Linux Media Centre
 

Hello all,

I am trying to get started on a new project.
What im trying to do is set up an old PC i have lying around as a wireless
linux Jukebox.

Several things have started to go wrong before i have even started :(
So i have a couple of questions to ask before i shoot myself.

:: Specs ::

Pentium 2 350Mhz
96 MB RAM (In process of getting more)
6.5 Gig Harddrive
On Board Sound
Nvidia TNT2 Video
Netgear WG311 wireless adapter
Lifeview '98 Tuner Card (Optional, don't know if ill bother)

Questions

1) Any recommendations on a good Distro to use on this small system? I downloaded Fedora Core 3 only to find that it has too high requirements.

2) I will be using a program called freevo to play all the music and hook up to the TV will this system be up to the task?

3) The main problem im having is the wireless adapter, everyone seems to be having problems with this particular adapter. I have set up Redhat 8 but am having problems upgrading the kernel etc and it doesn't support this card

If anyone can help me out with these three points (especially the wireless card, the rest i can probalby figure out myself) or any comments on this project i would greatly appriciate it.

Matt

Vector Linux 4.3
Made for older hardware, based on slackware, kernel 2.6, xfce,
no gimp, no open office
mplayer et al available
Makes older hardware zippy again.

Can't answer about freevo or the wireless card.

Hi,

To try and answer your questions -

1) Last week I installed Mandrake 10.1 on an old Celeron 300MHz box with 512MB RAM, so you should be OK to at least get something to work. The machine had a 4.3GB HDD fitted, and after quite a fulsome installation, I still had 1.5GB left for users' data. With your 6.5GB drive and your intended application, I'd suggest that your machine is at the bare minimum here - it might be worthwhile looking out for a bigger drive in the future. So you should be OK, with the caveat that, yes, you'll want to increase your RAM (get as much as you can afford / your mobo will support, particularly in view of your intended application). My old Celeron 300 runs quite nicely - it isn't exactly super fast, but it's more than acceptable for its intended use (internet, word processing, etc)

2) If you're hoping to use Freevo or MythTV or similar, with the spec of machine you've got, you'll want to make sure that any TV card has got built-in hardware MPEG encoding - your machine almost certainly won't be up to the job of encoding / streaming video in real time. Freevo / MythTV both make demands here - they 'record' the video to hard hisk before displaying it - enabling you to 'pause' live TV for instance. This will actually also make demands on your hard disk - you'll want to check that it can read / write fast enough. I'd have a look on freevo's or MythTV's websites for more details, maybe run some speed tests (hdparm is your friend here) before you get into installing the TV stuff.

3) Don't know... sorry.

Hope this helps..

Sweet huys ill try that Vector Linux.

As for the TV i don't really need it, this is really intended to be just a music player to play on the kickarse system in the lounge room, but i had a spare tuner card so i thought i might just add that in for somthing to do. Ill try to hook up some ram tommorow as that seems to be the main holding back factor right now.

Check out http://mythtv.info/moin.cgi/LinuxDistros it gives good descriptions on how to run mythtv on over 10 different distributions.