[ClientAlive]

Hi,

Someone on #linux referred me to xbmc. I have to admit, it's obviously really awesome. What I need to know before I install it though is if it is the right thing for what I'm trying to do. In some of the descriptions I've seen about xbmc I see the clause "media player" and that it's meant to be accessed through the tv, not a computer. Though I'm sure it's possible, what I'm really looking for is not just "possible" but the really right tool for the job.

What I'm looking for is something I can install on my desktop (runs ubuntu server and will basically run/ be booted up all the time) and will stream movies and music to my laptop. I thought I would then just use vlc to open the stream and watch the movie or whatever.

Perhaps I don't understand how xbmc works when I say something like the above - bottom line though is I'm trying to serve up media to my other computers (any computer with access rights for that matter) in a way that the data remains on the desktop altogether.

Is xmbc really the best thing for that or is there something else I should be looking for?

Thanks in advance for any input.

Sincerely,
Jake

[artrafael]

Welcome to the XBMC forums.

Using XBMC solely as a media server is overkill and not its primary mission. It is a Media Center application for organizing, presenting and consuming various media content. Rather than just reading descriptions, you can get a much better feel of what XBMC is by running it in "live" mode on a CD or USB flash drive and putting it through it paces:
http://mirrors.xbmc.org/releases/XBMCbun...u-11.0.iso

[rdarwish]

MediaTomb (http://mediatomb.cc) - may be more what you are looking for. While XBMC can be used as a server in a sense, it is really more of a media player. I do have it installed on a number of machines, and they all suck their media from one "server" machine, but if I wasn't using the server as a fronted/media player as well, I would have just used a media server like mediatomb instead.

A lot of the code/uses of XBMC are really geared towards the actual playback of the media on the host machine, so you won't be getting a lot of use out of it. You could use mediatomb on the server, then install xbmc on your laptop, point it at your mediatomb server, and watch your media that way. But you don't even have to do that if you don't want to make it that complicated. You could just store your media on the server, share the drives/shares/locations on the network, then add them to xbmc on your laptop, and use it that way, but then understand that you wouldn't be able to see your media without a network connection to your server. But then again, that's true with mediatomb or any media server as well.

You can also look into plex media server which runs on Ubuntu: http://www.plexapp.com/linux/linux-pms-download.php. You could also install this on the server, then "use" it through either xbmc or plex on your laptop.

Good luck!