Linux Linux MP3 Jukebox (Not streaming)

Hi,

I have an epia mobo and would like to utilise this along with a large hard disk to transfer all my CDs into OGG or MP3 with the relevant tags and album art and use as a MP3 player connected to my hifi.

I will connect the epia to an LCD tv, so will be using a normal vga connection.

I have a linksys wireless pci card I want to use to enable internet radio and maybe occasional web surfing.

If poss I would like to make use of the windows mce remote i have and even better if I can use the mce keyboard too.

I want the epia to boot into linux (which should I use?) and autostart into the mp3 jukebox which would show album art etc. Then its basically pick an album and play.

Is any of the above possible? which software/apps do I need?

Any help appreciated

 

For general HTPC functionality, go with MythTV if your going down the Linux Route

 

If you have and MCE remote and keyboard then i would say try and go for MCE2005.


I know its not linux but id recommend it .... its a very nice front end ..... even compaired to Mediaport etc.

 

As much as I love MythTV I think it would be OTT if you're not doing TV/video playback. A better choice would be FreeVo, I did play with it a while ago. Its quite modular so you could chop out the bits you don't need. The screenshots show it should do what you're asking

My only other suggestion would be use KDE and have amarok start up on boot. It should also do nicely, it'll handle album art, internet radio and Ipods. Only problem would be getting a remote to interface with it.

The windows MCE remotes apparantly work with LIRC and that would interface directly with Freevo.

Distro wise, you could look at Freevo based distros, or install Freevo onto any other Distro.

 

MythTV is great, yes it may be a little OTT if not using tv/video but does it really matter? It'll still do the job well. Freevo is good but mythtv has handy extra features such as web browsing, games, weather etc that might be useful - not sure if freevo has these/if you would even use them but thought they were worth a mention! LIRC is one of the handiest pieces of software I've come across, love it. Does exactly what you want it to.

 

Thanks for the info. I am not bothered about PVR stuff, plus I mainly watch cable channels to freeview.

Ive tried MCE but I want something speedy. I dont want to wait 5 mins to power up the machine to listen to some music.

I am now trying to track a freevo based dist. Seems freevix and freepia have gone the way of the dodo

 

the boot speed depend on the distribution, if you play with rc and init you can cut it by 10. If you want ready distro try DSL (2.4 kernel based), it is really fast to boot on

or if you want to lears alot; gentoo, when the boot is tweaked it is the fastest distro, but it is hard to install and configure for begginer

 

DSL might be worth a try. Quite impressed that its only 50mb. Should boot really fast.

I am a linux n00b, so would like to use a version with minimum configuration requirements.

 

DSL would require quite a lot of reconfiguring to do what your looking for so you would have to install to to disk but once you've done that it becomes a highly modified debian and as such is about 200mb. You might be as well just installing straight debian and then only adding the packages that you need.

 

Cheers for the info, Have gone with kubuntu as it is debian based and is geared for desktop.

Went okay as well, have a problem using my linksys wmp54g card due to the broadcom chipset. Just trying to get my head round the ndiswrapper work a round.