Not too sure if you guys are looking around at some of the super lightweight distros of linux, but I have found a project called xPud. It's an ubuntu based lightweight distro that boots in ten seconds or less.
My question is whether or not anyone has been able to set up an xbmcbuntu set top box setup on something like xPud. I'm thinking about setting up a mini itx system that mounts to the back of a lcd monitor and is networked with my server, but I want something that cold boots in around 10 seconds.
I am all ears about going with a system that anyone has achieved this goal no matter what system setup you have used. I am not a linux master, in fact I am a novice, but I am willing to put in the time to get it right. I will do the research also.
There is a thread about Moblin around somewhere, which is a similar light weight distro. There are how-to's on getting it running.
Why do you want <10 second cold booting when you could achieve <10 second 'booting' much easier using suspend and wake?
I wasn't really thinking about suspend and wake. I suppose that could work. I was also thinking about upgrades. In the situation of upgrading xbmc or the OS, restarts are usually necessary. I was hoping to cut down that restart time. I suppose the suspend and wake function will work for me.
I'm still looking at lightweight distros that allow me to graphically share files and setup up shares over my network because I can't seem to figure out the whole command line setup for sharing and also copying is the main thing. Unfortunately I need a GUI to get files where they need to be. Truthfully, I don't have the time or the patience to figure out the command line and that is also beyond the scope of what i want to do.
I think Moblin is the fastest at the moment, I have it installed and it takes about 5 seconds to boot _after_ post, the post actually takes longer then Moblin + XBMC.
I'm wondering if maybe an EFI BIOS board would be faster...
Note though the 5 secs are attained with a Vertex SSD.
so you installed xbmc on a moblin setup? I am just curious about the file manager of moblin. I have seen the GUI and it looks very simple. Does it give you network management abilities?
keeganl Wrote:so you installed xbmc on a moblin setup? I am just curious about the file manager of moblin. I have seen the GUI and it looks very simple. Does it give you network management abilities?
I do not load the GDM/Clutter interface, I jump straight into XBMC. But there are network management tools on the repository, I know Samba is on there and it has regular file management by default. (both the regular and the dev image do).
The dev-image offer a more traditional GUI (no clutter interface).
Moblin thread:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=52142.
The tutorial on the first page is currently offline, but coming back soon from what I understand. On page 3 and 4 are other tutorials on how to install both Moblin and XBMC.
The filemanager is Nautilus btw.
thanks a lot. I dig around these forums all the time and this goes to show how much info there really is here. hopefully I will have a nice system setup soon.