*^$*(^%() Linux!

[Carpe Vapor]

Put Linux Mint 14 nadia on my wife's lappy before xmas.

Only problem we had was getting iTunes or any variant of it to work

She gave up in the end and reformatted to put Windows back on as she only uses it for email, internet and loading music on to her iPhone/Phone/Tablets

[farzooks]

Well, I put the Kubuntu desktop on Myth last night and it's quite pleasing; much more configurable than previously and really quite nice to use. I've just installed WINE for my torrents (I found Transmission, the Linux torrenter, was a bit cranky) and uTorrent is now back in service, and flying along. If it weren't for the bloody satellite card I'd be dead chuffed with this, it's like a new machine - faster than Win7 (although by this time Windows was getting slogged down by the crap that builds up and was due a re-installation, anyway). I hope that isn't a necessary feature of Linux.
In terms of the Kubuntu desktop, it's the little things that make a difference - like proper scroll bars and reasonably familiar layouts and things can be jigged around so that the look and feel is almost Window-like. Oddly, installing WINE slightly changed the fonts, but it's not objectionable.
Interesting what you say Carpe, about the laptop - last year I put Puppy Linux on an ancient Dell 500 laptop and it gained a new lease of life. Puppy is dead-stripped and simple, and just worked. It's a bit spartan, but for basic tasks, it's fine and does all a laptop needs to do for my use.

[farzooks]

Jan 1, 2014 18:23:45 GMT digiw0rx said:

with regards to your TV card, what card is it? All the different distro's may have different functionality out the box but at the end of the day they're all based on linux and things which work on one, can be made to work on another with some commands.

This is a Technisat Skystar2 - DVB-S I know others have got it to work on most of the popular versions of Linux, but there seems to be a lack of coherent information on it. Trouble seems to be that every installation is a bit different, and even though the kernel supports it, I'm missing something between it and the ability for the backend to even talk to it. It's bloody annoying - works in VLC and a decent picture (although the codec in use could have been better) and it must be just a ba'hair away from working in Myth backend, but all the backend tells me is it doesn't recognise it.

[GunJack]

+1 for Puppy...cracking little distro

[Carpe Vapor]

I personally love linux and use it daily for web servers et al.

If it weren't for the itunes (or getting tunes on to devices) problem she would have stuck with it.

[farzooks]

I'm giving it a break for a couple of days, but I'm determined to get it working. Meanwhile, I'm growing to like it a lot.

[boyofford]

Jan 3, 2014 13:19:43 GMT Carpe Vapor said:

I personally love linux and use it daily for web servers et al.

If it weren't for the itunes (or getting tunes on to devices) problem she would have stuck with it.

Never used iTunes but thought I read somewhere it worked in wine.
But that would of been years ago when I read it so maybe old version only.

[Deleted]

Linux is fantastic. Tb cards can be a real bitch though. I tend to buy whats already in the linux kernel. They add more and more each revision. Tvheadend is worth a look on top of any flavour linux you fancy. Then use xbmc as a frontend for it with the tvheadend plugin. Never really got on with mythbuntu myself.

Edit: Ive actually read the whole thread now definitely try tvheadend, will more than likely be your missing link. The tv card you have is supported out of the box in linux so tvheadend should just work. Hasnt failed me yet

Sent from my GT-I9300 using proboards

[Deleted]

Jan 3, 2014 2:01:57 GMT farzooks said:

Jan 1, 2014 18:23:45 GMT digiw0rx said:

with regards to your TV card, what card is it? All the different distro's may have different functionality out the box but at the end of the day they're all based on linux and things which work on one, can be made to work on another with some commands.

This is a Technisat Skystar2 - DVB-S I know others have got it to work on most of the popular versions of Linux, but there seems to be a lack of coherent information on it. Trouble seems to be that every installation is a bit different, and even though the kernel supports it, I'm missing something between it and the ability for the backend to even talk to it. It's bloody annoying - works in VLC and a decent picture (although the codec in use could have been better) and it must be just a ba'hair away from working in Myth backend, but all the backend tells me is it doesn't recognise it.

Will have a scout around and see what i can find, how much RAM do you have? you may of already said but i can't remember and forgot to look at the OP before posting this reply haha.

The reason i ask is i seem to remember some TV cards having a hissy fit with large amount of RAM.

[fred]

As the card plays nice with vlc I guess its not a firmware issue.
Is it that myth just won't recognise the dvb card , or that it won't tune channels? Remembering that dvb-s cards are set up in myth as dvb dtv, and you MUST set up diseqc. Universal LNB should do, unless you have switches, multiple dishes or motors.

Good luck.

[farzooks]

Jan 4, 2014 10:33:33 GMT digiw0rx said:

Will have a scout around and see what i can find, how much RAM do you have? you may of already said but i can't remember and forgot to look at the OP before posting this reply haha.

The reason i ask is i seem to remember some TV cards having a hissy fit with large amount of RAM.

There's 8GB in this, but as fred says, it's working fine in VLC.

I discovered that this version of Mythbuntu (which I thought was the latest) actually has the .25 MythTV in it, so I forced an update to .26 last night and today, there was a difference in the backend setup screens - and the card showed up, briefly. It went away again when I tried scanning. There's no diseqc option in it anywhere, nor any LNB settings or choices. I'm now wondering if the setup got corrupted somehow, early on, possibly by installing something in an attempt to get it working.

<edit>
Update; I just went back into it and the card remained visible this time, and then a bar appeared with 'LNB, Diseqc, Switch' settings on it. Set that up, and went back to scanning, which started working this time. I now have 260 channels of sheet, but hey, better than nothing. I now have to see if I can actually watch any of them, as the frontend won't play nicely now and mythweb is nowhere to be found, to try to get rid of all the conflicting crap channels. I really don't know who wrote this utter piece of shit, but by feck, it's as well it's free.

<edit>
By gawd, it's working! Pretty rubbish picture quality and a primitve interface, but it's actually going. I ended up ignoring Mythweb as I did't fancy going down all that list and painstakingly taking out all the dud ones and quite possibly screwing the database pooch with a mistake. Anyway, now that it's actually proven to work, I'm trying to get XBMC to act as a frontend for tvheadend - TVH went in allright, but is lacking something, again. Argh.

[fred]

Yeay - good job farzooks!

Now you've got it playing nice, but with poor picture quality, I WILL tell you to try different versions of the firmware - the newest is not always the best in many cases.
Does vlc give you a better picture than mythtv?

You can hide channels in mythweb and in mythtv-setup on the backend, rather than deleting them - would save you any worries of borking the dB.

[farzooks]

Still fiddling; things have improved a lot. When I went to get XBMC PVR add-ons, there was one for TVHeadend, too. This is looking up.
XBMC is now showing fairly clear channels on the LiveTV window (I've left the database alone for the time being).
TVH is now scanning, and getting all the muxes in a listing, but not registering services, so I'm now working in a purely KDE desktop without Myth being loaded at all, so will see if there was any clash of priorties for the card drivers. It will end up being Mythbuntu with no Myth, at this rate

<addendum>
And that's the story so far - TVH on a reload of the KDE desktop with no Myth is scanning properly, and the plug-in in XBMC is loading the channels from it, they can even be edited, but LiveTV in XBMC isn't showing them - still missing a link (perhaps it's permissions on the dvb folder). Still, it's getting there and if I can get over this final hurdle and it stays reliable, that's fine. I like the KDE environment a lot. Fast, slick, clean. With a couple of extras that really should be in Ubuntu - like no faffing around trying to get the CD to work (although, that's more a bug than a feature) and auto-mount of the drives when set up that way. Of course, it has its quirks and foibles, like they all do - starting up uTorrent in a Wine box locks the system if not done right, but that was happening in Ubuntu.
At least this desktop remembers the settings for the mouse speed, too.

[Deleted]

Get rutorrent instead and ditch wine Glad youre getting there

Edit: Or Deluge. Whichever you fancy. Then theres couchpotato and sickbeard to play with, which were built for usenet but torrent support is pretty good nowadays.

Edit1: www.seedmybox.com/wiki/index.php?title=Install_Rutorrent that's a nice link to get rutorrent up and running quickly and easily. Native apps are always much better than using wine. Rutorrent gives rtorrent a utorrent look and feel so should be easy enough to use once set up. Interested to see how you get on so post back if you get chance

[Deleted]

elementaryos.org/ ...have a look here....a modern linux ,low in resourcess ,is based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS,It's available in both 32-bit (i386) and 64-bit (amd64) ,good luck