Music playback distro?

Benihana

Benihana

Benihana

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Hey all,

I have an upcoming birthday for which I've been asked to provide some sort of music source, was going to use an old p4 slimline desktop with a linux distro that would act as a sort of HTPC, where people could add music into a queue but not access any other controls.

I guess i'm thinking of Window Media Player's 'Party Mode'

Does this exist? Any suggestions welcome!
 
XBMC will allow this sort of function, it's a little bit finicky with the controls though. There is also an XBMC Live CD which will boot it and set it all up for you.
 
Yeah, no need for a dedicated distro. Just stick XBMC on your distro of choice. It has a kind of full-screen kiosk mode which should be just what you need.

Edited to add: Not sure about locking people out of the rest of the system. There will always be some smartarse who will fiddle or may even know the right keystrokes. Full-screen is your best bet really.
 
Cool, tried XBMC, Boxee and MediaPortal, plus a Jukebox software called Juke That! but they all seem to have problems with direct x. I have a compaq evo D510S with some crappy onboard gfx (8mb woo, wont even display 1440x900 it seems)

Will try the Live CD and report back!
 
Last edited:
As above.

I would say Linux in general would have an issue with Direct X.

If the on-board graphics are a SIS chipset of some kind then the problem gets worse. Intel graphics on the other hand should work just fine.
 
do you mean X Server?
If your XServer breaks, linux should still be able to display in text based mode.
Is your refresh rate set out of range? This would cause problems displaying on a TFT screen and should be <60Hz
If you can get into a terminal (ctrl+alt+f#) [f1 to f6 should work] have a look at your xorg.config. This is usually in /etc/X11/xorg.conf but may vary for your distro (worth checking the doc's/wiki). nano is usually a good terminal text editor to use for this kind of thing eg: [nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf]
Look for a line with refresh rates and check they're under 60, then try restarting the xServer. (ctrl+alt+f7 should return you to the terminal x11 is trying to run in).

If no xorg.conf is present, your distro might use an automatic configuration that is failing to detect the hardware properly. If this is the case you should be able to generate a xorg.conf to override the automatic config, but this will be specific to your distro and may require the installation of some small apps or script. You then generate the new xorg.config with some command like Xorg-configure and follow prompts. Then check the created file with nano or another text editor and finally test it and hope it works.

There are more debugging options too, like checking the correct graphics drivers are installed (distro wiki/docs again) and checking that is select in the xorg.config etc
 
Stil looking for suggestions?

Try Geexbox which is really easy to use and has most of the features you would probably need.

Alternatively If you want a distro that does a bit more than just media playback, take a look at Mythbuntu which is quite popular as it allows you to customise your system and add more features.

Hope that helps.
 
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