Heyya, for my Jukebox project, I need a distro of Linux, or anything that boots quickly and starts playing music straight away. So I need -Boots straight into a media player capable of playing MP3s and WMAs -Can interface with a standard multimedia keyboard for volume/ next track etc. It doesn't all have to be built in, if there is a program that can be setup to do this it would be fine too.
While I'm sure that this is quite possible with customization of nearly any distro, I couldn't begin to tell you how to do it as I am a complete linux n00b. What I can say is that I have seen similar things done with a cut down Win98 and batch scripts set to run at boot time. I'd imagine a similar procedure is involved in linux, but probably much more elegantly done.
About any distro can be used, and with a lowweight windows manager like Fluxbox, a key mapper is allready installed (so you can make your own hotkeys quite easily). Also with Fluxbox, it is quite easy to start applications at startup. Just add it to .fluxbox/startup or to .fluxbox/apps (with the right syntax)
Ah cheers, just waiting on the bits to get here (auction and I'm trying to get a hold of the guy but he seems to be away, all good feedback though) Then I can give it a go. What distro would you recommend for fast boot times? Was planning on possibly using CF for boot, but bugger buying an adaptor, I'll build my own.
i'm very interested in the very subject because within a couple of years, my main rig here will be used as me living room media box after i #1 build a new 'puter, then i'm going to install a panel in one of the 5.25" bays with a remote control receiver. if the technology is inexpensive enough, i really want a remote an LCD that could display certain information like music/movie titles, volume, bassand possibly the same place could display a visualization for audio output. my idea is probably a little more far off than yours. lol. god that will be expensive but oh so rewarding.
Wwll I am moving soon, so this will have to be completed within a month or so. Hopefully I can get it all working before I leave.
best of wishes, wish i could contribute but i'm more of an onlooker in this thread. i will be following it so when you figure thsi out can you post it up please?
Arch Linux or Gentoo. It also depends A LOT on what services you want initialised and whether you're happy to boot to the command line only or if you need a GUI. Flash is quieter but not as fast as a HDD, AFAIK.
It will have a HDD in it anyways, I was just entertaining the idea of using Flash, if it was faster. It doesn't need a GUI, it will be running headless after the setup, which is why I want it to boot up and start playing music straight away, as there is not real way of navigating to the music. The only inputs are going to be are play/pause button, next/previous song stop and volume.
There are a lot of CLI based mp3 players. For example: mpd (Music Player Daemon) mad123 mpg123 mpg321 xmms-shell (CLI for XMMS) mp3Blaster and many more... Some even support LIRC (Linux Infrared Remote Control), eg. mcplay. I'm sure you'll find something to suit your needs!
