Can I use Linux, and which one?

[cybervision_]

I am about to setup a computer that will be feeding a Duet with delicious music and Win XP activation refuses to accept my code even though I have a genuine license. Oh how I hate Microsoft.

I saw on the SS website that you can run Squeezecenter on Linux and I was wondering if it would run well on a computer with Ubuntu.

If the machine is to do nothing but running SCenter - would linux be a good choice on an elderly computer?

[pfarrell]

cybervision_ wrote:
> If the machine is to do nothing but running SCenter - would linux be a
> good choice on an elderly computer?

Yes. Which one is a bit of a personal choice.
I use Debian Etch on my music server. Works well on machines that are
too underpowered for Vista.

My number one rule:

Pick the distro that your buddy uses, buy your buddy a beer, and enjoy.

Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, ClarkConnect and others are popular.

And I will not pick between them without a beer.

--
Pat Farrell
http://www.pfarrell.com/

[cybervision_]

So what you're saying is that I can use the linux version of squeezecenter on ubuntu and get all the stuff windows users can get and the performance will be good?

[pfarrell]

cybervision_ wrote:
> So what you're saying is that I can use the linux version of
> squeezecenter on ubuntu and get all the stuff windows users can get and
> the performance will be good?

I don't know what you mean by "get all the stuff windows users can get"

Squeezecenter runs great on Ubuntu or Debian, and all you have to do is
point your browser to <ubuntuhost>:9000 and it will all work the way you
know and love.

Performance will be at least as good as XP, better than Vista. A lot
depends on how the box is, more memory is good, of course.

If you install 'samba" then your windows users will just see the shares
and use the usual drag and drop stuff to move files.


--
Pat Farrell
http://www.pfarrell.com/

[SuperQ]

Ubuntu is a fine choice. I run SqueezeCenter on an old PC for my parents squeezebox. It's just a P3-500 with 128MB ram. It runs without a GUI, so it's only a bit slow (uses a tiny bit of swap regularly). But it's fine via the remote interface. This is probably the minimum requirement for a dedicated server these days. Supposedly the new database design will shrink the requirements a bit (no more mysql)

You can also turn off un-used plugins to save ram.

[pfarrell]

SuperQ wrote:
> It's just a P3-500 with 128MB ram.

> This is probably the minimum requirement for a dedicated server these days.

So, this is a slow computer that is at least a decade old. You can't buy
a new computer now, even the cheapest, slowest one available, that is
not at least four times faster CPU and four times the memory, and any
vaguely reasonable computer will be eight or 16 times faster with eight
or sixteen times the memory.

The cheapest, slowest computer on the walmart.com site has 2.7 GHz and
2GB of RAM.

I've had embedded systems that were faster and had more memory than that.

Why would anyone care to have something use "less" that this, unless you
want to run it on your cell phone?

--
Pat Farrell
http://www.pfarrell.com/

[SuperQ]

Hah, I wonder if I could get SC running on my Android G1 phone. I would have to get an ARM build of perl.

Considering most NAS devices are about as powerful as my G1, That is a good target. A lot of people want to run SC on NAS devices.

Another target platform would be something like my Soekris net5501. 512M ram, 400mhz AMD Geode CPU.

My Squeezecenter runs on a dual core Athlon64 with 2G of ram. I might move it my colo which is a 2x quad core with 16G of ram (running in a small VM)

[egd]

I am about to setup a computer that will be feeding a Duet with delicious music and Win XP activation refuses to accept my code even though I have a genuine license. Oh how I hate Microsoft.

Oh dear, you obviously need some "I love Windows" counselling from Goodsounds. If that doesn't work, install a distribution like Xubuntu which is aimed at older machines and you'll find it does all you need and probably quicker than you're used to.

[cybervision_]

I have a Athlon 1.4, 512 mb ram, 80 GB WD 7200 RPM disk, Radeon 8500 pro. It runs Win XP really nice so it should cope with Ubuntu.

I have downloaded Ubuntu now so here it goes.

[egd]

I have a Athlon 1.4, 512 mb ram, 80 GB WD 7200 RPM disk, Radeon 8500 pro. It runs Win XP really nice so it should cope with Ubuntu.

I have downloaded Ubuntu now so here it goes.

Once installed, open a terminal window (Applications/ Accessories/ Terminal) and type the following:

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Then refer to http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/DebianPackage and cut and paste the entry for the version of SC you'd like to install. Save and close the file, then type the following in the terminal window:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install squeezecenter

Answer Y to any prompts. Once back at the command line, it's all done...just point your browser to: http://localhost:9000/