going linux, need some advice

[INM8]

Hi all,

basically my problem started after building a few mythtv HTPC's for people. Since then, i have had this sudden desire to install linux on one of my desktp computers (both are running xp pro at the moment). Dont ask me why, i guess i just enjoyed using FC4 a bit too much while setting up the mythtv systems, and now i have handed them over to their respected owners, its almost like something is missing. :roll:

I downloaded FC5 a few weeks ago, but since then i have been procrastinating about which computer i am going to put in on, and how im going to set it up (eg: dual boot, how to parition the drives, and so on). So thats why i am asking for some advice.

Here are the specs of my two computers:

1. Asus A8N SLI Premium
Athlon X2 4400+
1gb (512 x 2) ram
nvidia 7800gtx
500gb (250 x 2) samsung p120 hdd (currently in a raid 0 array with all my important data on it...stupid, i know. If i do install linux, i will get my important data off this array and dismantle it)
400gb WD hdd (i bought this recently so i could get all the data off the array so i can get rid off it)

2. Gigabyte 6BXE
1ghz Celeron
512mb ram
16mb nvidia TNT2 graphics
80gb hitachi hdd

At the moment, i basically use the computer "1" for everything (gaming, CG work in blender, video editing, some programming, and just usual school work), and computer "2" is currently not used at all (its just sitting in storage at the moment, even though the original plan was to set it up in the office so my dad could use that one, but he prefers to use mine for some reason anyway).

If i installed linux on computer "1", theni would have to dualboot windows xp anyway, because i game occasionally (mostly Age of Empires 3). If not, I would just move the main desktop completely over to linux. Setting it up to dual boot isnt a big issue from what i have read, but having a setup where i can access my files from both windows xp and linux seems to be a problem due to the different filesystems that are used in windows and linux.

As far as a i can tell, the hardware on both computers is supported in FC5 , although i will have to find older nvidia graphics drivers to get the TNT2 to work (nvidia discontinued support for the TNT range a while ago), so that isnt a bit an issue either. To be honest, i dont even know what i will use linux for once i have it running, its just something i feel like doing after setting up those mythtv HTPC's.

Anyway, sorry for the long whinded post, but i would appreciate any reccomendations\ideas from people who use linux and windows together. I am leaning towards installing it on my main system (mainly because i have heard Blender, the 3D package i use, runs better on it then it does on windows. I have a fairly large project coming up soon where i am going to have to do a fair it of rendering, so a stable\fast computer is crucial), but i am also being held back by the though of all the potential file system issues i may have.

 

[drag]

You may have slight issues with the nvidia motherboard, but if that happens those should go away after a while as support matures.. if it hasn't already.

I suggest using the celeron system as a file server for your Linux and Windows dual boot. You can install Linux on it and if you want RAID you can do that using software raid 'called MD' and it should be more then fast enough over the network. You can stick that machine in a out of the way place. Get a good UPS for it so that occasional brown outs don't get a chance to cause data corruption. Also a decent little DVD burner is good for backups.

That would make it so that you can have data aviable to multiple computers, help improve data integrety (desktop systems are more likely to barf then simple file servers, and it cuts down on chances of driver bugs or viruses causing data corruption), and make it easier to dual boot.

Unfortunately I don't know of any thing that will replace AoE3 in Linux and it won't work in Cedega (propriatory software that allows you to install and play many windows-only games in linux) so that option is out. In my signiture I have a link to a guy that (I think is entertaining) talks about linux gaming and such.
http://www.linux-gamers.net/
http://www.linuxgames.com/
http://www.happypenguin.org/
are places that I visit to find out what games are being updated and what new things are being released for Linux.

For video editing there are some new stuff coming out.
Older mature stuff is kino..
http://www.kinodv.org/
and Cinelerra
http://cvs.cinelerra.org/
http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3

Kino is more limited and is designed to give basic functionality for home users. Cinelerra is designed to be professional level, but has a strong reputation for being difficult to use (I think anything above a certain level tends to be difficult though)

http://www.jahshaka.org/ is something that is interesting. Haven't looked at it, but it seems usefull. Not so much a NLE, it's more of a composition thing. Of course you know that blender should make a good compisitor, or at least they say so.

http://diva-project.org/ is a new NLE in development using Mono (.NET for Linux, basicly) and Gstreamer. It's suppose to be very cool, but like I said it's very very new.
And also newer is http://pitivi.sourceforge.net/ which is about the same thing, but it uses python.

I don't know if you know about those, or even that they would be usable replacements for whatever your using, but I thought you may be interested.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: drag
You may have slight issues with the nvidia motherboard, but if that happens those should go away after a while as support matures.. if it hasn't already.

I recently installed Debian Sid on a system built on an A8N-E and had no significant problems. IIRC, the only "glitch" was that the installer couldn't autodetect the NIC, which worked perfectly fine once I told it to use the forcedeth driver. I'm not sure what extra bells and whistles are on the SLI Premium model that the E doesn't have, but at least all the core functions work just fine.

 

[INM8]

Thanks for the replies, i appreciate it. Setting up the celeron system as a file server is actually a really good idea. For some reason, i didnt consider it. The only issue with that is that both 250gb hdd's and the new 400gb one i bought are sata, and the gigabyte 6BXE mobo only supports IDE. I do have a spare 160gb IDE drive though. That, combined with the 65gb or so from the 80gb drive should be suitable to atleast have my important pictures and documents backed up. Just say i wanted to keep the celeron running xp, if i setup the network shares on there, what would the performance differences be compared to a linux file server?

 

[drag]

Linux has a bit faster file sharing capabilities, extra features, plus it's I/O is a bit better and it's software RAID is much better. Going from Linux to Linux you can use NFS and that's usually faster then windows file and sharing. Also I've always had a harder time setting up a standalone windows file share and getting it to work with a bunch of different operating systems, but that could just be me. Also XP pro is kinda of expensive (seeing how XP home is more limited, but I suppose it would work).

Of course the major advantage for Windows is that your more comfortable with it, or at least perfer it for your own reasons.

But the differences don't realy matter much for a simple file server. Once it's setup I doubt you'd see much of a difference, if at all.

For sata I went to newegg and did a search for 'linux sata' and there is a nice little Sata to PCI adaptor for 12 bucks. Personally I have for a file server (and mythtv server, among other things) 2 cheap PCI sata adapters with a total of 4 harddrives in a 'MD' (software) RAID 5 array. (one on the onboard ide controller and three on the 2 sata controllers). So that's kinda nice.

 

[INM8]

There are only two reasons why i considered using windows for the file server:

1. Windows XP proffessional is already installed on there

2. At the moment, i use my main pc (aka: computer "1") to schedule and record digital tv daily using some free software called DVB Webscheduler ( http://www.digtv.no-ip.com/webscheduler/ ). However, if i were to dual boot, this system would no longer work because i would miss all the recordings that were on whilst i was using linux. As a solution to that, i thought i would move the tv tuner from the main computer to the celeron system, but the software only runs on windows, so if i was using linux as a fileserver i wouldnt be able to use it.


Neither of these are big issues however, because i am quite happy to overwrite the XP Pro installation, and i could use mythtv for the DVB recordings, which leads me to another question. With your mythtv setup, do you use mythtv's built in transcoder to compress video files, or something like nuvexport? The only thing i dont like about mythtv at the moment is that there is no built in option to compress recorded tv to a format like xvid, which would save alot of space. Im sure there is some way around that however, and having mythtv setup wouldnt be a bad idea anyway because i have been comtemplating a lounge room HTPC anyway.

 

[drag]

Na, I don't compress the stuff. Once I watch a show or movie or something I'll usually just delete it. I have enough disk space so that it's not realy a issue most of the time.

If I needed to compress something further then I would probably just use mencoder because I know how to use that. (mencoder is mplayer's encoder counterpart.)

If I had a lot of stuff I wanted to save for a long time I'd probably just use the built in stuff to go and compress stuff.

One option that I just noticed while looking over mythtv's wiki is a plugin called 'mytharchive' which is suppose to make it relatively simple to save shows and such to DVDs. To me that seems pretty cool if you want to store things for a long time.

You can get a 100 4.7g dvd+r (not that know the differences between dvd media) ridata (which I hear is a good brand(?), there are cheaper ones) disks for like 30 bucks. Compared to a 100 dollar 300 gig harddrive that is 6 cents per gig for the dvdr vs 33 cents per gig for the harddrive.

Of course the harddrive is much more convient and faster. The harddrive is more likely to have mechanical failure though. On the flip side drives are getting bigger and cheaper so copying digital data should help ensure it's integrety. The DVD media has a tendancy to rot (or oxygenate?) and will loose data after a few years, but I think you should be able to play them back on a veriaty of devices vs always having to have this whole big network/computer/software thing to setup. So there are trade-offs.

edit:
of course right now the mytharchive requires you to use a development version of mythtv, which makes it difficult. But hopefully it will make it to a stable release.
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/MythArchive