Kodi Community Forum

AaronD Wrote:Hi,

I am in the same boat as the author of this thread. I'm a software developer with excellent knowledge of Windows, and next to no experience with Linux. I have been considering switching to Linux for the following (real or perceived) benefits.

1. I'm very keen to get the tv side of things working - want to use Mythtv backend and BMC as a frontend.

2. Sick of my nVidia driver locking up while playing video in XBMC. I've honestly never had this problem in Windows with any other app, but I frequently get a black screen and XBMC locks up while playing videos. I have to kill it off from task manager and restart - then try and find where I was up to in the video.

3. Media center as an appliance - it sounds like this might be a misconception, but I think there is a widely held perception that Linux is better to use than Windows where you want a dedicated appliance.

I had downloaded Mythbuntu ISO, backed up my Vista HTPC to an image and was all set to do the switch over on the weekend. Then, I started talking to the embedded engineers at work and low and behold found that they all run Linux at home on media centers (no surprise there I guess) and long story short they told me I should go with OpenSUSE. It doesn't mean much to me, but one of them explained to me at lengths today the difference - really evangalized OpenSuse over any Ubuntu distro - and told me (in response to my question) that the reason I only ever see mention of Ubuntu in the forums here is that OpenSUSE "just works and never causes any problems" as opposed to Ubuntu.

So now I have two CDs here - one for Mythbuntu and one for OpenSUSE - and I am unsure which one to go with.

I think if I go with OpenSUSE I can get lots of support from the guys at work, but none of them use XBMC (yet!). But I can get lots of Ubuntu + XBMC support on the forums here by the sound of it.

Any thoughts? Any other views apart from what I have been told repeatedly at work that Ubuntu cuses all sorts of problems and SUSE just works!? And are my goals of Mythtv and XBMC acheivable? I know the limitations at the moment with requiring the Mythtv script, but I am preparing myself for the day that we get proper Mythtv integration.

Many thanks

RPM based distros have been largely out of favour for a while. Lots of misconceptions about them imo, as long as you know what you're doing, and are prepared to work a little harder than simply following a cut+paste list of instructions to get XBMC up and running it'll be fine.

I've heard good things about Arch Linux too.



motd

motd2k Wrote:I've heard good things about Arch Linux too.

As for xbmc it is relatively simple as there's a so called PKGBUILD available to build it directly from SVN. Unfortunately i wouldn't recomment Arch for anyone with next to no knowledge on linux. You simply have to know fundamental concepts of linux and how it works or you won't have that much fun with it in the beginning. Remember: A newly installed arch has neither X nor any fancy app running and there are no fancy gui interfaces to system configuration or maintenance - just the good old tty :-)

EDIT: As for Ubuntu vs. OpenSUSE: Now that is a funny claim 'OpenSUSE just works'. In over ten years of linux i never came upon a distro that 'just works'. I guess that's the price of freedom but so what. Windows neither 'just works' - and so is OS X. As for Ubuntu at least it is debian based and thus SHOULD be rock solid and RPM free. I fully agree to motd2k RPM being the source for many troubles since its beginning.

Haggy Wrote:As for Ubuntu vs. OpenSUSE: Now that is a funny claim 'OpenSUSE just works'. In over ten years of linux i never came upon a distro that 'just works'. I guess that's the price of freedom but so what. Windows neither 'just works' - and so is OS X. As for Ubuntu at least it is debian based and thus SHOULD be rock solid and RPM free. I fully agree to motd2k RPM being the source for many troubles since its beginning.

I have to agree in part. I run a network of several hundred machines in a mixed environment and the ONLY thing I hate about it is the 1 SLES (Suse Linux Enterprise Server) box, it is a complete Bollocks to upgrade and maintain, all my redhat & debain based systems are little to no hassle to maintain. In saying this I will say that openSuSe may be different in some respects the last time I tried SuSe for home use was some 5 years ago.

that's just my £0.02.

Distro war round 1 - Fight!

Linux sucks. why any one would not want to use windows blows my mind...

I'm willing to test out linux just for the VDPAU and supposed perfect MCE remote functionality.

I already have 2 Vista dedicated XBMC PCs working perfectly, including sleep and wake from sleep and full USB-UIRT + Harmony remote functionality. It takes less time for the PC to wake then it takes for my TV to be ready for a picture (Samsung 61A750 and PN50A650).

Edit - BTW, Vista puts machines into sleep and wakes much faster than XP. I don't know why.

I vote for both!

onesojourner Wrote:Linux sucks. why any one would not want to use windows blows my mind...

Ykes - someone forgot the <irony>-tags :-)

olympia Wrote:FYI, I updated the guide recently with the optional installation of vdpau branch.
You can use -j2, there is no problem with that.
.xsession also has been modified.

Are you sure the guide is updatet? Because I can't find anything like vdpau in it...

I made the move 2 weeks ago and I say give it a try!

I moved from Vista MCE to Ubuntu XBMC and I am not going back. I am a very experienced windows user/ IT professional with no linux competence.

Yes, it takes some more time and it is not hassle free. BUT it is license free AND the result is better.

Like Sethar I have spent some time on the MCE remote. BTW it works fine now, start, kill and shutdown computer. Let me know if I can help.

I actually managed to miss the existence of XBMC Live until today and I have taken a different approach. I have been reading in the Linux forum about the boot directly into XBMC solutions with no window manager. I see the point of course, but my conclusion was that as a Linux newbie it is convenient to be able to drop out to the standard OS GUI to handle non media center admin tasks and trouble shooting, e.g. wireless and security setup. I am quite surprised that many users with very limited experience take the “minimal” road. I am considering a compromise where I auto start XBMC into twm but with Gnome or Xfce installed and maybe default for a separate admin user.

My trial setup is on top of Gnome and I just found out that I can create a Live CD / Distro from my running setup with Remastersys. This blew me away and I have totally surrendered to Linux. I have only tested as Live CD but if the installer works as good as the rest of the package, this could be away to pre-pack for less experience users.

(Yes, some text is stolen from myself in another thread)
//J

So you didn't follow the guide posted in this forum using the "minimal ubuntu installtion"?
Would you tell me how you did it? Or where I can find a guide. It would be much easier for me using a graphical interface, but i don't know where to start =)
In 2 days I will get my nVidia 9400 and then I want to install Ubuntu on my HTPC. So if you don't mind it would be very helpful if you could explain me what I have to do

post deleted

No, it was too complicated for me.
I think the greatest advantage is not the actual setup but that olympia is VERY helpful and service minded.

Please note that I have a basic setup with no digital sound and no HDMI.
However, I am guessing the solutions from other threads for these more complex issues will also apply in my basic setup. (Unless it says "DO NOT USE if you have GDM installed")

I have notes from my installation that I can post later but need to sleep soon.
I based it on a standard Ubuntu (for now with Gnome). I quickly moved from 8.10 to 8.04 due to problem with ATI and Alsa. I had issues also on 8.04 though, so I am not sure which one is best. Will probably keep 8.04 and then go for 9.04.

I then installed XBMC according to http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=33327
I did not use the SVN but the standard HARDY PPA. Only problem was to figure out the keys, but I think if read the text more carefully it would have been easy.

I then only had to apply two fixes:
1) Movies playes in top left corner - easy fix in user settings xml
2) Some flags had be set in Xorg or something like that to prevent the power savings to kick-in.

And then
3)Set the xbmc user to auto log-in
4) and xbmc center to autostart.

Will post detailed notes later.

The big work was the Remote setup.
I have already put the notes for that one web for my own use.
http://vikjonlinuxhowto.blogspot.com/sea...R%20Remote
(since I lost the first copy when re-installing ubuntu)

I will be back

Ok,I posted a draft installation howto for a basic XBMC setup on Ubuntu without a lot of tweaking.

http://vikjonlinuxhowto.blogspot.com/200...p-v05.html

It is based on my notes for own use, but I will expand if anyone need it....

//J

Thanks a lot! It will definitely help me setting up my HTPC tomorrow =)