I guess now all we have to do is build-up knwoldge. Let's people experiment freely with linux and post their experiences, problems and fixes. If you find a fix for one of your problems do not keep it for yourself.
For the beginners I think we can safely reccommend either Mandrake version 8.2 / 9.0beta or RedHat 7.3.
For the more advanced users, if someone wants to start playing with the kernel, please do so and let us know. People interested in fast boot times should open a new thread. In particular dwk123 was mentioning several OS tweaks, I think it would be nice if he would explain in a thread each of those tweaks, why they are needed and how to do them. People might not want to do them manually (particularly beginners) but it is something I am very interested in, and I guess others as well.
There are also several threads on the main forum that should be moved here. I just had a quick search and there were several new posts I had missed! Paricularly a very good one from homer and nother regarding 410 drivers, plus some old ones I had forgotten. I know that xcel and Path are going to do it. Just a reminder.
Furtheromore there were some very interesting topics in the big thread 'Linux HTPC?' . The authors who posted them might consider to copy the contents into separate threads in here to make them easier to retrieve.
Thought as least one other person should participate in this thread.
My goals for a Linux HTPC would be..
IR capability -Done I already use a LIRC compatable IR receiver and IRMAN is also LIRC compatable so most users will have this portion of the work done.
DVD capability - I'm too green to know about this one yet. It seems that there are players that support menus now and even ac3. I will have to check into this more. What I haven't seem mention of yet is AR control which is critical to me and likely critical to everyone else too. Zero IRE settings for Radeon cards is a great aspect of windows HTPCs that I hope can be migrated.
Dscaler - I guess this is likely to happen soon and all I can say is it's about time. Dscaler is way too cool to not be ported to Linux. According to the Dscaler website part of the foundation of Dscaler comes from a Linux Brooktree driver to begin with. (Unless I misread something.)
For me that's it. DVD, Dscaler, and IR are the only things I do with my HTPC. Clearly there are a lot of other great uses for a HTPC including internet, mp3, divX and other stuff.
I think we probably need to do a bit of gathering of 'state of the union' information. ie what is currently available, and it's status. This in my view would include dvd players, general media players, sound API's and drivers, video drivers/systems (framebuffer vs X, DRI, Xv). Probably other stuff.
There are several active development efforts surrounding modular systems - Xine and MPlayer for example, plus the various shells/wrappers. There are varying degrees of info available, but at least the beginnings of a survey would be useful. Figuring out how whatever it is 'we' are looking at here relates to those efforts, and how we can particpate in their mailing lists etc is likely to be a help in avoiding another 'reinvent the wheel' effort. For the most part, these efforts already share a bunch of stuff (eg libdecss, libdvdnav are shared by at least Xine and Ogle, vidix is used by MPlayer and ??Ogle etc) so we should really make sure we understand something about how they're structured before considering any concrete effort towards any implementation.
Once we have some clearer picture of what's out there, we can start to identify gaps and shortcomings, and from there identify where effort would be beneficial.
I'll try to start putting some meat behind some of my ideas from the other thread - OS tweaks, driver issues etc. I'm maxed out on a customer project right now, so time is less plentiful than I'd like, but I'll at least kick a thread or two off in the next day or so.
By the way, thanks for sort of taking the reins on this. We need to make sure interest in this doesn't fizzle out!
Thanks to all of you. Unfortunately I should be quite busy in the short future for at least one or two months, so I think you will have to keep the ball rolling
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Anyway, regarding the above issue....why don't we start putting together a FAQ that we can update...or maybe not even as "formal" as a FAQ. Just SOMETHING where we start listing some common resources....along with corresponding URLS... For starters I'd like to see a document that we can keep updating and referring to. Something like this:
A faq is a good thing. I think there will be lots of small and bigger problems, and lots of small and big FAQs at the end we will need a 'meta faq' always in evidence like for to the main forum. So instead of a single HUGE FAQ I will start with several specific FAQs (general linux info, set-up info, distro info, HW compatibility, DVD players... ), each in its own thread.
I already wrote a big introduction to Modular Players , I think it is enough for this week... If someone else wants to write a FAQ on a specific topic he should absolutely do so. Even better if he can keep it updated.
Originally posted by dwk123 There are several active development efforts surrounding modular systems - Xine and MPlayer for example, plus the various shells/wrappers. There are varying degrees of info available, but at least the beginnings of a survey would be useful. Figuring out how whatever it is 'we' are looking at here relates to those efforts, and how we can particpate in their mailing lists etc is likely to be a help in avoiding another 'reinvent the wheel' effort. For the most part, these efforts already share a bunch of stuff (eg libdecss, libdvdnav are shared by at least Xine and Ogle, vidix is used by MPlayer and ??Ogle etc) so we should really make sure we understand something about how they're structured before considering any concrete effort towards any implementation.
I agree. I actually think that things with linux are very different from windows. You do not just look at applications as a whole, but you need to dig down a bit and consider their architecture and the libraries/plug-ins they are based upon (usually they share some components). Modular systems are VERY powerful and if we can learn how to use them and get direct access to the pipelines (and in theory we can, given that they are opensource), the sky is the limit. This is the linux way! And this is where we should start...
I already gave my little contribution on the subject( http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...hreadid=156908 ) I only hope that my thread (with the others out there) will soon be moved on this forum (I wrote it minutes before the new forum was opened ).
PS: have a look at LADSPA , it is a powerful and very promising audio library already available as a plug-in to some of the palyers...
Another thing we should do is to start advertising this forum to the Linux community and get some of the gurus on board, particularly the ones behind MPlayer, Xine, Ogle, Gstreamer, Freevo and some heavyweight kernel hackers.... I do not know though if it is better to wait first for this forum to grow a little, it is not nice to have someone coming for a look and having only a few posts to show, it might put them off...
It will look better once some of the old linux threads are moved to this forum (moderators, hint, hint!)...
Why not simply "Linux HTPC"? Cyborg is just confirming my first impressions. The word 'Chat' in the title actually puts this forum on a somewhat lower and less serious level. You could add 'Linux HTPC Chat' to Cyborg list and it would fit... I know this was not the intention of David, but so it could be interpreted... In the best case it is confusing. I really do not like it.
Ago, just joking about most of them.. but I do think putting project at the end is more fitting to what's happening here don't you think?
So far most of the post have been about how to create a LINUX HTPC so for most its going to be a undertaking.
Looking this up in a thesaurus I found several other words that I think would be appropriate
Activity
mission
enterprise
task
endeavor
venture
development
I for one really wish for this forum to take off. If everyone sits around and waits for M$ to take over with the Content management Initiative then we will probably have to pay each time we want to watch that dvd we purchased. Just look at M$ new OS that will be out in time for the 2002 holidays "Windows Media center XP" Windows Media Center XP
I think this forum would be the best place to get the end users and the linux coding geeks together and create a true Home Theater personal computer experience.
Originally posted by cyborge1 Ago, just joking about most of them.. but I do think putting project at the end is more fitting to what's happening here don't you think?
Yes and No. In fact you can already do many of the things you noramlly do with a windows htpc, while the word 'project' implies these things are far into the future. There are several people who managed to do so. So the point is not how to play a DVD or do PVR but how to integrate everything, and how to unlock additional features (spdif out, custom video resolutions, pipeline access)... There are many more things to do than in windows, granted, but even so there are still a lot of things to do in windows as well. So this is a project just like windows htpc is a project.
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So far most of the post have been about how to create a LINUX HTPC so for most its going to be a undertaking.
Actually we are discussing how to do a PROPER htpc, exploiting some of the nice features peculiar of Linux, this is something beyond what you can do in windows (wich will always involve an eterogeneous bunch of different applications). We are not using linux because it is cheap, but because it is flexible.
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