Why Linux for media PC? Redux - Page 4

huh?

384MB is a recommendation for optimum performance, not a minimum requirement. In my experience, 256MB is plenty for typical use.

I even playback HD (network 1080i broadcast) just fine on my mythbuntu AppleTV frontend with 256MB.

I just noticed that 356MB is the requirement for the live-CD and 256MB for the install.

I'm trying to install Ubuntu on my new PC, and when I test the disc for errors, it goes to ash and says "(initramfs)" and just sits there. I rebooted and tried again - same thing. I also tried installing and got the same thing. This is with an actual 8.0.4.1 CD I got in the mail from Canonical. I wonder if they sent me a bad disc? I'm going to try the disc I burned that I know works (8.4.0.) - nope, same problem. The hard disk is the one I pulled from my HTPC with Mythbuntu on it - is this causing a problem?

I prefer Kaffeine, which also uses the Xine engine. You can also configure Kaffeine to watch HDTV using your digital capture card. You don't even need MythTV, unless you want to record and timeshift programs.

In the lobby area where I work a plasma tv was hung that displays schedule info and ads. In less than a week it was already suffering from some major burn in. Much worst than a CRT would have. It was however still set to factory settngs (bright)

Kaffeine can also use gstreamer. But I'll second the nomination of Kaffeine-xine. It was my early favorite and I still use when I absolutely need dvd menu support.

Although I've switched to SMPlayer for 90% of my viewing because I prefer it's zoom, time skipping, and fast forward and fast rewind features (and it skips over all the crap before the start of the movie that I usuallly don't want to see anyway). It doesn't have dvd menu support, but I usually don't need the menus.

What, you never heard of LinDVD?

http://www.intervideo.com/jsp/Produc...e.jsp?p=LinDVD

I installed it once from the Mandriva package. It seemed ok.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinDVD
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=302887

Wow ya think you could even get lindvd if you tried? I remember the rather lack of hype when it was announced that you got it with Mandriva or Mandrake or whatever it was back then (I think it was that or maybe Suse?) It's almost like they got paid to pretend to make it to show that nobody would buy it and prove the content masters are all knowing and powerful benign dictators. I forgot it even (possibly) existed!
-Trouble

I misread it as DVD, not DVR. We were discussing DVD support, so my bad.

The built-in Rythmbox works fine for playing audio CDs, but when I tried to copy the CD using the built-in Brasero, it kept getting stuck at 2% and slowed down to 1.6x speed. I posted this problem in Ubuntu forums, but didn't get any reply. I guess I could try K3B, but don't know why the built-in utility doesn't work.

^^^^ That's probably due to CDParanoia seeing errors on the disc and slowing down the rip. I can't recall off the top of my head which rippers use paranoia and which don't.

Personally, I still use EAC in WINE for ripping CDs. I have a lot of learning time invested in it and I know I can make it do what I want it to do in every case, so I refuse to switch...

I prefer something native, especially when it's built-in to the distro, but I if I have to, will run Nero under Wine or virtual box.

I don't understand why you wouldn't copy cd to cd.

So D3B won't do both rip and burn to make a copy of an audio CD?

On XP, I've just been using Nero 6, which copies to hard disk, then burns to disc since I only have 1 drive.

I only have 1 drive in my Ubuntu PC, so I was afraid maybe Brasero requires 2 drives to do a disc copy and doesn't copy an image to the hard disk in the process. Copying a disc to memory first is quick enough, even on my old Pentium 2, that I didn't think I'd need 2 drives to copy discs.

I also have another Ubuntu problem. I got networking (Samba?) set up real easy just by opening up my network places and connecting to my XP PCs to copy files between them and my Ubuntu PC, but can't do the same with my Vista PC. When I open the XP network shares, nautilus shows me the C$, D$, Documents and Settings, etc., but when I open my Vista network share, I just get a blank window area. I've confirmed that I can see the Vista shared folder on an XP PC. I posted about this problem in Ubuntu forums a couple of days ago, but haven't received any reply.

Crap. I was going to reformat my 2 XP PCs with Ubuntu, but I guess I'll have to wait for Ubuntu 8.10 so I can still access my Vista laptop.

Actually, Panasonic 768p monitor accepts native resolution in both Windows and Ubuntu (latest Nvidia drivers for both). I had to provide custom timings, but it works (VGA connection).

And regarding the thread, drivers are still not "there" for Linux, I am sorry to say. I had problems with my Linksys NIC and my X-Fi card. I resorted to the onboard solutions just to try out Ubuntu, but that's a workaround and not a permanent solution.

Sorry, I didn't imply "all". It was a generic statement regarding the overall state of drivers. Surely there's a lot out there working, but see below.
I did end up using it, but the onboard NIC is somewhat defective, which is why I ended up buying an add-on NIC, in my case Linksys.
X-Fi, apart from one specific model which is low end, and I don't recall, is not that bad. I wouldn't have had problems with using onboard audio, and in fact while trying out Ubuntu, I did. But it ended up having mismatched channels for the output, which I should have solved by using the .asoundrc file. Now, I consider myself decently literate when it comes to computers but, for the love of me, and after three days of research, I could not manage to have it working as it should have.
I ended up switching jacks and using the provided solution in the Windows Realtek control panel to switch the outputs. Which is point and click under Windows and still text editing under Ubuntu (which is supposedly the most user friendly distro).

I'm just saying, from personal experience, that the transition from Windows to Linux is still, sadly, far from being "plug and play". But don't take this as an attack on Linux or anything. I would love for it to be polished, but my experience has been different, that's all.

I installed Ubuntu 8.10 beta a week or so ago when I discovered it had support for my Linksys USB 802.11g wireless device. This device was routinely identified when connected to the bus, but the driver never worked correctly. I had an equivalent 802.11b Linksys USB device which worked with most kernels up until 2.6.24 or so then stopped working with later kernel releases. Just being able to connect at 54 Mbit was a big incentive to upgrade.

I will say it took a bit of work to get everything back on track though. Previously, using Fedora 8, the nVidia driver from Livna worked fine. When I installed the proprietary driver from the Ubuntu repositories though, the text on my screen became microscopic. I had to edit xorg.conf by hand and add
Options "DPI" "100x100"
to the Monitor section so I could read the text on-screen. Ordinary folk are going to throw up their hands when confronted with issues like that. Also the stock open nVidia driver didn't recognize my Sony TV by EDID though the proprietary driver does so.

I'm well over the hump now and generally like 8.10 and KDE 4.1. It's actually somewhat less configurable than KDE 3.5+ though. For instance, you can't set the panel to hide automatically yet though it's promised for a later release. Some applications are no longer in the KDE release either. For instance, I used to use KAudioCreator to rip CDs to flac, but now CD ripping appears limited to K3b. (I had to install the "flac" package as well; otherwise the default is Ogg.)

I agree with rgb, though, that if you can preview Linux support for devices before purchasing it makes life much easier. My daughter's Dell Inspiron laptop runs Ubuntu just fine, but I made sure I had Dell install an Intel wifi card at the factory rather than the problematic Broadcom cards that Dell usually ships.

When installing proprietary hardware drivers. I have found that it is usually best to download and compile the drivers. I find this to be true for both video and wireless drivers. If you use the MadWifi driver, always get the SVN version of the driver.

There is at least one kernel driver module that works excellent. That is the b43 driver for Broadcom wireless. It is not problematic at all, in fact in my opinion, it works better than the Intel drivers.

Broadcom wireless was notoriously difficult to use with Linux kernels even as recently as a year ago. Most people recommended using ndiswrapper with the Windows driver as a solution. Broadcom refused to release an open-source driver until fairly recently.

You and I may know how to compile drivers, but that's hardly a solution for vast bulk of Linux users, particularly new users coming from a Windows background. As someone who started using Linux in 1994, I consistently advocate Linux to my clients and my friends. But I'm not blind to the problems Linux still faces as it becomes more widely available. I'm optimistic based on developments over the past couple of years that hardware manufacturers are starting to realize they need to support Linux as well as Windows and Macs.

What we really need is a commitment among the major systems integrators - Dell, HP, Sony, and the like - to start shipping systems with Linux pre-installed. And not just a couple of limited options hiding in the back of the web site as is the case with Dell today. I'm a patient man, though; I expect Linux will be much more widely accepted a decade from now, just as it is more widely accepted today than it was a decade ago.

For Ubuntu, all you need to do is install the firmware, by running this command:
How difficult is that? Suse is similarly simple.

There is a lot of misinformation out there. Here is a site with the correct info.

http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43

Broadcom has never released a Linux driver. They have all been reverse engineered by dedicated Linux programmers. NDISwrapper does not give the complete funtionality that the b43 driver provides.

I just updated to Ubuntu 8.10, and opened Nautalis but have the same problem - I see a blank pane when I open up the Vista PC. I tried the following procedure: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=238 but when I tried to make the link, got "Operation not permitted" error:
link /mnt/vista_public ./vista_public