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I have an oldish Gateway with Ubuntu. It has a 500MHZ PIII, a NVIDA GeForce graphics card that I am planning to upgrade to one with S-Video, and almost 400mb of ram.
Is there Ubuntu software or another distribution that I could use to make this a good media center box that I could operate with ease on my TV via a remote.
Also, where could I get a compatable remote?
I am really a linux noob, and got lucky with an instal of Ubuntu with no issues.
Knoppmyth is probably your best bet. It is debian based like Ubuntu. Google knoppmyth to find the website. There is also a FedoraMythology site but that is for a more detailed process.
Being "debian based" means that the package tools used to update the software installed are the same. Ubuntu, Knoppix, and Debian all use dpkg and apt-get.
I'd imagine it includes all the codecs, but that should be on their website. I built a gentoo MythTV box, so I had to get the codecs through the gentoo package tools. www.pcalchemy.com has hardware for HTPCs, but again I don't know which remote you want to use and I don't know the differences between the configurations I have and the configurations you need. It is widely known that Knoppmyth is supposed to be the easiest MythTV setup.
I am getting ready to download an ISO, but I was wondering if I could try it out before I use it. In other words, can I dual-boot it with Ubuntu before installing. If something doesn't work out, I don't want to have to reconfigure Ubuntu the way I like it.
Also, I have some HDTV files I got from Bittorrent. They are 350MB for 40 minutes of content.
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