Which linux version do I need
 

Have windows 7 64 bit, AMD phenom 11X4 830-2.8 gh 6 gig ram ATI radeon HD 5400 series with 900 gb hard drive. I like to use windows media center to record over the air t. V. with a Silican Dust Home Run tuner model HDHR-T1-US. What version of Linux would I need to upgrade to? Have given up on windows.
Thank You for your help.

I think the equivalent to Windows media center is MythTV:
https://www.mythtv.org/
and Silicon Dust support Linux:
http://www.silicondust.com/support/downloads/linux/

If you get Ubuntu, it's in the Universe repository.

Which distribution should you get?

Hmm. Depends...

If you're comfortable with Windows, Ubuntu may be a good choice. It is well supported and the initial installation is done with a straight-forward GUI interface.

If, on the hand, you want to learn Linux, well, that's a different kettle of fish.

It might be a good idea to go to http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major. The link will take you to the Top Ten Distributions page and you should read and consider everything on the page, distribution by distribution, and see what sounds the best to you.

I can highly recommend Slackware (it is the only distribution I use) for reliability, flexibility, dependability and... did I mention reliability? Oh, yes, I did. I will tell you, right up front, that Slackware has a kind of a learning curve -- it'll take some reading and trying and thinking about things but you will learn Linux and you'll have a platform that will be rock solid for a long time.

Those are, pretty much, the two extremes and because Linux is all about choice it's up to you what to choose. You can download a large number of distributions from the Downloads link to the right of this page (near the top) and try them (do that one at a time, though). It's easy enough to simply load a Linux distribution, try it, and blow it away to try another until you get one that fits your needs. You will probably lose Windows in the process unless you choose to repartition your disk drive so you can install Linux as a dual-boot; if you really do not care about Windows, just install Linux (Windows will go to the Great Byte Bucket in the Sky).

Anyway, welcome to LQ, hope you enjoy your time here and feel free to ask questions if you get stuck on something and need a little nudge in the right direction.

Hope this helps some.

Thanks for the replies, I will do more research, myth tv works on mint 17.2 cinnamon and its offered (along with others) using a flash drive to try out the different versions of linux, at this time I want to try different versions before I ditch windows 7.
Thank You for your help

There will be no easy solution as Media Center is really pretty good.


This may help. http://www.htpcbeginner.com/plex-vs-...parison-guide/