Does anyone know of a variant of a major distro that can perform in a similar way to the new Microsoft "Media Center" offering (the platform that is stripped down to simple media controls and easy internet.)

???

I was wondering because I know Red Hat has many flavors of their distrobutions, some being for simple kiosk style operation, all the way up to ultra-multi-faceted OS's for enterprise level operation.

Is there anything custom tailored to a media driven hardware platform? Maybe with a real clean interface and good media control?

Just wondering if anyone knows anything or has any ideas!!!

Thanks a lot!

im not sure if this is what you are talking about but evilentity (undeadlinux.com) is made for multimedia power users and (despite the name) has recieved good reviews in those and other respects

Thanks for the lead. You are right, the name is definitely not palatable (since I want this option to offer potential low-end users like old ladies and kids!)

Are there any other offerings that have good reviews, are stable, and have a nice skin?

Thanks people!

I use Redhat 8 with MythTV. Works well. It is a Linux PVR system with extended features such as mp3 playback, image viewer, weather update etc

Thanks kindly for the lead. I think this mythTV might be the direction I should go in.

You have no problems with rh 8 and mythTV, I'm guessing? Any advice or pre-advice for someone who plans on giving it a whirl?


Thanks again cmisip!

Most problems I initially encountered and many users have is with audio configuration. Make sure you have a sound card supported by the latest alsa drivers. I have an sb live 5.1 and it works well. Santa Cruz does not. There is very good documentation on the mythtv site. Following all instructions, the only problem I really encountered which the docs did not cover was that on the xmltv installation when you get to the cpan part, in had to force install some software (i dont remember now, LWP maybe, but its whatever will give you an error and a message saying will not install without force). Stick to xmltv 0.5.2 as the latest one has problems with missing tv shows in the electronic program guide. I use WindowMaker because it has good window focusing. The lirc program uses keyboard emulation via irxevent and has problems with other windowmanagers. An nvidia card with tv out is recommended. I edited XF86Config so I can quickly change between TV and monitor output. I use ext3 for video storage to avoid the 2 gig file barrier. You can put together a fairly complicated system. For example I have a Soyo KT400 Dragon Ultra and an AMDXP2400 cpu and 256 mb PC2700 RAM. It comes with onboard sound which became my /dev/dsp1. It has onboard lan connected to my linux firewall ip masq box. I have an ATI TV Wonder PCI and another ATI TV Wonder VE, an SB LIve 5.1 which became /dev/dsp. It is a dual tv tuner system which is capable of recording two simultaneous shows while playing backn another. I used LVM to string three harddrives for a total of 260 gigs of storage. CPU speed is a consideration. The more powerful the processor of course, the higher then quality of recording you can make without frame dropping. You can even make this system a video server. Myhttv clients can connect to it and playback video. This is not officially supported in Mythtv .7 but this is supported in the upcoming release( I simply disabled the livetv function and scheduled recording in the client). I find that a homepna 10 mpbs is capable of playing back a nfs exported video across the network with a smooth playback. Therefore I have a second pc in the kitchen with no keyboard and mouse, working only with a remote control, connected via phone line networking enabling me to watch the videos I recorded with the first pc. Good luck. This is a fun project.