Boxee + Ubuntu 9.04 + WPA Issues
Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 10:04AM 
I have been doing some testing of the Boxee Alpha release - for Ubuntu 9.04.
My test rig:
ASUS P5W DH Deluxe
4 Gig Ram
Intel Core 2 Duo - E6400 - overclocked to 2.8Ghz from 2.13Ghz
Nvidia GeForce 6200
Ubuntu 9.04 installed flawlessly and fast - I also set Ubuntu to auto login. After loading up, I did a full system update and selected to use the proprietary Nvidia video drivers. I have the PC hooked up to the tv via a HDMI to DVI cable - and Ubuntu detects the native resolution of my tv perfectly. I have audio hooked up to the green headphone jack on the back of the mobo.
Boxee was installed via the instructions on my Boxee login. After it is installed, I found the Boxee icon under the Audio/Video menu, and right clicked to put the icon on the desktop. From there, I right clicked the icon to add this program to the start up. So now when Ubuntu boots up, it auto logs in, and opens up Boxee full screen!
When running Boxee, and viewing internet video, I was having choppy sound and video sync issues. This is the same experience I had with Ubuntu 8.10. Ubuntu 8.04 didn't have this issue BTW. After searching the Boxee forums, I found one issue related to this popping up - something wrong with the Pulse Audio drivers - or related to that.
So I ran
sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio
Now the video and audio sync issue went away!
Finally, since I have been testing this rig hooked up to the TV, I've been using the mobo's onboard wifi for the net connection. Unfortunately, looks like Ubuntu 9.04 has a wifi WPA issue with the USB Realtek wifi driver, where it can not remember the WPA key - I can't believe this major bug hasn't been squashed yet - and even more surprised that it has carried over from previous versions of Ubuntu?!!!! See these links:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/182473
http://aircrack-ng.org/doku.php?id=r8187&DokuWiki=df606c53c8f63cccc89292219b478c97
WTF, is it too much to expect Ubuntu to be plug and play?! Oh well, I guess it doesn't really matter since Boxee is still in Alpha right!?!?
For those that don't know what the hell Boxee is - check out this video:
