Hi, before I start I should state my experience with linux is VERY limited - putting XBMC on an old xbox and installing Ubuntu on a laptop. I've never done anything with command line commands and am not generally sure how to handle tar.gz files
Anyway, I have an old Shuttle PC that I want to turn into a media center, after becoming a little unhappy with the power consumption and limitations of my new PS3 as a media center.
Just wondering what you would recommend, and what guides there are out there for me to make it work?
What I'd like the machine to do, is be not only a hub for me to play music and movies through my TV and hifi, but also be a server of sorts for me to store all such media files for my other machines (PC, laptop, PS3 etc) to access, as well as a torrent client for downloading stuff.
I'd also like to keep power usage down to a bare minimum - the PC at the moment is an 2gHz Athlon XP with 1gb of RAM and Geforce MX4000 graphics. What would be the bare minimum for running 720p HD movies (my TV is only a 32" 720p HD TV so don't need to run 1080p movies)? And are there good, powerful settings within such distros to seriously minimize power consumption?
Also, I'd love to be able to control it all through some kind of remote conrol, so any tips there would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Jez