Mythbuntu is a Media Centre operating system. It is based in the Ubuntu Linux distribution and centred around MythTV, the open source Home Theatre PC software. MythTV is one of the most powerful Home Theatre packages around; combining a PVR (personal video recorder) with network streaming of all multimedia content. TV programmes can be scheduled for single or series recording, with multiple TV cards supported. It can also record more than one channel from each digital TV card.

MythTV has many additional plugins available to copy recorded content to DVD, view galleries of still images, convert video content for viewing on a number of portable devices, browse RSS news feeds, show weather forecasts and much, much more. TV programmes and videos stored on a Mythbuntu computer can be watched on other computers on your network, running Linux, Windows or MacOS.

MythTV is regarded as powerful but a bit of a beast to set up. By building a distribution around it, Mythbuntu takes care of most of the work when it is installed, leaving you to tell it about your TV cards, pick a theme and decide which programmes you want to record. Mythbuntu does not include the office and email suites of a standard Ubuntu installation, although these can be installed with a couple of mouse clicks if you want a more general purpose setup.