Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 30th Oct 2009 12:07 UTC
I'm in a bit of a pickle here. I have an Atom 330-based tiny computer which I use as my HTPC. It performed its job fine running Windows 7 and Boxee, and over the past few months, it ran Mac OS X Leopard with Plex. Now, however, I want to try Linux as an HTPC operating system, but I kind of ran into a roadblock there with Ubuntu 9.10 - so the question is: what is a good HTPC Linux distribution?
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RE[9]: Comment by Thom_Holwerda
by Thom_Holwerda on Fri 30th Oct 2009 23:52
in reply to "RE[8]: Comment by Thom_Holwerda"
Member since:2005-06-29
RE[10]: Comment by Thom_Holwerda
by Morgan on Fri 30th Oct 2009 23:55
in reply to "RE[9]: Comment by Thom_Holwerda"
Member since:2005-06-29
RE[10]: Comment by Thom_Holwerda
by spiderman on Sat 31st Oct 2009 06:38
in reply to "RE[9]: Comment by Thom_Holwerda"
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Honestly you are both correct to a degree. Ubuntu is based on Debian as we all know, but every non-LTS release is indeed on the so-called "bleeding edge".
While there are a lot of people trying really hard to make sure each release is stable enough for everyday use, inevitable bugs and broken functionality exist in nearly every one. This is due, in large part, to the strict six month release cycle which is tied to the Gnome desktop's development cycle. I've often wondered why they don't stretch it out and ship more stable software.
Because of this, you have a full release (as Thom correctly said) which is never quite ready for prime time (as spiderman opined). I'm on the horns of this dilemma myself, as the 9.10 release was supposed to have Grub 2 but instead seems to have shipped with Grub 1.9 beta, which refuses to do more than dump me to a grub command prompt. That is unacceptable and makes me want to stick with my old stalwart, Slackware.
I love what I saw of the Live CD, though to be honest it was a bit buggy too in other areas, but overall I'm unimpressed. Karmic was touted as the best Ubuntu yet by a large margin, but that's a silly claim when a large chunk of your audience (gma950 users) are shut out completely.
So Thom, I'll suggest--albeit in a less coarse manner than others--that you stick with a proven stable OS that fully supports Boxee, XBMC or MythTV, and leave Ubuntu behind for now. There are a few good Debian based ones out there (Dreamlinux springs to mind) so I know you'll eventually find what you need.