Quick copy-paste instructions to get up-and-running instantly:
sudo apt-get install git-core cmake libglut3-dev pkg-config build-essential libxmu-dev libxi-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev git clone git://github.com/OpenKinect/libfreenect.git cd libfreenect mkdir build cd build cmake .. make sudo make install sudo ldconfig /usr/local/lib64/ sudo glview
Note: If you getting an error saying apt-get cannot find libglut3, you might be on a newer version of Ubuntu that has freeglut3-* instead of libglut3-*, so your initial apt-get install would look like:
sudo apt-get install git-core cmake freeglut3-dev pkg-config build-essential libxmu-dev libxi-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev
To use Kinect as a non-root user do the following:
sudo adduser $USER video
Also make a file with rules for the Linux device manager:
sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/51-kinect.rules