Prepare installation media
Base installation of Linux Mint
- Follow the standard Linux Mint installation procedure - choose timezone, partitions, username, password etc.
- Disconnect the installation media and reboot.
- Login using previously selected username and password.
XBMC and VLC
- XBMC and VLC are well known free and open-source multimedia players
- Both of them use GPU accelerated video decoding and give exellent playback quality
- Both of them compatible with the most popular video formats
sudo apt-get install xbmc vlc vainfo i965-va-driver
- XBMC will support GPU accelerated video decoding out of the box
- In VLC you need to check Tools->Preferences->Input and Codecs->Use GPU accelerated decoding checkbox to take advantage of GPU accelerated video decoding