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Primarily because of wanting audio over HDMI, I am using 13.0/KDE 4 with my eventual HTPC. The project has been far more challenging that I ever envisioned.
I would appreciate comments and discussions from others using 13.0/KDE 4 as a base for an HTPC. I have tested some other distros, but I prefer the system design of Slackware.
Complicating this project is the absence of various apps that could provide me a better HTPC environment. I would appreciate related information about certain apps currently "forgotten" with the transition to 13.0/KDE 4.
MythTV
Freevo
XBMC
Kdenlive
KDELirc
Kaffeine
If I understand correctly, both Kdenlive and KDELirc are available in the 4.3.x releases. I would appreciate comments and advice for updating 13.0 to 4.3.1. Just download the sources and update the build scripts?
Kaffeine is in 1.0 pre-release stage. The other three apps are front-end interfaces.
Freevo seems less complicated than MythTV and for my simple purposes I am wondering whether Freevo is a better choice.
Perhaps an app like Miro might provide much of what I seek. Yet Another GTK app.
I have tested the full XBMC 9.04 and was impressed with the design (but I disliked the underlying Ubuntu system ). I would prefer XBMC run on top of 13.0.
I need a tool to edit TV recordings (strip commercials, dead space, and hopefully station logos) and then convert into a DVD ISO image. I tested devede but frankly, I much prefer a native QT4 app rather than GTK. Hence my interest in Kdenlive.
My primary purpose is recording TV shows and watching DVDs and DVD ISO images. I'm not focusing on music or audio aspects. For TV recording I created some shell scripts that are functional but lack polish and flexibility. I'd like a better method to schedule recordings and associated system wakeup times.
I'd like a better interface where I can mostly use a remote control for selecting and watching videos. However, I am struggling greatly getting lirc to function. Hence my interest in KDELirc.
Nowadays I think any related discussion includes using a web browser (and sigh, Adobe Flash) because that is the only native method available for Linux-based systems to watch hulu.com videos. I welcome any tips about using a remote control with a web browser and embedded Flash.
I don't really have an opinion about Slackware as an HTPC or HTPC in general but I do have a few comments about the software used.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Woodsman
MythTV
Freevo
XBMC
Kdenlive
KDELirc
Kaffeine
That looks like a good list to start out with. Moovida might be one to look at as well. Although it looks like it is another Gtk app and has a crap load of dependencies.
Quote:
Freevo seems less complicated than MythTV and for my simple purposes I am wondering whether Freevo is a better choice.
When I was interested in building an HTPC most people seemed to be using MythTV over Freevo or anything else. One thing MythTV had was a free TV guide that could be used with a specific code. I think this is no longer the case, but there might be paid services for obtaining a channel guide.
Quote:
Perhaps an app like Miro might provide much of what I seek. Yet Another GTK app.
I have to admit I didn't like Miro very well in its initial 2.0 phase, but with each incremental release and now with the 2.5 series a lot of the little kinks I didn't like about it have been ironed out. However, I don't think Miro is a good candidate for streaming video with its lack of lirc support and inability to play flash within the player. Lirc I believe is being worked on but it looks like there isn't any work being done to get flash working.
Quote:
have tested the full XBMC 9.04 and was impressed with the design (but I disliked the underlying Ubuntu system ). I would prefer XBMC run on top of 13.0.
I have a slackbuild for XBMC if you'd like to run XBMC on Slackware. It only has 6 required dependencies and a couple more optional dependencies. It is a good solution for watching lots of video with lots of different codecs and has lots of support for plugins. I've tried 9.04.1 on Slackware 12.2 and it seems pretty stable.
At any rate, good luck on your HTPC adventure. I'd be interested to see where this takes you.
You have to pay for the scheduling service for mythtv if you're in the US, although it's only $20 a year. The nice thing about it is you can customize which channels you actually want guide data for, so you only see the channels you want in mythtv (goodbye QVC!).
@Woodsman
check your other thread, I tweaked your original script.
Good luck with your media PC. I'm sure you'll get it--it took me months but I'm finally done with it. Did you ever get your audio over HDMI working?
Moovidia...Although it looks like it is another Gtk app
Some folks might roll their eyes, but I prefer to stay with QT apps in the newer KDE 4. This is an HTPC and I want a consistent look-and-feel.
Quote:
I think this is no longer the case, but there might be paid services for obtaining a channel guide.
I'm not too concerned about downloading any schedules. I'm in a rural area with only a few station selections. I have been visiting the station web pages (or embedded TitanTV pages) to browse. Not elegant or automated but doable.
Quote:
Lirc I believe is being worked on but it looks like there isn't any work being done to get flash working.
Odd how apps are designed for media purposes yet the basics such as Flash and LIRC are unavailable.
This afternoon I downloaded and built SMplayer 0.6.8 and Kaffeine 1.0 pre2. No LIRC support that I have found. Both apps are buggy too. For example, in Kaffeine, when playing a video, the Next button does not move to the next chapter in the video but the next video on the playlist --- even when there are no additional files in the playlist. I haven't figured out how to get around that. SMplayer seemed natural now that MPlayer is stock in 13.0. Yet when I opened one of my DVD ISO images, I could not navigate the menus with the mouse or keyboard. I also tried Dragon Player. Simple and does the basics but little else. Looks like I'm still going to use xine for a while.
Quote:
I have a slackbuild for XBMC if you'd like to run XBMC on Slackware. It only has 6 required dependencies and a couple more optional dependencies.
If you mean these, I have them downloaded. I just built and installed the enca and tre dependency packages --- seems those are the only two not included with 13.0. I'm trying to use the build script with 9.04.1 but am running into problems. I'm getting errors about libdvdread and libdvdnav failing to configure. But probably should move that to a new thread if you are interested.
Quote:
check your other thread, I tweaked your original script.
Which thread? Which script?
Quote:
Did you ever get your audio over HDMI working?
Yes. I reported that in both threads.
Quote:
I'm sure you'll get it--it took me months but I'm finally done with it.
My big stumbling block at the moment is lirc. I'm stumped. I'd like to get lirc working with xine so I have a decent player with a basic desktop. I like the XBMC interface for playing videos but so far I am unable to build the package on 13.0. I might look at freevo if I can find a build script. Mostly, however, I have found this project exhausting.
Woodsman have you looked at running vdr instead of mythtv ?
I was reading on both of these as an option and i have gone with vdr because i was told it was way less patching then mythtv for a satellite dvb card i use.
Also after vdr starts up you will have a remote setup guide that pops up that will setup your remote for you quickly. It will handle it all for you.
I wrote a few quick scripts to install vdr plugins and required codecs along with xine and xine-ui but my next step is to turn them into packages.
if you want them just let me know, you should be able to modify it to make packages of the entire install.
Woodsman have you looked at running vdr instead of mythtv?
Not really. I never found current build scripts. I'm not a "make, make install" person. I need build scripts so I can have a package. Regardless, the product looks simple, which might be all I need.
Quote:
if you want them just let me know, you should be able to modify it to make packages of the entire install.
Have you considered posting them to slackbuilds.org?
If you mean these, I have them downloaded. I just built and installed the enca and tre dependency packages --- seems those are the only two not included with 13.0. I'm trying to use the build script with 9.04.1 but am running into problems. I'm getting errors about libdvdread and libdvdnav failing to configure. But probably should move that to a new thread if you are interested.
I'm familiar with that slackbuild by brootal. However, I didn't like how the slackbuild puts a header file on the system during compile time instead of using installpkg to do it. I just ran my xbmc.SlackBuild on a vanilla Slackware 13.0 VM and the only thing it complained about was enca. So the only requirement is enca.
I've attached my slackbuild with the appropriate files if you wish to build XBMC. There are some optional programs XBMC can make use of as noted in the README. As well, there are a couple options that can be passed to it for the appropriate features. There are a couple of upstream patches that I included as well but have commented out. The only patch needed is jpegint_h.patch.
Remove the ".txt" extension from the attachment and it is a normal gzip tarball.
EDIT: I updated the XBMC slackbuild to fix some lib64 issues and some hard coded paths in a Makefile. I also removed the glxinfo hack and no longer made the Nvidia hack an option. On Slackware 13.0 make sure you upgrade your Mesa package to 7.5.1 as this has the required glxinfo file. Enjoy!
I tried starting xbmc from konsole and received an error message that XBMC needs hardware accelerated OpenGL rendering. I have the proprietary NVidia 185.18.31 drivers installed. XBMC runs fine on my installed partitions. Therefore the problem is not hardware. Possibly xorg.conf? Hmm.
I tried starting xbmc from konsole and received an error message that XBMC needs hardware accelerated OpenGL rendering.
I got the same error. I just thought it was due to my open source radeon drivers. I'm forced to use them on Slackware 13.0 due to a new xorg and lack of ATI support. XBMC worked great on Slackware 12.2 with ATI proprietary drivers. Oh well.
I started looking around the web and found a handful of people with a similar problem. All of them are running Ubuntu or XBMC-Live, which is based upon Ubuntu. They all solved the problem by installing a Debian package named mesa-utils. I figured the problem was related to the latest mesa 7.5 package installed in 13.0.
From Konsole I ran glxinfo | grep OpenGL. No output. Then I ran glxinfo | grep 'direct rendering' with the same empty screen. Weird. I'm running NVidia 185.18.31. I found no reported problems online between that version and XBMC 9.04.1. Hmm.
I rebooted into 12.2. I ran the same glxinfo commands. I received the expected normal results.
I rebooted back to 13.0. I extracted the glxinfo command from the mesa 7.0.3 package in 12.2. I ran the command in 13.0. I received the expected normal results.
Next I noticed that in 13.0, the /usr/bin/glxinfo command is a sym link to the glinfo command. I removed the link, copied the older glxinfo command to /usr/bin. Then I successfully started xbmc.
I suspect the xbmc binary basically greps the glxinfo command.
I hope this helps you too!
Now my primary problem is getting lirc working. The first thing I did after xbmc started was to grab the remote control but nothing happened.
By the way, the default skin is very nice. Also 9.04.1 supports VDPAU and has some fairly cool skin transition effects. Please seriously consider submitting your build script to slackbuilds.org!
[b]Next I noticed that in 13.0, the /usr/bin/glxinfo command is a sym link to the glinfo command. I removed the link, copied the older glxinfo command to /usr/bin. Then I successfully started xbmc.
I suspect the xbmc binary basically greps the glxinfo command.
I hope this helps you too!
I did just that and now it works. Good catch. I had to download the Mesa package from 12.2 repo, remove the symlink to glinfo, and then install the glxinfo binary to /usr/bin.
Although, when I open XBMC there are some artifacts on the right side of my screen. I'm just gonna chalk it up to drivers again. No idea if that is the case. Just guessing.
Quote:
Now my primary problem is getting lirc working. The first thing I did after xbmc started was to grab the remote control but nothing happened.
I've never had lirc work for me. I guess I'm to lazy these days to go the extra step or two to make stuff work.
Quote:
Please seriously consider submitting your build script to slackbuilds.org!
XBMC was the initial reason I uploaded enca to slackbuilds.org. My main hesitation for not submitting it is that I don't have proper setup to diagnose any (maybe most) situations if a problem arises. So my ability to support it wouldn't be very useful.
Although, when I open XBMC there are some artifacts on the right side of my screen. I'm just gonna chalk it up to drivers again. No idea if that is the case. Just guessing.
Hmm. No such problem here. I'm using the NVidia 185.18.31 drivers.
Quote:
My main hesitation for not submitting it is that I don't have proper setup to diagnose any (maybe most) situations if a problem arises. So my ability to support it wouldn't be very useful.
I understand. Perhaps you might consider posting the build script at your own web site if you have one. Or you could submit a query to the slackbuilds.org mailing list asking if anybody wants to accept ownership for maintenance. Or even just open a separate thread with the same attachments you provided here for people looking for an XBMC build script.
Okay, back to the original post: looking for advice about using 13.0/KDE 4 in an HTPC! I really would like to install KDE 4.3.1 so I can test Kdenlive. Does anybody know of any quirks or problems with updating to 4.3.1?
I am currently using XBMC 8.10 and I tried to upgrade to the recent version "Babylone" 9.04. I am running on Slack12.2 and tried to install (compile & install) via the xbmc.SlackBuild script that larryhaja put on this thread but during the make phase, it craps out giving me this error:
Code:
make: *** [xbmc.bin] Error 1
here's the last few lines of the output.... seems to have a problem with some libiconv stuff....
Code:
/usr/lib/gcc/i486-slackware-linux/4.2.4/../../../../i486-slackware-linux/bin/ld: warning: librt.so.1, needed by /usr/lib/gcc/i486-slackware-linux/4.2.4/../../../libcurl.so, may conflict with librt.so.19
xbmc/FileSystem/filesystem.a(FileMMS.o): In function `XFILE::CFileMMS::CFileMMS()':
FileMMS.cpp:(.text+0x1538): undefined reference to `libiconv_open'
xbmc/FileSystem/filesystem.a(FileMMS.o): In function `XFILE::CFileMMS::~CFileMMS()':
FileMMS.cpp:(.text+0x15d4): undefined reference to `libiconv_close'
xbmc/FileSystem/filesystem.a(FileMMS.o): In function `XFILE::CFileMMS::~CFileMMS()':
FileMMS.cpp:(.text+0x16b4): undefined reference to `libiconv_close'
xbmc/FileSystem/filesystem.a(FileMMS.o): In function `XFILE::CFileMMS::~CFileMMS()':
FileMMS.cpp:(.text+0x1914): undefined reference to `libiconv_close'
xbmc/FileSystem/filesystem.a(FileMMS.o): In function `XFILE::CFileMMS::CFileMMS()':
FileMMS.cpp:(.text+0x1b28): undefined reference to `libiconv_open'
xbmc/utils/utils.a(CharsetConverter.o): In function `bool convert_checked<CStdStr<char>, CStdStr<int> >(void*&, int, CStdStr<char> const&, CStdStr<char> const&, CStdStr<char> const&, CStdStr<int>&)':
CharsetConverter.cpp:(.text+0x3bd): undefined reference to `libiconv_open'
xbmc/utils/utils.a(CharsetConverter.o): In function `bool convert_checked<CStdStr<char>, CStdStr<short> >(void*&, int, CStdStr<char> const&, CStdStr<char> const&, CStdStr<char> const&, CStdStr<short>&)':
CharsetConverter.cpp:(.text+0x58d): undefined reference to `libiconv_open'
xbmc/utils/utils.a(CharsetConverter.o): In function `bool convert_checked<CStdStr<wchar_t>, CStdStr<wchar_t> >(void*&, int, CStdStr<char> const&, CStdStr<char> const&, CStdStr<wchar_t> const&, CStdStr<wchar_t>&)':
CharsetConverter.cpp:(.text+0x9d4): undefined reference to `libiconv_open'
xbmc/utils/utils.a(CharsetConverter.o): In function `bool convert_checked<CStdStr<char>, CStdStr<wchar_t> >(void*&, int, CStdStr<char> const&, CStdStr<char> const&, CStdStr<char> const&, CStdStr<wchar_t>&)':
CharsetConverter.cpp:(.text+0xbad): undefined reference to `libiconv_open'
xbmc/utils/utils.a(CharsetConverter.o):CharsetConverter.cpp:(.text+0xfdd): more undefined references to `libiconv_open' follow
xbmc/utils/utils.a(CharsetConverter.o): In function `CCharsetConverter::stringCharsetToUtf8(CStdStr<char> const&, CStdStr<char> const&, CStdStr<char>&)':
CharsetConverter.cpp:(.text+0x1d97): undefined reference to `libiconv_close'
xbmc/utils/utils.a(CharsetConverter.o): In function `CCharsetConverter::utf32ToStringCharset(unsigned long const*, CStdStr<char>&)':
CharsetConverter.cpp:(.text+0x1ef8): undefined reference to `libiconv'
CharsetConverter.cpp:(.text+0x2193): undefined reference to `libiconv_open'
xbmc/utils/utils.a(CharsetConverter.o): In function `CCharsetConverter::utf8To(CStdStr<char> const&, CStdStr<char> const&, CStdStr<int>&)':
CharsetConverter.cpp:(.text+0x23ba): undefined reference to `libiconv_close'
xbmc/utils/utils.a(CharsetConverter.o): In function `CCharsetConverter::utf8To(CStdStr<char> const&, CStdStr<char> const&, CStdStr<short>&)':
CharsetConverter.cpp:(.text+0x277a): undefined reference to `libiconv_close'
xbmc/utils/utils.a(CharsetConverter.o): In function `CCharsetConverter::reset()':
CharsetConverter.cpp:(.text+0x283a): undefined reference to `libiconv_close'
CharsetConverter.cpp:(.text+0x2856): undefined reference to `libiconv_close'
CharsetConverter.cpp:(.text+0x2872): undefined reference to `libiconv_close'
xbmc/utils/utils.a(CharsetConverter.o):CharsetConverter.cpp:(.text+0x288e): more undefined references to `libiconv_close' follow
xbmc/utils/utils.a(CharsetConverter.o): In function `iconv_const(void*, char const**, unsigned int*, char**, unsigned int*)':
CharsetConverter.cpp:(.text+0x195): undefined reference to `libiconv'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [xbmc.bin] Error 1
Any clues??? BTW, thanks Woodsman for the HTPC stuff, very nice, now I am interested in building the same thing....
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Hence my interest in KDELirc.
Problem while compiling XBMC on Slack12.2
