I want to put a Linux distro on my fiancee's laptop. Vista is slowing it right down and I can't do what I want on it. Is there a distribution of Linux that will allow me to do DLNA streaming to my TV and will also function for general web browsing. I've only ever used Ubuntu but I don't know if it'll do the streaming part of it. It needs to stream XVID based AVI files if that makes any difference. Cheers guys
MediaTomb seems to be what you need - it is available through Ubuntu as well. The general rule is - if it exists, Ubuntu repositories contain it.
I'll give that a look! Anyone know if XBMC would do the streaming part of what I want? It seems popular and says it can use a lot of protocols to do streaming.
Arch Linux running minidlna I found mediatomb to be a pain the rear to setup, tv would throw errors with half the files... The thumbnails were cool though. Minidlna just needs a path to the media and off you go. Only problem I've found with minidlna is it falls over around once a week.
OK, bought myself a HP Microserver barebones. Just in the process of installing Debian Linux, which I have precisely zero experience with! Once done I intent to install miniDLNA, any support or advice welcome, and will post my findings...
ushare is very small and easy to configure media streamer. essentially tell it a directory to index and done. I have it scripted to re-index every time a file is added to my media directory.
I tried uShare but had some difficulties with it, can't remember what though. I use MediaTomb now nice slick web interface running on Debian. Debian is as straight forward as any, my sever has been running for over a year now and I've not had to touch it. Really should make time to play a bit more with it though its way over powered to just be a file server.
A little update, I got bored and frustrated in trying to get Linux to stream to my TV. So I installed Windows 7 instead .......And it still won't flaming stream, but my main PC will. And they're both running Windows 7, both have the same codecs, both have the same video files and both are running on exactly the same network with the same cabling. I give up, I'm gonna get a VGA cable and a jack cable and just plug it in lol
I'm struggling with Linux, that seems to be the crux of my issue. I'll start a new thread for some general tips and whatnot after I do some (more) googling.
VortexBox is a pretty good headless, single-minded server for media use. Streams via DLNA/UPnP, has a wealth of features, and even rips CDs and DVDs if you stick 'em in the drive. I reviewed it 'ere. It's not perfect, but it's nice and easy to set up.
Thanks for the suggestion Gareth. For whatever reason I embarked on the OpenMediaVault distro instead. Coupled with the miniDLNA plugin it's working like a charm! Very happy, though steep learning curve for me. When HDD prices come down I'll stick a couple of 2TB drives in, though for now I'm just experimenting with a spare 500GB drive.
Haven't tried that one - I'll have to have a play. MiniDLNA is great; I use it on my ARM server, although for some reason inotify fails to tell it when there are new files to index...