Hardware Building an Ion-powered Linux Media PC

As mentioned above, If you don't like boxee (Which it certainly didn't seem like you did), go to it's parent project, XBMC. There you have proper DVD support, and full playback, in a little more stable environment, and without the whole social necessity. Oh yeah, and they have a LiveCD/USB system you can use to try it easily.

 

[strike]Thoeretically, yes. Rip the disc contents using software on Windows, and XBMC can then play it natively (Although without menus and the like so far).[/strike]

You can follow the guide(s) here:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/BluRayAndHDDVD

Or (with DumpHD installed and working) use a command-line like this:

Code:

./dumphd.sh --infile:BDMV/STREAM/000054.m2ts /media/cdrom | mplayer -cache 8192 -lavdopts threads=4 -vo vdpau -vc ffh264vdpau -

To decode and play on-the-fly.

 

A slightly easier way for 9.10 is to open System/Administration;/Software Sources & add the repository "ppa:thefirstm/karmic-testing" to the "Other Software" tab. Then simply install "nvidia-graphics-drivers-195" & "flashplugin-nonfree" from the Synaptic package manager, and reboot.

One good thing about Ubuntu in particular is that any program or driver you want has probably already been packaged by someone.
Firefox plugins are available to help you find it (install "firefox-launchpad-plugin" using Synaptic or apt-get or aptitude).

 

Emphasis on the slightly easier.

Tell me, is there any procedure for linux that doesn't involve knowing some secret magic string like this that you can only get from some guy on some forum somewhere, which you then type in and watch the results between your fingers?

 

Phil since you clearly have no interest in using linux why do you bother coming in a trolling the threads regarding it?
Fact is there are menu options to do things in this distro but since the internet is text based its actually easier to read then copy paste text commands than it is to follow your way through a 4 level deep hierarchical menu to then follow a serise of click here do this click here do that sequence of help that if you miss a bit can land you even more confused.

 

You misunderstand.

Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to start using linux; unfortunately a prerequisite for that is that it is actually becoming usable as a desktop OS. Yes, yes, I know you can use it under those circumstances - it's also possible to pogo-stick up the Sears Tower - but I'm just not willing to commit to the amount of careful nurturing it needs that when there are far better alternatives that don't demand anything like as much maintenance time. Why should I?

But really, the chief frustration for me is that under the current circumstances, the world's linux people seem desperate to promulgate the idea that it is one hundred per cent completely wall-to-wall perfect and faultless, which is, firstly, massively fatuous and stupid, but mostly very unhelpful as regards persuading people to fix the things that are wrong with it because nobody will accept that there are any.

And yes, I know it's almost impossible for people like you to accept the idea that linux may not be infused with a godlike infalliability, so I'm probably completely wasting my time.

 

I'm the first to admit that its not perfect, its not. Show me the OS that is. For example Phil explain how having just moved from an ATI gfx card to a nVidia card one would get windows to run stably? I suspect your right why don't you go back to the windows threads we'll call when we need your opinion on how perfect windows is.

 

Personally I'd probably take that as an opportunity for a reinstall - but that's part of the issue. You'd just reinstall windows, and in a couple of hours you'd be done. Linux, you'd be at it days, googling desperately for all the Magic Make It Work Strings, and you'd probably never quite get it back the way it was before.

And you do need my opinion, and the opinion of everyone else who says "stuff linux it's too much trouble". You do indeed need the input of those people, but you just don't see it that way, do you?

 

Exactly you would spend hours doing what should be a completely unnecessary procedure where as in three simple "Magic" commands you'd be off. You don't even get that the fact that you have to do a reinstall every now and again is ridiculous your just so used to the windows way™ and there in is the "Problem" with Linux you've spend years learning how to do things like a reinstall and updating drivers and you cba to learn how to do things differently. Fair enough I cba to learn a new language but then i don't go round a French for beginners forum trolling them.

Constructive feed back is always a valuable asset, trolling by some one who is very invested in windows and only wants to use Linux when its exactly the same as windows is very much less useful.

 

+1, every command in linux give as a terminal command can be done via the GUI with 'click here, do that' commands.

Its just easier to help people with the terminal commands.

I thought linux would be a pain, well its not at all. It throws its toys out the pram a few times, but that is due to user error 9 times out of 10.

after installing ubuntu, just give it a 10/100 connection to the internet, and it will find drivers and fix errors with in a few minutes, then open up the applications and add from all the open source goodness out there hassle free!


I also love that zotac's ION itx is £130, and strongly back up the suggestion of buying AMD on a mATX plateform for much less cash, and live with a little noise and greater size.

 

...which would take far longer than two hours, wouldn't it, because you'd have to figure out what particular pseudorandom alphanumeric gibberish it wanted today, try several variations, fix the damage done when you tried the wrong one, etc.

Frankly I've had to install linux more often than windows because it's so easy to destroy the entire install by typing in the wrong gibberish! I have pages and pages of notes (made on a windows PC) detailing exactly how to set up various things under Ubuntu, on the basis that you install it, try and make it do what you want, mistakenly make it unbootable, then you reinstall, return it to the point just before you screwed up, try something else, get a bit further, mistakenly kill the install again, reinstall from the CDs... god it's just soul-destroying. The only thing I'll put Ubuntu on these days is eee-PCs which have that magic "factory reset" button, you want to do anything else you're on your own.

 

http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&sour...=&aq=0&oq=install+nvidia+&fp=b79064815dba9d93

Yup that would take hours, hours and hours and hours. If you had to build Google from scratch.

 

I'm sorry but you must be made of complete failure, when I first ventured into ubuntu without even a hint of linux experience or any beginner tutorial/handbook even I never managed to make the OS "unbootable". To this day I've never managed to screw it up THAT BAD that I can't even boot the bloody thing, I think what you should've done was read the instructions a LITTLE more carefully and had a bit of common sense The only time ubuntu has been unbootable is because I reinstalled XP so it installed the XP bootloader so a simple 5 minutes googling and I found how to get my grub back and bob's your uncle, FIXED!

I still do not see why you are trolling a guide entitled "Building an Ion-powered Linux Media PC" with emphasis on the LINUX MEDIA PC to just come and say linux is crap, use windows. If you have no interest in the title the the guide THEN DON'T POST AT ALL!

 

Inasmuch as a google search just restates the question, yes, Steve, I would expect it to take hours and hours to install a set of graphics drivers on Ubuntu. It might not, you might be lucky, but you've generally got to allocate an afternoon to a job like that on PenguinOS because it will so reliably screw it up and you will have to fix an absolute bucketload of peripheral issues that the work throws up.

The problem is that any version of Linux can and will drastically alter its behaviour depending on whether it's exactly the same hardware configuration, BIOS setup, kernel/libraries/source versions as the guy who wrote the guide, whether you're wearing odd-coloured socks or if it's the thirteenth wednesday after Pentecost. Consistency is a huge problem. It's easy to get the impression that most of the software (including absolutely critical things like the package manager) are written by a bunch of amateurs who have no real personal investment in whether they work, so long as they work for them at that moment. Which is in fact the case, mostly, so it's not very surprising.

 

Restates the question and throws up a thousand guides to solve it, funny that.

 

Y...yes, Steve, yes, that's what I mean.

Why does the bloody thing need a thousand guides to install a graphics driver?

Here is a "guide" to installing more or less any piece of software on Windows:

1) Run the installer.
2) You're done.

 

For the same reason there are nearly 17million hits for the same search as above but for windows. Every one wants their own words on the web.
http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&q=in...ng+nvidia+drivers+windows&fp=b79064815dba9d93
What version of windows are you installing on? 32bit? 64 bit? Its no where near as simple as you make out, what are you meant to run where do you download it from? Do you see where I'm coming from your a Linux noob you clearly have issues with it, but your (presumably) a Windows power user so of course its easier to work windows, it doesn't just work either but you know what your doing and how to work around the limitations inherent in any OS.

 

Ok is it me or is it getting a little hot in here?

 

ya I figured that much but the other thing that DumpHD will have to look into that.

 

WARNING! RANT AHEAD.
<troll><rant>
@Phil

I hear this argument all the time, and frankly it's pretty tired. If you want to run Windows, you have to KNOW you need a driver. You have to FIND the driver. You have to DOWNLOAD and RUN the driver and then let it restart your computer twice to get it to work.

In Linux, you DOWNLOAD the driver, switch to a terminal, type in TWO commands and it works.

Do you know how to type "CD"? Do you know how to use "DIR" in windows command prompt? These things are learned. As you become more tech sophisticated, you learn more things, like drivers and installation procedures and registry editing and all those other wonderful things.

Linux isn't harder, it isn't magic, it isn't any of those things. It's DIFFERENT, and you DON'T LIKE IT cause you have to LEARN A NEW COMMAND. The days of "months of google searching" are long past over. If you didn't know what a driver was, going onto NV's site and getting the right one and installing it would be just as cumbersome.

Nobody who is a regular user of Linux claims that it's perfect. But we all get VERY tired of the same old worn-out argument simply because you learned something differently so therefore it's SO much more complex to learn this one. If you want to hammer on the OS, be my guest - being a user of Mac and Linux only at this point, I can point you to a few places we can really have a ball firing shots at Tux. But at least pick a valid argument.

Major tech sites now carry all the basics of Linux, so it's not hard to find. And frankly, the day that I can open up my windows box, open up Windows Update and have it upgrade EVERY BIT OF SOFTWARE on my box to the newest version (not just the OS) with two mouse clicks and a password, or just search for new software by typing in what I want and having it go fetch, install and configure it for me, I'll start listening to the Windows crowd about what is or isn't "easy."

yeesh.
</rant></troll>