[Duduke]

Guys,

In an effort to start something we "Users" can help in, let's start throwing ideas towards creating a very small bootable version of XBMC LE (XBMC Linux Edition).

I think the goal should be to create a <1GB version booting directly into XBMC, available as either a self booting CD or USB that can be installed on an regular HDD.

[rodalpho]

That's already in the works, once they finish initial porting. XBMC/linux is usable at this point, but it has a ton of work left before it's ready for joe user.

[BLKMGK]

I think that due to issues with deCSS and other things that at least some of the code will have to be downloaded once the Distro has been installed no matter what. I'm using MythUbuntu right now as a base and find that DVD playback isn't working for me but does for others using different distro. Obviously having a straightforward method to get stuff like that working without running into DMCA issues or license problems distributing straight binary drivers for say video could be tricky. Identifying potential candidates is probably not a bad idea but I don't think I'd put effort towards customization yet.

So far an Ubuntu sort of distro (Debian yes?) looks to be desirable and favored - lots of work already done there and repositories too. Something that will setup Lirc and allow for easy video driver would be nice (ENVY rox!). ALSA audio with a default to unmute digital outputs. Mint was mentioned as working and in my brief look at it I saw nice things but I chickened out on trying it just yet. Honestly I'm almost wishing I'd used desktop Ubuntu just to have the nicer window manager etc. as I'm not sure that running something "stripped down" bought me much more than some added disk space and a slick install of Myth. As time goes on and I bump into things I need I download them - slowly bringing my install up to where something fatter might have made sense.

Why the desire for a 1Gig limit? Are folks looking to run this from flash drives? I'm using a 250Gig laptop drive comfortably and silently right now. 500Gig 3.5inch drives can be found pretty easily so I'm curious as to what you think this economy would be getting us. Running from flash would rock though but at what expense?

[seven5]

Why the desire for a 1Gig limit? Are folks looking to run this from flash drives? I'm using a 250Gig laptop drive comfortably and silently right now. 500Gig 3.5inch drives can be found pretty easily so I'm curious as to what you think this economy would be getting us. Running from flash would rock though but at what expense?

I definitely would like to run this from a compact flash card if I could. For noise and heat. This would be totally ideal.

[pike]

user L.Capriotti on this forum has created a PROOF-OF-CONCEPT 300MB disk image that can be written to a USB Flash of 512MB or greater size and then booted straight into XBMC Linux

Ofcourse it's way too early for anything final here, but it's not too early to start planning the best environment to use

L.Capriotti currently uses some form of Ubuntu Mobile, it's best if he tells you the details himself as I don't know them

[BLKMGK]

Well, 4-8Gig USB flash drives are going for less than $30 out this way via Microcenter. These are generic devices but if you ran them in something with enough memory that didn't swap this would probably fly from a RAM disk - my NAS does this now. I guess with my music and DVD databases I don't see myself doing this but for say a car-PC it would really rock! Hrm, my NAV system can be hacked to display video.... I think I want it running on my fat PC first! Slimming it down after working "perfectly" on something fat would probably be easier wouldn't it?

Anything that's got big heat issues isn't likely to be running a fast enough CPU for HD I think. That said - the new C2D have apparently hit the street here in limited quantities. Not yet on the likes of NewEgg but a brick and mortar store was selling them as part of a bundle for $189. That was for a 45nm 3Ghz C2D CPU. These run noticeably cooler, have 2meg more cache, consume 20W less power, and have been clocked as high as 4Ghz on pre-release silicon while still running cool. Maybe something like that in the trunk of the car isn't too far fetched?

Take a look at the WD Passport line of USB drives. These are easy to open and have 2.5inch SATA drives inside. The connectors are standard SATA and the drive isn't even getting warm in my machine....

[topfs2]

I found this on the ubuntu Mobile.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MobileAndEmbedde...rUMEDevice

The only thing I want if ubuntu mobile is choosen is that driver support isn't crippled.

[topfs2]

Hmm, seems I missed that the image-creator isn't for x86 :/

[lcapriotti]

Time to set a checkpoint on the USB image...

The Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded (UME) edition is being developed taking into account the current and next generation of low-power processor and chipset architectures. However, all the tools and design features are made immediately available for the generic Ubuntu distro, making it suitable for a generic i386 architecture as well.

When I started playing with UME I thought that a set-top box like appliance has many similarities to a portable device, i.e. it must boot fast, support any power cuts gracefully, provide a sort of controlled environment where modifications to the core system are arbitrated, etc.

So I started using the UME SDK (a.k.a. PDK, Platform Development Kit) and managed to create an i386 platform for a generic PC (see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CreatingAGeneric...formForMIC).
With these small (!!!) bits in place the PDK is able to produce read-only and R/W LiveUSB images, as well as an install USB image for an internal hard disk installation.

The current test image has support for Intel GPUs only, has a fresh build of XBMC-linux running as the X11 "shell" full screen (no window manager), mounts USB flash disks automatically and has ssh and ftp servers running at boot - DHCP server needed. All xorg drivers included in the standard ubuntu distro are already included, but a custom xorg.conf is needed to enable them.
Everything included is around 300 MB, where 100 MB is XBMC only... Size can be trimmed by removing lots of stuff (unused xorg drivers as an example), but it's not a priority right now.

The image is currently not available in the public since we are still looking for a suitable hosting solution, but hopefully an announcement will be possible in a short time. However, take into account that this is a PROOF-OF-CONCEPT only, it won't be supported by the core developers and myself

Besides, there are areas needing improvements, such as faster boot time: right now it's similar to a full Ubuntu system, i.e. around 30 seconds from power switch to XBMC running full screen on a low-end C2D.

Anyway, stay tuned for more developments and feel free to comment and provide any feedback/ideas.

Cheers

Luigi

[ajje]

Thanks! Sounds great! i was hoping someone was working on something like this...
No window manager? something like direct rendered Framebuffer then?
ir remote support?
Can't wait to try it out!

[pike]

problem with Lirc is that it needs to be customized to your setup
This is why a future image like this will be for a target platform and not a generic image

[topfs2]

Thanks! Sounds great! i was hoping someone was working on something like this...
No window manager? something like direct rendered Framebuffer then?
ir remote support?
Can't wait to try it out!

the framebuffer is the one that renders it and the window manager gives the borders of the windows. Probably more but I'm not sure. As XBMC will be the only App that will be running the usual window manager isn't needed.
XBMC has almost it's own window manager wich it uses to manage what you see and what is active.

If you look at ubuntu you have 2 default in the latest release. Compiz fusion and Metacity. You can run any of these and none of these, you'd still get an image on the screen, this is what the framebuffer does.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framebuffer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_Manager

[Gamester17]

The image is currently not available in the public since we are still looking for a suitable hosting solution, but hopefully an announcement will be possible in a short time. However, take into account that this is a PROOF-OF-CONCEPT only, it won't be supported by the core developers and myself

It will need to be discussed within Team-XBMC first but if there are nothing in there that is copyrighted in a why making it illegal to distribute then I see no reason why we should not be able to host in the official XBMC SVN on our SourceForge.net project.

I was thinking that we where going to look into using Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded (UME) Edition as the base for our official XBMC Linux distro, however we have not prioritized that since there is so much else to do first. Maybe it would be a good idea to start an parallel sub-project for this now.

OFF-TOPIC (this is only a FYI so please do not reply to this in this topic thread!): The idea was originally that we where going to wait until XBMC for Linux was stable enough for anyone to use, then we where planning on choosing one or two specific hardware platforms that Team-XBMC going to officially support, make a Linux distro prepackaged with XBMC designed to run on that/those specific hardware platform(s) and that would be the only thing that Team-XBMC would officially support (others could of course choose to support XBMC on any hardware if they want, but not in our official XBMC forums). Now, maybe what we should do while we wait until XBMC for Linux get stable enough for that, (and there is no hardware chosen yet), is to start today already with making the above mentioned XBMC Linux distro as a generic x86 (i386 32-bit) version based on Ubuntu UME that could be installed on any computer, then only later lock it down when XBMC for Linux has become stable enough and we have selected those specific hardware platforms. This could help us making sure that the Linux distro itself is stable enough as well.

[ajje]

Aha! Thanks for the info Topfs2 and pike!

problem with Lirc is that it needs to be customized to your setup
This is why a future image like this will be for a target platform and not a generic image

Would be sweet with a online "iso-generator" where you choose your gfx card and remote and out comes a iso ready for download...

[Gamester17]

Maybe create a initial configuration script similar to a Mythbuntu installation, with ENVY included?

...again, not as a permanent solution, only as a workaround until a hardware platform been selected.