HTPC Distro

Matt Russell · 10 Jul 2006 at 15:43

I've had a look around the forum, and not found much.

What distro do people use and reccomend for a HTPC?

Is Knoppmyth any good?

This is for me, who has had very little experience with Linux, but definately want to learn more!

Cheers,
Matt

titchard · 10 Jul 2006 at 16:18

I myself am quite interested in a good Media Centre Linux distro, although from what I have seen Knoppmyth is a Live CD?

I may be wrong, but I would like to actually install it onto the HDD.

Looking to get one of those little Compaq iPAQ thin client jobbies, so that it just streams off of my server.

Rich

Deathwish · 11 Jul 2006 at 19:49

KnoppMyth installs to your hard drive, or can be a LiveCD (but only for a frontend).

Have a look at these URL's, might help ya. I've got a KnoppMyth box running here, and i'll attempt to answer any of your questions

http://www.mythtv.org/
http://www.mythtvtalk.com
http://mysettopbox.tv/
http://knoppmythwiki.org/

Al Vallario · 11 Jul 2006 at 20:29

Definitely check out the Systm episode on MythTV which includes information on what MythTV is, a walk-through install of KnoppMyth among other handy tips

whitecrook · 11 Jul 2006 at 22:38

i'm running a slightly older versin R26 of knoppmyth and it is good, to figure out how it works, but it's limited as the knopp base system can't be easily upgraded without breakign loads of dependencies. I'm shortly going to instanll ubuntu 6.06 and mythtv on that. Should be much improved. Mythtv Rocks btw./

Deathwish · 11 Jul 2006 at 23:53

It might be good to post what hardware we are all using to help others decide?

I'll start:

AMD Athlon XP 2200+
512Mb Corsair DDR RAM
ASRock K7VT2 (KT266)
250Gb Samsung HD
GeForce FX 5200 128Mb
2x Hauppauge Nova-T DVB-T
Microsoft USB Media Centre Remote
KnoppMyth R5B7

Things I would change/I will change:

Avoid VIA chipset based motherboards, they have issues with high DMA load on the PCI bus (not good for TV Tuners). Im going to swap over to Gentoo as I know it better, KnoppMyth was used just to get me used to using MythTV. Might upgrade the gfx to something newer, 6200 perhaps.

Vonhelmet · 12 Jul 2006 at 12:19

You can install MythTV into pretty much any decent distro, so pick whatever you're comfortable with and go with that. I'm trying to get one going with Gentoo at the moment as it's what I'm used to.

titchard · 12 Jul 2006 at 12:47

Al Vallario said:
Definitely check out the Systm episode on MythTV which includes information on what MythTV is, a walk-through install of KnoppMyth among other handy tips

Argh! I forgot Kevin and Systm did an episode on this!

Must dig that out for a watch!

Rich

steinooo · 13 Jul 2006 at 12:57

titchard said:
Argh! I forgot Kevin and Systm did an episode on this!

Must dig that out for a watch!

Rich

Myth TV is also sometimes installed on Fedora Core, I did it following this excellent guide : http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/

whitecrook · 13 Jul 2006 at 20:45

I'm using a similar spec,
Sempron 2800+,
512MB,
seagate 250gig
Bt878 tuner card
Flyvideo3000 tuner card,
el cheapo 5.1 card + onboard sound
fx 5200 s-video out

Records 2x full res analogue channels at once no sweat.