In search of a media server
The conclusion I’ve decided to reach, this evening, is that either I have to devote significantly greater amounts of time to my random trials of Linux, or I will have to read a few more books. Enough of the library collecting; the evolution of the modern distro means that a few simple commands in a bash shell aren’t enough to impress the kids. They want a desktop, in colour with bells and whistles. No CLI for the GUI generation.
This evening I installed another home system in dual-boot, with XP in the driver’s seat and a variation of Ubuntu in the caboose. Large hard drives make it easy to allocate a few dozen gigs of space for such efforts. The real hope on this machine is that I can finally get some regular use out of the TV tuner card we installed one weekend last year under Windows. It works, but the overhead in trying to create useable media afterward is rarely worth the result. Hence the card has had little use. A decent card, too: the Hauppage PVR-150 with a connection to our home cable system.
There is support in Linux, and within minutes I was watching something or other on one channel. There’s the little irritation; I had no idea how to change channels. A few more minutes in a wiki revealed that there was lots of software out there, and that I probably wanted to add MythTV to the mix. The package manager installed it, and then I realized that MySQL was also needed. I’m not sure what password is currently in use, and since son #2 wants his room for more traditional things like sleep, the configuration is currently on hold. See what I mean about needing more time?
I will make this work, but there goes another weekend.
