player on the Internet. These projects are malware clones, so avoid for all cost. The official website of the Popcorn Time movie player is https://popcorntime.sh/
.
This tutorial is available for other Ubuntu Versions:
Operating System and Software Versions
- Operating System: – Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver
- Software: – Popcorn Time 0.3.10
Requirements
Privileged access to your Ubuntu System as root or via sudo
command is required.
Conventions
- # – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of
sudo
command - $ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user
Other Versions of this Tutorial
Instructions
Install Prerequisites
Let’s start by the installation of all prerequisites:
$ sudo apt update && sudo apt install libcanberra-gtk-module libgconf-2-4
Download Popcorn Time binaries
In this section we will download and extract Popcorn Time binaries into the /opt/popcorn-time
directory:
$ sudo mkdir /opt/popcorn-time
Next, download and extract popcorn-time:
FOR 32-BIT SYSTEM EXECUTE: $ sudo wget -O- https://get.popcorntime.sh/build/Popcorn-Time-0.3.10-Linux-32.tar.xz | sudo tar Jx -C /opt/popcorn-time FOR 64-BIT SYSTEM EXECUTE: $ sudo wget -O- https://get.popcorntime.sh/build/Popcorn-Time-0.3.10-Linux-64.tar.xz | sudo tar Jx -C /opt/popcorn-time
Give it some time. Depending on your internet speed the download may take some time.
Create executable link
Now, that Popcorn Time binaries are installed, we will create a symbolic link of the /opt/popcorn-time/Popcorn-Time
binary to /usr/bin/popcorn-time
. This will allow non-privileged users to start Popcorn Time via terminal without any additional configuration:
$ sudo ln -sf /opt/popcorn-time/Popcorn-Time /usr/bin/popcorn-time
Create Desktop Launcher
Open up terminal and use your favorite text editor (eg. vim
) and create the launcher shortcut. The below command uses the vim
editor to create the new /usr/share/applications/popcorntime.desktop
desktop entry:
$ sudo nano /usr/share/applications/popcorntime.desktop
Insert the following content into the above created file:
[Desktop Entry] Version = 1.0 Type = Application Terminal = false Name = Popcorn Time Exec = /usr/bin/popcorn-time Icon = /opt/popcorn-time/popcorntime.png Categories = Application;
Lastly, download the Popcorn Time’s icon:
$ sudo wget -qO /opt/popcorn-time/popcorntime.png goo.gl/wz8ifr