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Best Linux distro for low end HTPC? or Win??

W

Winchester

Diamond Member
I acquired a Pentium III 900mhz, 192mb ram (upgrading soon), and a 40GB HD. I am probably going to throw in a Creative Live 5.1 card and a video out card. I am would like to turn this into a low end HTPC. I am pretty sure I can find ram to upgrade to 256 if not 512mb at minimum.

I pretty much just want to play DVD movies and MP3s through my receiver. It would be nice if the distro played real nice with generic wireless cards as well.

If I should use Win2k or XP that is fine as well, but figured a linux distro would use less resources.


 
I don't know about lesser resources. You can set it up to use more resources or less resources then WinXP. It's up to you, realy. If you use a full-fledged desktop enviroment the resources are the same for Linux as WinXP. However if you run a minimal enviroment such as IceWM you can reduce resources used by quite a bit.

The distros are pretty much the same, too. I like Fedora, but it doesn't do mp3's or DVD's out of the box because of the legal issues. You can fix this easy enough by installing apt-get from http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/

However Mandrake or Suse are just as good.

You may want to check out Ubuntu. It's very nice and Debian-based (which in my opinion is the best Linux distro currently aviable, but other people dissagree) It has the same issue as Fedora and the legality, but it has directions on their website in the FAQ section on how to setup dvd playback and other stuff.

currently people seem to be most excited about Ubuntu. It's aviable at http://www.ubuntulinux.org/

For the HTPC software check out Freevo

Currently the top of the line is Mythtv and that will do the TiVO-like time shifting, but that requires a fast computer.

If you don't already have a TV card and don't want to spend a lot of money get a cheapo software-based card that uses he bt848 or bt878 chipset. These will run in Linux without any (or much) extra effort. Such as the Hauppage WinTV. Many cards do not work, most noticably the newer ATA All-in-Wonder video cards.

I have a ATI Wonder VE tv card that does work, but it uses a different chipset, a bt848 one. The AIW cards use a different ones.

The driver is called "bttv". So they are called bttv-compatable cards.

Top of the line cards include hardware encoding hardware, and these go best with Mythtv, these are the Hauppage WinPVR-250 and WinPVR-350. These require special drivers, though.

For a low end machine I'd stick with Freevo.

edit:

The nice thing about the more expensive cards that include hardware encoders is that they reduce the load off of a system's cpu. A 900mhz is enough to do decent enough recordings off of a tv using a software encoder, but not for time-shifting. If you have a hardware based encoder then your machine MAY be fast enough for Mythtv. But with freevo you get 90%, just no time-shifting.






 
Thanks drag. I have Suse and Windows XP installed on it right now, both run fine, i turned the <peformance settings on in XP but am using KDE in Suse, seems to be fine. I might try some registry tweaks with XP to free up some resources etc just because it is a little easier to deal with, but I will check out freevo as well.
 
Ya. If you want to make a big difference in Linux just drop KDE all together. If your not going to use it as desktop all that extra stuff is just bloat. Minimalist enviroments include IceWM, Fluxbox, Enlightenment, TWM, FVWM, and a few.

you don't have to uninstal kde, you just install the other window manager and switch to it.
 
Originally posted by: drag

...

You may want to check out Ubuntu. It's very nice and Debian-based (which in my opinion is the best Linux distro currently aviable, but other people dissagree) It has the same issue as Fedora and the legality, but it has directions on their website in the FAQ section on how to setup dvd playback and other stuff.

currently people seem to be most excited about Ubuntu. It's aviable at http://www.ubuntulinux.org/

...
Click to expand...

Yes, Ubuntu is great, ever since I installed it I grew to like it enough to make it the default os to boot, and only occasionaly do I go into windows any more. The strong points are superb software management system (apt/synaptic), excellent desktop (gnome 2.8). Compared to windows, it's faster at loading open office documents. The GUI desktop speed is close to windows (a little slower), and of course games are not as plentiful (but I do have native doom 3 and ut2004), but the nvidia drivers are almost as good as the windows ones, and many games can be run satisfactorily with a windows emulator (cedega). So I have everything I need, and a lot more control and stability then in windows.
 
Yep. Now people using Ubuntu know what the people using Debian have known for a few years now. 😉

Although I've discovered that the the steps between hoary and warty aren't like those of Debian Testing vs Unstable. It's more like Debian Testing vs Debian Unstable combined with Experimental.

For instance I am using hoary and am using Gnome 2.9 developement branch, which I dont' like so much. (since it's developement), but it's not a big deal.

I hope Ubuntu and Debian don't diverge to much from each other. It's nice to have it so that I can use Debian software in Ubuntu to get the extra stuff like libdvdcss and stuff like that.
 
Originally posted by: timswim78
Can Freevo be run without a GUI?
Click to expand...

Do you mean without X Windows? Or just from command line?

Mythtv you can use the GUI to set recording times and whatnot then shut off the front end.

You have 2 parts the backend and the front end. You can have multiple backends and multiple front ends, and they can be on different computers or on the same computer.

The backend runs a MySQL database to keep track of times, settings, and channel information and has the TV capture cards on it. The front end is the GUI part were you watch TV and set the settings and such.

You can have the back end run with the front end shut off.

I don't know about Freevo though.

I use to use bash scripts and mencoder/pipes/redirects set by "atd" batch scedualer and Cron jobs to set recording times using normal Unix tools. All from the command line, so you dont' realy need to have stuff like Freevo and mythtv to do recordings and such, but it makes it more convienent.
 
Originally posted by: drag
Originally posted by: timswim78
Can Freevo be run without a GUI?
Click to expand...

Do you mean without X Windows? Or just from command line?

Mythtv you can use the GUI to set recording times and whatnot then shut off the front end.

You have 2 parts the backend and the front end. You can have multiple backends and multiple front ends, and they can be on different computers or on the same computer.

The backend runs a MySQL database to keep track of times, settings, and channel information and has the TV capture cards on it. The front end is the GUI part were you watch TV and set the settings and such.

You can have the back end run with the front end shut off.

I don't know about Freevo though.

I use to use bash scripts and mencoder/pipes/redirects set by "atd" batch scedualer and Cron jobs to set recording times using normal Unix tools. All from the command line, so you dont' realy need to have stuff like Freevo and mythtv to do recordings and such, but it makes it more convienent.
Click to expand...

I guess that I meant without X Windows. Thanks for clarifying.
 
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