MythDora — MythTV 0.2 In a Box

peterdaly writes "MythDora 3 is the first MythTV 'in-a-box' style distribution to include MythTV 0.20. Based on Fedora Core 5, MythDora 3 is designed to format your hard drive then install everything needed for a fully functional MythTV System. Here is a walkthrough of the entire MythDora installation process, including screenshots and a screencast."

Comments

Re:Um...KnoppMyth?

[rGauntlet]

Well, right now MythDora using Myth 0.20 and KnoppMyth (Which I use, and prefer) is on 0.19. Aside from the Debian vs Fedora, that's the main difference I think. The issue I had with MythDora was that it ships with a single-processor kernel, SMP disabled. KnoppMyth worked with my simple SMP rig right outta the box, no recompilation required. If you care and find yourself with nothing better to do, and trust me there are far better things to do, my read on it is on my website.

Re:Why does Myth think it's an OS

[Dynedain]

Because there are so many extra components you need. Outside media players, codec libraries, driver packages, various MPEG decoding/encoding libraries, etc, etc.

I tried getting MythTV installed from the Knoppix disc. Plenty of things didn't work. It took me a few days to track down DVD playback problems. I then had to mess with getting the NVIDIA binary drivers installed and xconf configured properly. And then after that I still didn't have sound support (lack of drivers for my onboard soundcard). Oh, and I still had to deal with subscribing to a program guide service (with a one month renewal process). It got to the point where it was no longer worth my time. $150 for Windows MCE, and $40 for the NVIDIA mpeg encoder and I was up and running with everything working within a few hours.

People who want to use MythTV or Windows MCE, for the most part want it run as a dedicated Tivo-like appliance. They are going to be doing little if any desktop computing on it. For that reason, it makes perfect sense to have a full OS configured specifically for it, with default large fonts and display in the GUI, drivers and codecs pre-installed for most media types, auto-boot directly into the TV/Media interface, etc.

Sure, it's nice to be able to install something like this on top of your pre-existing, pre-configured OS. But for most people who want to use this technology, they'd rather wipe the machine and start clean.