[touc]

Hi,

I'm new to XBMC and I've just bought a Shuttle XS35GT to install it on, but which flavour of XBMC should I use ?

The box will be used mainly for viewing DVDs (ISOs), Music (flac & mp3). It also needs to be able to play iPlayer from the BBC. Additionally, I would like the ability to occasionally browse the web. My library is stored on another Ubuntu computer and I generally pull data from this using NFS.

So which flavour of XBMC is likely to meet this needs with the minimum of pain ? Obvious candidates are XBMC Live, XBMC for Linux and XBMC on Openelec - perhaps there are more.

What I really want to avoid is spending time setting this up for one distribution and then finding out everything I want is not available on that distribution.

Cheers
Steve

[gobbledigook]

try it out with live and see what you think

if you like it then you can install as standalone on linux osx or windows whatever you feel more comfortable with... ubuntu for me

there is an iplayer plugin although not officially supported i beleive... and a browser plugin too!

[outleradam]

XBMCLive is designed from the ground up to take care of all issues with running XBMC. XBMC Live will essentially turn you computer into a dedicated media center without any other software to cause problems and add issues. XBMCLive is the best way to go for a dedicated media center.

The next best way to go is to install ubuntu 10.04 and install XBMC on that. This is a much less streamlined process which may leave you to have to install other software and add configuration options on your own.

You may look at possibly installing XBMCLive, then dropping to the console and installing package ubuntu-netbook or ubuntu-desktop.

XBMCLive=Easy to use XBMC
XBMCLinux=Easy to use for other things.

[bmcclure937]

OpenELEC [openelec.tv]

[Shaker666]

I agree with outleradam. XBMC Live first, then Ubuntu w/XBMC, followed by whatever else. I like the streamlined installation that Live provides, although I've had my own issues that have required extensive research to resolve.

[CASHMON3Y]

I have heard alot about openelec, but just for ease of use I use the XBMC Live version. Everything works perfect for me!

[therionate]

If you want a quick and easy setup, without the pain of installing every driver and to be able to try it temporarily (on ex. an USB stick) you should try OpenELEC. If you like to do everything by yourself and have some more options (which require knowledge of Linux), install Live. At last you have XBMCfreak, which makes things also a lot easier than Live (and the Ubuntu version), because it automatically installs the drivers for you. The downsite of it (and also for Live) is the very large image you have to install compared to OpenELEC.

In my opinion, installing Ubuntu or Windows first is useless. Only if you want to use your box as a complete desktop computer this is usefull, otherwise you spoil a lot of time and HDD space for nothing.

[touc]

Thanks for the responses everyone. I'll start with XBMC Live and see how that goes.

Cheers,
Steve