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4 Responses to Spoiled By Choice »»

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1. Anonymous coward
   Comment by Anonymous coward | 2007/03/14 at 09:55:32

   Wow. Yet another posting saying “I have no idea” “I don’t have the knowledge” “I don’t know” and then blaming Linux for the author’s demonstrable incompetence.

   If you don’t know what you are doing, much wiser to employ someone who does. If you want the MythTV features, go to a supplier of the whole lot - there’s a list on the MythTV Wiki http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Commercial_MythTV_System .
   And you still have a choice.

2. James Andrews
   Comment by James Andrews | 2007/03/20 at 02:44:59

   I agree and disagree with your points. Knowing that you are far from “incompetent” as the previous commenter alluded to I think you have hit on a relevant problem with Linux in general, in that there are competing distributions and the point of entry for a new user is not obvious. But you picked one on the WORST application suites to try and get running on Linux and not really a fair point of view for looking at a Linux desktop. It’s like trying to install Oracle on Windows XP because you just want to have a little address book database and chucking out the OS when it didn’t work out of the box! Myth is designed to be installed as a complete appliance and more than just a media player thing. Windows MCE works because the OS comes bundled with all the bits to play media already and the MCE bolt on bit will pretty much work out of the box (as long as you have compatible hardware) because it leverages what is already there. Many Linux distributions on the other hand are less likely to have the right media bits installed in the first instance because there is no assumption that you want to watch movies on your Linux desktop. So you will always have more initial configuration to do before getting any media app working. In many cases this is due to the fact that in order to keep the distro’s legal and royalty free some of the DVD decoding stuff and other media codecs are deliberately not there. Likewise if you want to make your MCE box store compressed movies or decrypted DVD’s you will also need to install some additional software and make some configuration changes to get it to work.

   Media centre type apps are still specialist (even in the case of Windows Media Centre) and are not likely to be bundled or integrated with an OS like Linux, especially if you want to make a credible desktop OS. If you had of said “What I wanted to do was write email, browse the internet and create some documents” you would have had a very different experience. These are not generally considered specialist apps and pretty much every desktop user would expect them to be there. With the good Linux distro’s they are there, they work out of the box and very well. In fact I could argue they are quicker and easier to get going than Windows. No, Linux is probably not a good default choice as a desktop OS for a home user that wants all the fancy multimedia and gaming stuff and it has a long way to go before it competes with Windows on that front for sure. But ease of use and installation difficulties are not an argument against it any more. Your problems came from the fact that you were faced with a choice’s that didn’t have an obvious answer for a new user and you are correct to point them out, but there are reasons for some of the choices and in fact some can be avoided outright. You also chose probably the worst distribution to try and get MythTV working on so you were doomed from the start of the experience! MythTV is not easy to get going and the choice of distro can make it much much worse!

   The previous poster either has very little or no experience with setting up MythTV on varying hardware and Linux platforms because setting it up will almost drive the hardiest of Linux devotee’s back to Windows MCE. I have around 10 years experience using Linux and even when I took the time to _carefully_ select hardware to run Myth on and it has still taken me over a month to get it going just well enough to use as a permanent appliance in my living room and I am still considering switching to Vista! And it’s not just me… Many of my (perhaps more competent) friends have setup Myth boxes and have had the same hair pulling frustrations with it. Myth isn’t really a desktop Linux thing as such, it’s relies on a whole bunch backend server stuff to work properly. The architecture and philosophy behind it differs from Windows MCE although an MCE clone is what most people want and therefore get frustrated. So anyway, to your choices…

   Choice #1 is actually a pain for sure because it’s not at all easy to choose the right Linux distro, but for new users (and actually as a MythTV platform) Ubuntu is the way to go. It takes about 10 minutes to get up and running and it pretty much just works. The APT package manager is much better than RPM (in my opinion anyway, I switched from being a RedHat/Fedora devotee which uses RPM and I find APT much better. Yast is the Suse frontend for RPM). For some apps (like Myth, which uses some beta software), Ubuntu “protects” you from installing them by putting them in different APT repositories so you _have_ to rejig your configuration to allow them to install. This is because these apps are not part of the core (and fully supported) application set and you risk scuttling your system by installing them. All of the apps in the default repositories can pretty much be safely installed by APT without killing your OS or having dependency issues. Yes it means you have to work a little harder to get some things working, but hey it’s a design choice of the OS maintainers to provide a stable base system. As things get more stable they will make it into the core repositories. Isn’t this something you want from a decent desktop OS?

   Choice #2 is not an issue with Ubuntu. It just goes ahead and uses Gnome without bothering the user with the details. If you want KDE later you can install it or opt for the derivative Kubuntu distribution. The KDE / GNOME question should _never_ be asked by an installer. To my mind this is a bad thing to put in the OS installer users that know enough to have a preference can always install it later. The most important thing is getting a productive system up without confusing the user initially. Who the hell knows what the best choice is between two things you have no knowledge of for god sake! Both Ubuntu and Fedora remove this choice in the installer for that reason.

   Choice #3: With Ubuntu VLC will install using APT no problems with one click of the mouse. However before you do that you do need to decide what functionality you want. Unlike windows (see above) there is really no default feature rich media player installed initially (although on Ubuntu I think there is one there. Not sure what it is as I never use it!) and you can choose between a bunch of them (as you found out!). The main ones you can go for are Xine, MPlayer and VLC and they install using APT with no issues on Ubuntu (no kernel recompiles!). Xine and MPlayer do pretty much the same thing so you can pick one or the other or both and see which suits! VLC has some specialty streaming stuff in it so if that is your bag use that. I tried them all and I found that Xine and Mplayer seemed work best with Myth without too much hassle. The Ubuntu Myth binaries are configured to look for Mplayer so it’s the easiest to go for. In fact I think Mplayer gets installed as a dependency when you install Myth on Ubuntu so you wouldn’t even have needed to bother with this choice! Ideally you should have made Choice 4 before Choice 3 then you would have had fewer hassles as Myth combines both choices 3 and 4. Problems with Myth arise from incompatible hardware and software mix or the vast choice (again choice) of hardware combinations you can configure. It can be difficult to get them right.

   Choice #4: Really Myth is the only choice if you want a fully feature PVR / HTPC type setup. But as I said above be prepared to “tinker” to get it all working. Basically MythTV tries to work on almost any hardware despite the lack of end to end support. Whereas MCE is mostly restricted to well known sets of hardware. Myth falls over because you have to do a lot more tweaking to get it working on your particular hardware mix than you do if you are running MCE on a fairly standard PC with standard peripherals. In the early days MCE was a pain to get going with many TV and video card combo’s, but now it is much better. Myth isn’t at that point yet. Myth has always tried to work on everything, but it’s a lot harder to get them all playing together precisely because there has been a lack of restriction on the hardware set and software stack. Myth also relies on a lot of beta code that may not work properly with your particular TV card and Linux Kernel. Pretty much even if you do get a set of fully supported hardware there will still be issues with bits of the supporting software that will cause you grief. But for me, in the long run I think will get a better end product than the stock Windows MCE platform. A final big issue I have with MCE is the likely hood of DRM issues; with Myth I am free of most of that headache!
   I would only “roll-your-own” MythTV box if you want to do it as a project that is likely to be a roller coaster of joy and frustration! You need to treat it as a learning experience as you will need to get stuck into the heart of Linux in some cases to make it work. I would NOT recommend doing it if your only goal is to setup a box you can store and watch DVD’s on.

   Choice #5: Truly a choice. If you want to spend the time getting Myth running properly you can end up with something perhaps better than Windows MCE. But if all you want is the shortest path to getting a media centre PC in your living room, Windows is definitely the choice. It is not however proof and point that Linux is not a viable desktop or server OS. With Ubuntu you don’t get the hassle of the options you faced save for the multimedia app choices ones which are there for reasons explained above, it’s simple to operate and configure and much like the direction Windows is heading you get a core set of essential features and can opt in to other features later if you like. I still think Ubuntu has a way to go before becoming anything like an easy choice to run on the desktop but it’s not due to problems with installs and configurations. It’s due to application suites. Microsoft Office is still the best productivity suite out there, especially Outlook which many organisations rely on heavily and the Exchange backend is head and shoulders above any Linux alternative corporate messaging system at this point. But if you look at what Vista offers a business over a Linux alternative the gap is much less that it was when XP came out.

   As to more organisations moving to Linux, well I don’t know about that, the pain of doing it is too high with the large Windows install base out there. Windows is far too good an OS to justify a change, however when corporates start to look at moving to Vista in the next few years there might be an opening. The fact that there are so many choices out there is bogus, as long as you pick one and stick to it you are fine (otherwise your TCO goes through the roof maintaining things!). Basically for any corporate there are only 3 choices and it doesn’t take much research to figure it out: RedHat, Suse (Novell and a little bit of MS) or Ubuntu. From there it’s probably all about commercial support agreements but as long as you pick one and get the infrastructure in place to support it you will be probably be fine. If you mix and match you are doomed!

3. Brendon
   Comment by Brendon | 2007/03/20 at 15:06:20

   Get a Mac. Choice is totally absent from the Apple way. Steve knows best.

   Want a media server? Apple TV.
   What hardware? Apple TV.
   What software? Apple TV.
   What are your PVR options? None whatsoever.
   What if I want a media centre with a DVD player? Tough.

   Sometimes Steve doesn’t know best, but not ever having to make a decision is truly liberating. It’s like having a girlfriend organise all your holidays for you. You know could probably do a similar job if you really, really tried but you know you never will.

4. Matt Wright
   Comment by Matt Wright | 2007/03/22 at 15:48:45

   Option #6: http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/3683/completely_mind-blowing_linuxmce

   Looks simple and cool.

   –
   Matt.

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