Home Media Center - Setting up the Virtual Python Environment

Brian Lane's instructions are very good, but on Ubuntu 10.04 thing are somewhat different.  For example to install "Development Tools" under Fedora you use the command yum groupinstall "development tools"  but under Ubuntu the command is sudo apt-get install build-essential.  However, I was still getting errors after installing all of the requirements.  What was needed was to install python2.6-dev.  Once I solved the missing piece the virtual environment setup went smoothly.  My home media server is now waiting for someone to access it!