I am the Linux
So I got a new box the other day with a few issues (bad PSU, and bad Memory). Replaced the power supply and borrowed RAM from the Kids PC while waiting on the RMA from Kingston (gotta love Lifetime Warranties on RAM). I’ve wanted to setup a Media PC for a while and now I finally had the box to do it. The box is a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 with 1GB of RAM, so it works nicely as a HTPC. I just need to get a DVD/RW for it and all will be golden. I decided for this particular box that I was going to load Ubuntu Linux for the OS and so far things have gone swimmingly. Got it on the network, setup everything using Automatix, and mounted two shares on my main PC that have all the media on it.
Hooked it up via DVI to my TV in the bedroom and off we go. Surprisingly the picture quality is actually quite good on the movies and is quite a bit more fun than watching things while in my chair on my main PC. The only drawback right now is I have it connected to the network via a PLID and it’s just not quite fast enough to feed the video to the HTPC without the occasional choppy audio/video. So when I get a chance I need to run a cable into the bedroom so I have a full 100Mbit connection to the PC (I’d go gig, but I just don’t have the network hardware atm and nor do I have the budget).
During this time I also decided it would be a good idea to load up Ubuntu as my OS on my Dell D610. All that is left to do is finish getting the wireless working, being as how it has a stupid Broadcom based wireless card. I also need to get the Verizon Wireless card working, which looks simple, I’m just waiting on hear back about the phone number of my particular card. Both of these tasks have simply been part of moving towards moving to 100% Linux in my personal life with the fact that I have no plans of ever letting Vista onto any of my personal computers.
I have taken a look at putting MythTV onto my HTPC box in the bedroom, but I’m really just not sure it is what I want out of that box right now. VLC does an awesome job of playing my movies for me and I already have all my files carefully organized on the storage server, so I just don’t see the benefit of a PVR app when I don’t have a tuner card.